A draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties
http://osindia.blogspot.com/2009/02/draft-foss-manifesto-for-indian.html
With elections approaching in April 2009, it was time to create a
draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties. This is a first
draft and I have written this keeping in mind that most Indian
politicians would not be familiar with FOSS. Hence, the usage of
simple language that anyone can understand. If you feel that any
section here needs improvement, please let me know.
Comments/suggestions welcome.
venky
====
A draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties
The Free and Open Source Software community in India calls upon
political parties to make FOSS usage and promotion a central part of
the IT, e-government and education plans in their election manifestos.
FOSS is software which is liberally licensed to grant the right of
users to study, change, and improve its design through the
availability of its source code. The open, inclusive and participatory
nature of FOSS is a natural fit for the vibrant traditions of Indian
democracy. Since software is the foundation of the knowledge economy,
India's IT infrastructure should be built on FOSS and not on closed,
proprietary software systems.
We believe that encouragement of FOSS will result in:
* Development of the domestic IT industry
* Creation of jobs
* Encouragement of skills development and upgradation
* Enable localization of software to Indian languages
* Reduction of India's dependence on monopolistic proprietary
software vendors
* Encourage the usage of open standards
* Bridging the digital divide
* Rapid modernization and computerization of India's education system
* Technology upgradation of India's Small and Medium Enterprises
* Efficient usage of budget outlays for e-government
* Faster technology development through Collaborative Innovation
We call upon political parties in India to support the Indian FOSS community by:
1. Encouraging the use of FOSS in Indian education system. This
will inculcate the virtues of collaboration, sharing and participation
in children from a very young age and make computerization of schools
affordable.
2. Eliminating proprietary software from the education syllabus and
making the syllabus vendor-neutral, thus giving teachers and students
the choice of software that suits their budgets and needs.
3. Using FOSS in e-government to the maximum possible extent and
ensuring that government tenders are open and do not favor proprietary
software vendors. All software developed with tax-payers money should
be released under a FOSS license to encourage collaboration; and the
sharing of code and best practices.
4. Mandating the usage of open standards that are free from
royalties and vendor lock-in so that the interaction between the
government and citizens happens in a free and open manner befitting a
democracy.
5. Encouraging freely shareable, FOSS based knowledge repositories
like Wikipedia in Indian languages.
6. Encouraging the usage of the collaborative model of FOSS in
scientific research. Science thrives on collaboration and the sharing
of knowledge. The current trend of privatizing knowledge leads to
secrecy in science and reduces collaboration. We must use the FOSS
model based on collaboration, community and shared ownership of
knowledge to spark a renaissance of knowledge in India.
7. Eliminating software and business method patents that have lead
to huge amounts of litigation in developed countries. Indian
traditions have held that knowledge grows by sharing and diminishes
when hoarded. Patents on software and business methods grant undue
monopolies on ideas and prevent independent invention and the sharing
of knowledge.
India has one of the most youthful populations in the world and it is
important that they have access to the tools with which the
information society is built. The freedom to modify the source code,
the ability to share knowledge and build communities make Free and
Open Source Software the best, long-term model for India's
development. We therefore urge all political parties to encourage the
usage of FOSS for India's development.
Hello,
There is an advt. of CISCO where a group of people from China and Some
European country come face to face virtually on huge screens. Is this
really possible or just trick photography? If possible, it would not
only help in overseas conferencing but also in huge office complexes
where one has to travel a long distance or even a few floors to get to
the boss's cabin or some place else. The normal video conferencing has a
very small screen where one cannot even move one's head or it would get
out of the visible area. With high resolution videos, a huge life size
image is possible and groups of people can talk to each other. It has a
fantastic effect and looks really good.
Keeping aside the cost and availability of net bandwidth, is this
possible with Linux. If it is not very expensive, could we actually
setup a prototype in HBCSE during our forthcoming GLUG meets over the
months? A LAN cable should provide good bandwidth for intraoffice video
conferencing. We can link up two classrooms or the lab and classroom. We
already have a projector and a 17/19" LCD screen. I am sure this has
good commercial potential too for big corporate offices.
--
Regards,
Rony.
GNU/Linux !
No Viruses
No Spyware
Only Freedom.
Hi,
While putting up Rony's article, I felt the need to put up a
maintenance tag[1] for the page to get attention to the requirements.
I went through the Mediawiki guidelines to see that they have a
defined template for it.. What would be the best way to use that
template on ILUG-BOM wiki or any other personal wiki for that matter?
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_messages/Maintenance
--
If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?
Hello,
Today Kubuntu 8.10 was installed on the LG X110 netbook. Unlike Acer
which has no recovery CD and uses a 20 GB hidden partition, LG's X110
comes with driver CDs and there is only one partition of 160 GB that's
installed with Doze XP home. A Moserbayer DVD writer temporarily plugged
into an external USB IDE HDD adapter was used as the external USB CD drive.
After booting flawlessly into the Live session of Kubuntu 8.10,
installation is pretty simple. When you come to the partitioning part,
it stops at the first option to partition the disk 50-50 for Doze and
Linux. Select your option and the rest of the installation is automatic.
If you choose 50-50 then the first time you boot into Dose post
installation, you will get a file system error and the scandisk option
will pop up. Do not bypass it. Let it happen and it will restart the
system after correcting the disk space entries. After that the system
boots into doze normally.
After installation run 'sudo apt-get update' and install multimedia
support with 'sudo apt-get install kubuntu-restricted-extras'. It is
better to run this command in a terminal or gui terminal like konsole as
the Java license agreement choices cannot be navigated properly through
a GUI package manager like Adept, Synaptec etc. It will hang there.
To add firefox3, simply use 'sudo apt-get install firefox'. Please note
that Firefox 3 is a gnome package and it will download a bulk of gnome
based support packages. For the webcam interface use 'sudo apt-get
install luvcview' Luvcview is a nice software but the gui needs a little
getting used to. Pictures clicked are good and in a raw format. You can
later convert them into your favorite format. It does video recording too.
While the Realtek LAN is up automatically, the Realtek wireless drivers
need to be installed and that is done from this site
http://julienpecqueur.com/tutoriaux/install_driverwifi.html The site
is in French but the commands to be executed are in English so simply
copy/paste them into a terminal. Remember, the 'uname -r' is to be
replaced by the actual output of 'uname'r'. So do that first and make a
note of it. Download the tarball and untar it using 'tar xzvf
rtl8187se_linux_26.1023.0928.2008.tar.gz' then go ahead with the rest of
the instructions. Basically you download the builder packages and build
the drivers from the tarball. Then you save the modules into the
respective locations.
Bluetooth is still a gray area and hopefully it will get resolved soon.
What is surprising is that peripherials like BT, Camera, Cardreader etc.
do not show up in lspci. I will see if the output can be posted to the
list. Maybe there is a patch in the Doze side to get these devices
detected. Anyway the system is now up and running with Kubuntu 8.10 with
LAN and Wireless support and Camera.
--
Regards,
Rony.
GNU/Linux !
No Viruses
No Spyware
Only Freedom.
Hi all.
We are pleased to announce our 7th free software(FOSS) camp called Ngo in a
Box for Ngo's and similar interest groups,scheduled to be held from March
24-28 in Madhya Pradesh India.
This is a 5 day residential workshop and limited scholarships are available
to select participants who will be provided with free training ,boarding
and lodging.
Full details and application forms are available at our website
http://ngoinabox.mahiti.org
Application deadline is March 5th 2009 so hurry up!
All those on the list who have contacts in Ngo's can pass on this
information to them.
regards
rajeev nair
Project Coordinator
Ngo in a Box - South Asia
rajeev.nair(a)mahiti.org
When I said my comp crashed I meant that when I "hit the button" all
that happened was that the power led glowed - no display and no led
even for the hard disk. However, it turned out that is was more my
hopes that had crashed. The BIOS had got corrupted and a call to Acer
helpline fixed that. The comp is up and about again.
BTW +1 from me.
Sanjay
Hi All,
I'm using squid3.0 as our proxy server to serve the internet users,
which is working fine. Now I want users to access IMAP(say gmail on imap)
over my proxy.
Can anyone let me know, How do I do this?
Is there any way I can do it with squid? Is there any other way?
So far what I've read on google is, as squid is an http proxy,
it only supports http/ftp protocol. not fully for even https.
Is there any other way to proxy remaining protocols like imap/imap4/pop3/smtp
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sameer Shinde.
M:- +91 98204 61580
Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
Hello,
This is just for everyones' information that more manufacturers have
jumped into the netbook bandwagon and one such model is from LG. A
client of mine bought it from Vijay Sales for 19K.
Specs:-
LG X110
10" screen
1.2 Kgs
2.5+ Hr batter life
Atom Processor
945 Mobo
1 GB RAM
160 GB HDD
1.3 MP camera
3 USB
1 VGA
LAN and Wireless (lspci showed them as Realtek devices and the wireless
was not detected by Lenny Live)
Bluetooth
One MM card slot
Speakers.
Mic and H/P sockets
Preloaded with doze home edition
I found the screen to very bright but the camera was darkish, compared
to the Aspire One. The dealer told him that the camera can be made
bright through software settings but I have not tried it.
--
Regards,
Rony.
GNU/Linux !
No Viruses
No Spyware
Only Freedom.