Hi All,
As usual the meeting formally started late @ 5:00 pm though the announced time was 4:30. In fact an informal meet was going on in the HBCSE canteen, and we have call the people from there to start the meet formally. :-)
We started the meeting with introductions as there where many new faces, who were attending the meeting for first time. There were 29! members present in the meeting. :-)
Sundeep gave a very insight full talk on various Free and Open Source Licenses in use by various developers and what does it mean to an average user and a possible developers.
He covered following 4 prominent licenses widely used by developers.
1. X, BSD and Apache License. 2. GPL (General Public License) 3. Artistic License (Perl?) 4. MPL (Mozilla Public License.
We also learned that, the most common aspect all licenses are that, software covered by them comes without any explicit or implied warranty. Also only GPL and MPL are written by either Law Professors or Lawyers and only they have any chance of standing in Court of Law. However, so far this has not happened.
During Sandeep's presentation it became very clear that only GPL protects developers and users *rights* and *freedom* absolutely. That is why some times GPL is referred to as copyleft.
Also during the discussion, Philip told us how a guy has written a proprietary instant messaging application using the library (libyahoo2) developed by him and how he circumvent the GPL. Then many people very curious to know the reaction and feeling of Philip. :-)
In all, it was a wonderful presentation by Sandeep, where he covered most of the aspects of Free and Open Source licenses. Thanks Sundeep on behalf of LUG for such a nice presentation.
We took a tea break @ 6:00 and as alway, very generous Dr. Nagarjun sponsored the tea for the attendee. (I strongly feel that we should do something is this regard. How about voluntary contribution or may be a nominal set fee for attending the meets say in the range of Rs. 10.00 to Rs. 50.00? This is just an idea, all suggestions are welcome, all flames
/dev/null :-))
We assemble again at 6:30 and Dr. Nagarjun talked about PRC (Project Resource Center) for students and various other activities for proposed Developers Network. The idea was to get more projects and invite more mentors for the PRC.
We also found many volunteers for various task that needs to be done.
Harsh Busa and Kapil will redesign and maintain web site.
Amish Munshi and Ritesh Kale will co-ordinate LUG meets.
Dr. Nagarjun and I will look after the server.
It is decided that now LUG meets will be regularly done every second Sunday of the month. (Amish / Ritesh start inviting speaker and finalize the topic(s) for the next meet :-))
Also Dr. Nagarjun has generously offered the venue for all future meets. But we should also find other venues in various locations so more people for various other areas can also participate.
In all, it was a nice meet almost after an year!!! LUGers see you all in next LUG meet on 8th Dec. 2002.
PS: Kapil / Harsh Pls put this minutes on the LUG site as soon as u can. Pls edit correct as required. TIA
Thanks for your overwhelming presence and warm response. With warm regards,