[Fsf-friends] FLOSSNews: Bangalore, Pune, Jodhpur, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kerala..

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

We're just working to revive the news-content of the Linux-India-General 
mailing list. Kindly visit and check out the links. Once you're on the site 
below, please check out 'Indian news'. Your contributions and 
news-submissions would be welcome! FN

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News from Linux-India * http://www.linux-india.org
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[Website being relaunched, by Raju Mathur of Delhi. Contributions in terms of 
content and tech support are welcome!]
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Linux India: The India Linux Organisation Portal

NGOs, searching long for alternatives, find flavour in alt.software
Frederick Noronha reports -- Asia Source, being held in Bangalore from Jan
28 to Feb 4, 2005 hopes to bring together over a hundred people from 20
countries to increase the use and awareness of FLOSS among the non-profit
sector in South and East Asia.

GNUnify ... at Pune, Feb 13 to 15, 2005 Vidyadutt S <vidyadutt at gmail.com>
has announced the GNUnify festival of Symbiosis at Pune, a regular event
that takes place at this time of the year -- and has continued over the past
two years -- at the central Indian city of Pune.

GNU/Linux... in the life sciences Tarun Kant <tarunkant at linuxmail.org>
from the SunnyLUG from Jodhpur for this useful piece of information. He
says: "For people who are into life science research/bioinformatics, there
are a few good linux distros available." This includes the VigyaanCD, the
live Linux CD containing "all the required software to boot the computer
with ready-to-use modeling software". Says Kant: "And let me tell you this
(Vigyaan) is an effort by an Indian. Kudos to you Pratul K Agarwal for such
a nice package."

>From software... to culture Crimson Feet coordinator Prayas Abhinav is
working on a "showcase" of audiovisual -- film, animation etc -- work
produced by alternate methods, and plans an exhibition on February 5 and 6,
2005 at Ahmedabad.

Open Source in Education, Mumbai meet on Feb 11, 2005 Sameer D Saharabudde
<sameerds at it.iitb.ac.in> has sent in an early intimation of a program
scheduled for February 11, 2005 on "Open Source in Education". Says Sameer:
"Some 50 people involved in the education system, like university department
heads, college heads, etc will be invited." Further details awaited. Sameer
is a research scholar, KReSIT, IIT Bombay.

Microsoft at the KSEB (Kerala) Satheesh S Pillai <satheeshpillai2000 at
yahoo.co.in> recently drew attention of the Free Software User Group-Kochi
to the report made by Centre for Computer Aided Power Sector Studies
(C-CAPSS) in Kerala about the billing software developed by "a famous
consultancy along with M$ as part of the e-Governance project". This report
makes interesting reading, and has immense implications for many government
computerisation plans.  You can find the full report at
http://www.kseboa.org/KSEB%20LT%20billing%20computerisation.pdf

LaTeX for Malayalam 0.9 released TUG-India -- http://www.tug.org.in -- has
announced that an update 0.9 for 'LaTeX for Malayalam' has been released at
sarovar. This update enables the use of Type1 Malayalam fonts available with
CDAC ISM Publisher, according to Alex. Download the package from:
http://malayalam.sarovar.org/ .

IITIANS Develop Linux-Based Cell Phone Tracking Software CXOToday.com writer
Julia Fernandes has reported on how "three young Mumbai-based IITians, who
have developed a Linux-based software application that tracks the location
of mobile phones."

Nithin Kamath's LinTux Newsletter A made-in-Mangalore product. Interesting
compiliation of news and updates from the world of FLOSS across India and
the globe. Check it out at Now in the 14th issue. Keep it up Nithin. 
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/lintux

THE HINDU: A whiz-kid's tryst with Linux What do people do when they hear
that doing a particular thing is very difficult? Most of them try to avoid
it. But some people meet the challenge headlong. Sarath Lakshman a Standard
X student of the Jawaharlal Nehru Government Higher Secondary School, Mahe,
belongs to the second category. This article is from the national newspaper
THE HINDU, reproduced here with gratitude to this publication for
highlighting an issue which is important to understanding what makes sense
to the young techies-in-the-making of South Asia.

Low-cost CD outlet http://www.linuxbazar.com is run by Srinivasan
<LinuxIndia at hotmail.com>. Says he: "I sell CDs at Rs 50 per CD. Spreading
the word on my website is difficult .. still I have managed to ship Fedora
to remote corners in India incl. Jammu."

L10N How-To and Toolkit On Jan 19, 2005 Sunil Abraham <sunil at apdip.net>
announced that the IOSN-CDAC L10N How-To and Toolkit is ready for a "final
round of comments and feedback." The main page contents listing of the CD is
available at http://anakin.ncst.ernet.in/~aparna/consolidated/CD. It has
links to the guide, as well as the list of tools we will include in the CD.
You can see the current version at:
http://anakin.ncst.ernet.in/~aparna/consolidated in the HTML format.
Feedback welcome!

Font developer's guide Sayamindu Dasgupta <sayamindu at clai.net> is
offering what he terms a "preliminary version of a font developer's guide".
Check out what this determined young man has to offer at
http://sayamindu.randomink.org/conv_guide/

Listing Indian LUGs, GLUGs, FSUGs and more... a list of links to various
user groups in the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) world. Please
visit it at http://wikiwikiweb.de/LugsList/

Punjabi translation of Debian Installer comes closer to realisation
Christian Perrier <bubulle at debian.org> said January 19, 2005 that the
Debian Installer team has been contacted by Amanpreet Alam, who offers to
start working on Debian Installer (and further Debian translations) in
Punjabi. Says he: "The work on Hindi started about two to three months ago
after a discussion here where Ravi Shrivastava offered to initiate it."

ET's software stories Indian business daily, 'The Economic Times', has this
link for software-related stories. Unfortunately just a few related to
Free/Libre and Open Source Software in India ... a field where so much is
happening!

C-DAC launches Janabhaaratii FLOSS localisation project C-DAC, the Indian
government-run Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing, has
announced in October 2004 the launch of the launch of its "janabhaaratii"
project for localisation of FLOSS. It suggested the goal would be
"development, deployment and community building, and the work would be put
out under the GPL/LGPL licenses.

Govt open to open source software ... or just hedging bets?  India's
business newspaper reported in end-December 2004 that the Government of
India "continues to evaluate options for using open source software, a move
which would proliferate the usage of IT by bringing down its costs". IT
secretary Brijesh Kumar was quoted as telling the Federation of Indian
Chambers of Commerce and Industry, an industry lobby group, that the
"government continues to consider options available in open source
software". There was a suggestion that "India should force proprietory
software makers to share source code by threatening to shift to open source
software", the ET reported, citing the case of China.

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Frederick Noronha (FN)                    Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia
Freelance Journalist                      P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436
http://fn.swiki.net                       http://fn-floss.notlong.com
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