[Fsf-india] Minutes of WG meet

K G Kumar kg@myiris.com
Thu, 31 Jan 2002 13:33:01 +0530


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A quasi-formal meeting of the FSF Working Group was held on Tuesday, 29th 
January at Trivandrum. The following participated: G. Nagarjuna, E. 
Krishnan, M. Arun and KG Kumar.

The meeting began at 6.15 pm and the following points were discussed:

1. The WG and the FSF Board need to seriously consider the issue of 
expanding themselves in terms of inducting new "members" so as to spread 
the Free Software movement into other parts of the country and work out 
ways by which existing users of Free Software and GNU/Linux (including the 
plethora of LUGs around the country) can come into the fold.

2. Efforts are on to register the "Free Software Foundation of India" as a 
non-profit organisation in Kochi and Chennai, for which a Kochi-based 
lawyer has been engaged. While preliminary work has been done, some 
official objections to the name of the organisation is now being dealt 
with. The registration process is expected to be over in a month or so.

3. The FSF website needs to be revamped, made more dynamic and continuously 
updated. Currently, www.fsf.org.in is the single most important medium of 
communication for FSF India and represents the official "face" of the 
organisation. It thus requires constant and continual monitoring. It was 
also felt that the site could do with a new design that, while 
incorporating elements of www.gnu.org , could reflect an Indian identity. 
This would include designing a new and, again, distinctly Indian, logo for 
FSF India, as well as flyers, brochures and mailers. Ideally, some of this 
should be done in time for RMS' proposed visit to Pune in March.

In terms of content, the site needs to have well-written articles and an 
exhaustive FAQ pertaining to Indian situations, problems and solutions 
using Free Software. Specifically, an article on the FS business model, 
citing Indian examples of successes and failures, should be prepared to go 
up on the site as well as in Freedom Matters, the proposed FSF India 
newsletter. KG Kumar was assigned the task of following up on this.

The FSF India website also needs to announce live ongoing projects by FSF 
India members and the FS community in general, and provide a forum for 
discussion of these.

A directory of available FS software should go up on the site, with links 
to ftp sites.

FSF India should identify experts in various academic and professional 
domains (engineering, medicine, mathematics, social sciences, etc.) and 
determine the predominant proprietary software being used in their area of 
expertise (e.g. SPSS, AutoCAD, etc), and then list the FS 
alternative/equivalent. This listing can also be put up on the site as a 
table for quick reference.

By default, Arun has been the webmaster for www.fsf.org.in and he will 
co-ordinate to ensure these improvements are effected.

4. The FSF India mailing list needs to be rejuvenated as it now seems to 
lack the vigour and vitality of its early days.

5. FSF India should make an effort to hook up with the network of Peoples 
Science Movements around the country and show how FS has a role in 
development and planning. Specifically, a workshop for IT-savvy activists 
and organisers from NGOs like the KSSP could be organised by FSF India to 
expose them to the strengths and benefits of FS.

6. A core team comprising Arun, Karunakaran and Vikram (of IIT Bombay) will 
deal with the Indianisation project. As a start, Nagarjuna will convene a 
meeting with Karunakaran, Vikram and Prakash Advani in Bombay in the first 
week of February, after which Arun will co-ordinate to take the project 
forward.

7. FSF India should think of preparing customised GNU/Linux distributions 
on CDs for specific users, say, students, engineers, scientists, 
statisticians, etc.

8. FSF India should put up a proposal for the preparation of a Live Debian 
CD that can be used for demos that can be run off a machine loaded with 
proprietary software, using the machine's existing RAM, without having to 
install anything on the hard drive.

9. FSF India should launch a project to come up with a FS equivalent to 
Macromedia Flash. Arun informed the meeting that the technical specs are 
already available, and a project using the Ming library has come up with a 
solution to render .swf files using GPLd software. Arun will post details 
to the list.

The meeting ended at 8 pm.

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