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INDIA: THERE'S A LOT HAPPENING, BUT CAN IT BE CHANNELISED?
Compiled by Frederick Noronha
India, with its population of one-billion plus, has a rich tech talent, considerable interest in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and a network of some 80-plus user groups across its landmass (some active, some less). This offers wide potential.
- But officialdom
- apart from a few high-profile statements -- have been slow to wake up to the world of FOSS. Not enough is being done to promote FOSS in higher education, though the official syllabus.
There are impressively-large user groups in places like Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Hyderabad. There are also nationwide networks like the Linux India network and the Free Software Foundation-India (headquartered in Kerala in South India). In addition, a ring of medium-sized user-groups have also proliferated in smaller cities and towns, taking the technology right into the hands of the user-practitioner.
But much remains to be done in terms of providing official support for FOSS growth in a region which could surely benefit hugely from it.
Below are links to some interesting developments from the field, across India.
Indian language initiatives ---------------------------
IndLinuX? project was started to provide Indian Language support for GNU/Linux OS at both console and XLibrary? level. URL: http://www.tenet.res.in/Donlab/Indlinux/
Zha Kanini is an effort to provide a Tamil Desktop consisting of FOSS Applications. The objective is to enable any Tamil user to use a computer even without English proficiency/knowledge. URL: http://www.zhakanini.org/
Indic Computing, localisation -----------------------------
Indic Computing http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net/ Mailing list at Indic-computing-users@lists.sourceforge.net
TAMIL-LINux?/unIX http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilinix/ A group involved in the development of Tamil on Linux/Unix. Members are self-interested enthusiasts who contribute in their free time. Anyone is free to join this group and contribute to Tamil on Linux/Unix.
- Free CDs? spread FOSS in India: CNET News.com reported on May 25, 2005 about an initiative by the Indian government to "encourage the use of computers across the country by distributing free CDs? that contain localized versions of popular open-source applications". The government has started distributing CDs? containing Tamil-language versions of various open-source applications, including the Firefox browser, the OpenOffice?.org productivity suite and the Columba e-mail client. It plans to freely distribute 3.5 million copies of the CD to Tamil speakers worldwide, Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing researcher R.K.V.S. Raman was quoted saying. Raman said: ""We have had a tremendous response to this (initiative). In the first two weeks of the campaign we got about 100,000 hits daily on the Web site offering CDs?, and about 2,000 to 3,000 downloads (of Tamil-language applications). We have already sent out around 50,000 CDs? and have a backlog of 35,000." http://news.com.com/Free+CDs+spread+open+source+in+India/2100-7344_3-5720008.html?tag=cd.top
BharateeyaOO? is a Unicode
The Linux Localisation Initiative Project Website http://lli.linux-bangalore.org/ Description The Linux Localization Initiative aims to translate Linux documentation provided by the Linux Documentation Project (www.linuxdoc.org) and its contributors, into Indian languages. This long and boring sentence should give you an idea about the labors ahead. There are quite a few languages apart from Hindi, which is of course the national language of India. A selection includes Bengali, Marathi, Konkani, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Urdu, and Tulu.
Project Indlinux(Indian Language Support for Linux Operating System)
Project Website http://www.tenet.res.in/Donlab/Indlinux/
Description Indlinux team is a part of the TeNeT??
Project IndiX?: Indian Language support for the Linux Operating System
Project Website http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix
Description A modified X server to support Indian languages using
opentype fonts. Uses Unicode. Seeks to bring Indic support at the OS
level on GNU/Linux. Others too agree that NCST's (the Govt of India's
Mumbai-based National Centre for Software Technology) localization work
is promising, both for Indix and OpenOffice??
Project Ved Project Website http://sourceforge.net/projects/ved/ Description Explores indian holy books that are in sanskrit & translate them in english beside this project will also speak sanskrit shaloks which user will select it is useful for the peoples working on indian culture
Project itrans
Developer: Avinash Chopde
Project Website http://www.aczone.com/itrans/
Description itrans by Avinash Chopde is a package for printing texts in
Indian languages. It uses English-encoded text for input, and it
supports the Devanagiri script (used for writing Hindi and some other
Indian languages), Gujarati, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi,
and Romanized Sanskrit. Input files can be in TeX??
Project Dhvani Project Website http://sourceforge.net/projects/dhvani/ Description dhvani is a text-to-speech system for Indian languages developed by the Simputer Trust developers and others. It is promising to soon have a better phonetic engine, Java port, language independent framework.
- Project Acharya
- website for multilingual (Indian) systems... Project Website http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/perl_enhance.html Description From the Systems Development Laboratory of the IIT-Madras. It was taking time to download, and I gotta run... but these guys are doing some great work at IITM. Keep it up! http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/perl_enhance.html . The source of the software libraries has been GPLed?. Here is the project link http://sourceforge.net/projects/imli/ FOOTNOTE: Just before closing, I got it... this page is about the use of Indian scripts with PERL. "Nearly a decade ago, it was reported that Sanskrit is the most appropriate language for writing computer software. The report, quoted as having been published in the Forbes magazine, seems to have caught the attention of scholars all over India. Unfortunately, no one seems to have asked if this were feasible! Worse still, Forbes Magazine never carried such a report."
Project Oriya Developers: Gora Mohanty, Rajesh Pradhan Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/oriya/ Description Linux in oriya is the initiative for making linux available in Oriya.
Tamil Project gtamilocr Developer(s) Visweswara and Team Project Website http://gtamilocr.sourceforge.net Description gtamilocr project has released the alpha version of cross-platform GUI based Tamil Optical Character Recognizer(OCR) software under GPL. It will recognize pretrained printed characters. Students are invited to join in this project.
Project Tamillinux Distro Project Website http://www.tamillinux.org/
Project Kannada Localisation Initiative Project Website http://kannada.sourceforge.net Description Kannada l10n project
Project Project Maitre Developer: Pramod Description Project Maitre aims to create an infrastructure for rural and/or public schools wanting to implement Linux on their PC’s with Kannada support.
Project OpenOffice?.org in Kannada Project Website http://kannada.sourceforge.net/projects/openoffice.org/ Description OpenOffice?.org in Kannada will undoubtedly bring the benefits of this Office Suite to more people. The first build of Openoffice.org in Kannada is ready now. If you are interested in helping with the project, you can help us with testing the builds, filing bug reports, giving feedback on translations, doing further translations, etc.,
Project Kannada language pack for moodle Project Website http://kannada.sourceforge.net/moodle/ Description Kannada Language pack for moodle is now available. The translations were done as part of the ongoing Kannada l10n project, with a tad bit of support from IISc?.
Project Malayalam for LaTeX?? Developer: Alex A.J. Project Website http://malayalam.sarovar.org/ Description The Malayalam Package offers a set of macros and fonts for typesetting Malayalam, which is the primary language of an estimated 33 million people in the South Indian state of Keralam.
Project AkRti?
Project Website http://sourceforge.net/projects/akrti/
Description AkRti??
Project Anusaaraka Project Website http://www.iiit.net/ltrc/Anusaaraka/anu_home.html Description Anusaaraka is a computer software which renders text from one Indian language into another. It produces output which is comprehensible to the reader, although at times it might sound odd. For example, a Telugu to Hindi anusaaraka can take a Telugu text and produce output in Hindi which can be understood by a Hindi reader. However, the reader will require some amount of training for reading the output.
Project GNU/Linux Telugu Localization Effort
Project Website http://telugu.sarovar.org/
Description The project aims at localizing most common applications on
GNU/Linux to Telugu including GNOME, KDE, Mozilla and OpenOffice??
FOSS in Education initiatives -----------------------------
Linux in Education (India) Gnoware http://www.gnowledge.org/
Gnosys mailing lists
By gnowledge we mean the knowledge accessible freely for the community in
general, and to the users of the WWW in particular.
http://www.gnowledge.org/Data/ObjectType/mailinglists/index_html/
Linux @ Schools http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux_schools/
LIFE-GNU in Edn life at mm.hbcse.tifr.res.in LIFE-2 life at hbcse.tifr.res.in LIFE-Nagarajuna G. nagarjun at hbcse.tifr.res.in LIFEAdmin? life-admin at hbcse.tifr.res.in
Indians in the FOSS diaspora ----------------------------
It has generally been said that Indians aren't contributing sufficiently to the world of FOSS, by way of specific code contributions. This is proving to be untrue, as the contributions are increasingly getting noticed, and more from India get access to Internet connectivity -- which is essential for contributing to such projects.
On the other hand, the contribution of people-of-Indian-origin (POIs?) to the
global Free/Open Source Software experiment is worth speficially noting.
Some prominent contributors are (i) Tushar Joshi -----------------------------------------
FOOTNOTE: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is currently leading the FLOSSWorld? Project
which aims “to strengthen Europe’s leadership in FLOSS and open standards
research, building a global constituency with partners from Argentina,
Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, India, Malaysia and South Africa.”
Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS), states the site, “is arguably one
of the best examples of open, collaborative, internationally distributed
production and development that exists today, resulting in tremendous
interest from around the world, from government, policy, business, academic
research and developer communities.” This 3-year project, funded by the
European Commission, was launched on May 1, 2005.
http://topics.developmentgateway.org/ict/rc/ItemDetail.do~1040381 Involvement in wider projects
----------------------------- Anand Babu (FSF-India) has developed Gluster, a meta GNU/Linux Cluster
Distribution for HPC and Super Computing. URL:
http://www.gnu.org/nongnu/gluster Vijay Kumar (Ex GLUG-Trichy Co-Ordinator) has written a tutorial
about GtkTextView? Widget and CVSCheat? Sheet.
URL: http://www.bravegnu.org/ Shakthi (ILUGC-Member) rewritten the Linux Device Driver example programs,
from Rubini's Book, in a very simple manner. So that a beginner can
understand the code very easily. URL: http://www.shakthimaan.com Gauravp Sharmad has developed GLibMS? (GNU Library Management
System), a Library management software developed using PHP and
PostgreSQL? to automate the library activities.
URL http://sourceforge.net/projects/glibs (Thanks FSUG-Bglr) Ajay, Binand and RajaSubramanian? (ILUG Chennai-Member) jointly developed the
TransConnect?. It allows one to connect to remote machines on any port, using
HTTP Tunneling. URL: http://transconnect.sourceforge.net/ Joe Steeve (ILUGC-Member) and team has developed the IJammer?, an Instant
Messenger Jammer. IJammer? is a Daemon that runs on one workstation of a LAN
and prevents any IM traffic on that LAN. URL:
http://sarovar.org/projects/ijammer/ Amit Kale has developed kgdb, a source level debugger for Linux
Kernel. It is used along with gdb to debug Linux Kernel.
URL http://kgdb.linsyssoft.com/ Avinash has developed the iTrans package for printing texts in many Indian
languages and encodings. URL: http://www.aczone.com/itrans/ Source of many of the above links are:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/ilugc/ and
http://linuxinindia.pitas.com Anjuta: The goal of Anjuta DevStudio? is to provide a truely customizable and
extensible IDE framework and at the same time provide the basic
implementations of common development tools. libanjuta is the framework that
realizes the Anjuta IDE plugin framework and Anjuta DevStudio? realizes many
of the common development plugins. It has been widely noticed in the outside
world, and is developed by the Delhi-based developer Naba Kumar.
http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/ Project Glibms (GNU Library Management System)
Developers: gauravp sharmad
Project Website http://sourceforge.net/projects/glibs
Description Glibms is Library management software developed using PHP
and PostgreSQL? Project Karuna
Developer: Sharmad Naik
Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/karuna/
Description This project is a library management system designed to
automate a library. Taken into consideration all the aspects of a
library like search, issue/retrieval, acquisition and other aspects of a
library Project TransConnect??
Developers: Ajay Kumar Dwivedi and Binand Raj S . Credits also to Raja
Subramanian, among others
Project Website http://transconnect.sourceforge.net/
Description This program allows you "almost complete" access to the
Internet, through a HTTP proxy like squid. Chirag Kantharia, who's using
this, describes it as software that "allows one to connect to remote
machines on any port, using http tunneling". Project GNOWSYS: Gnowledge Networking and Organizing System
Developer: Nagarjuna G.
Project Website http://www.gnu.org/software/gnowsys/
Description: It is official GNU project. It is a hybrid knowledge base with
semantic computing features for both declarative and procedural knowledge.
More details and live demonstration of the application can be seen from
http://www.gnowledge.org/gnowsys/. It is a part of http://www.gnowledge.org
project supported by Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education
(http://www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/), Tata Insitute of Fundamental Research. Project IMV (Information Meta View)
Developer: Vinod G Kulkarni
Project Website http://sourceforge.net/projects/imv/
Description "Information Meta View (IMV) system attempts to create a web
standard for information storage in a decentralized database.
Information is stored as a graph like structure spanning several service
providers." Project Calpp (Computer Aided Legal Procedures and Proceedings)
Developer: Ramanraj
Project Website http://gborg.postgresql.org/project/calpp/projdisplay.php
Description Calpp aids in defining legal procedures and executing those
procedures as proceedings. Calpp uses Postgresql and PHP to create Calpp
powered legal systems. Project bzip2 translator
Developers: Ankur Arora, Shikka Garg and V. Venakataraman
Project Website
http://www.gnu-india.org/pipermail/gnu-india/20010307/000113.html (Release)
Description Ankur Arora, Shikka Garg and V. Venakataraman wrote this
translator. When mapped on a file, you can do bzip compressed I/O.
Capabilities include translating a read call, supporting SEEK_* in
lseek, and dynamically determines the length of the file (which
incidentally is a very slow operation, because the way the way the bz2
library has been written, the only way to find out the length of the
uncompressed file is to uncompress it). It has some "major problems"
too... concede the developers.... Project Genie
Developer: Arun Sharma
Project Website
http://www.sharma-home.net/people/adsharma/projects/genie/index.html
Description Genie is an open source, web based application to maintain
genealogy databases. Project Cyberoam Authentication Client
Developer: Amish Mehta
Project Website http://sourceforge.net/projects/cyberoam/
Description Cyberoam Authentication Client for various platforms(e.g
Linux) for 24hr online internet on cable service. Project GNUYahoo?
Developers: Balamurugan, Nagappan, Gopal, Ramesh, Vishwanathan, Anand
Babu, Mridul Jain... and above all, Parag Mehta
Project Website http://gnuyahoo.sourceforge.net/
Description GNU Yahoo is a freely available GNU messenger for Yahoo! It
was started by few of GNU hackers at end of the year 2000. GNU Yahoo is
a purely console based application which has a geeky "readline" and
"guile" interfaces. It connects to the Yahoo server using the "libyahoo"
library. Project JPA (Java Personal Assistant
Developer: Karthikeyan
Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/jpa/
Description PA (Java Personal Assistant) will have the following modules
Project Kpopup Developers: Santhosh Janardhanan Varghese B George Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/kpopup/ Description This is a chat/instant messenger, whish can be used in both internet and intranet. Coded in VC++. Done by a group of boys who love programming. This messenger have Linux and Windows Versions. We can send inter Operating system messages and alerts
Project Y-Chat - A Yahoo Chat Client in Java Developer: Pushkar Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/ychat/ Description Y-Chat is a Yahoo chat client written entirely in Java and hence runs on anything that has a JRE. It has two unique features, namely - "simultaneous multiple ID login" and "simultaneous multiple lobby joins".
Project Gym Developer: Druvan S Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/gym/ Description This is a JAVA based Yahoo Messenger Client. It supports unicode, so naturally Users can use any language. As it is Java based, it should work on all Java supported platforms. GYM!-J also provides a console edition also.
Project jymessenger Developer(s) Pushkar Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/jymessenger/ Description this is a Yahoo messenger client written entirely in Java currently it supports login,send PM messages,receive PM messages,send Buzz,new mail notifications,logout... it is basicallly a UI to jYmsg project from Sourceforge
Project ijammer Developer(s) Joe Steeve, Ananth Shrinivas S, Arun Ponniah S Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/ijammer/ Description IJammer? is an instant messenger jammer. Instant messengers are a nuisance in some LAN environments ( a.k.a College Networks ). IJammer? is a network daemon that runs on One workstation of a LAN and prevents any IM traffic on that lan.
Development
Project GNU/LDTP Developer(s) Nagappan A Project Website http://gnomebangalore.org/ldtp Description GNU/Linux Desktop Testing Project
Project Octave-GTK Developer(s) Hemant Kumar, Ramasamy, R Saravana Manickam, Muthiah, Dhruvkaran N. Mehta Project Website http://octave-gtk.sourceforge.net/ Description Octave GTK+ is a set of Octave bindings for GTK, to help develop GUI programs from Octave, with GTK+. It aims to aid fast creation of scientific programs that need GUIs? as well as number crunching power
Project KDOC (API doc generation tool)
Developer(s) Sirtaj Singh Kang tag with KDE Team
Project Website
Description
Project kgdb Developer(s) Amit Kale Project Website http://kgdb.linsyssoft.com/ Description KGDB is a source level debugger for linux kernel. It is used along with gdb to debug linux kernel. Kernel developers can debug a kernel similar to application programs with use of KGDB. It makes it possible to place breakpoints in kernel code, step through the code and observe variables.
Project Anjuta IDE Developer(s) Kh. Naba Kumar Singh. Project Website http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/ Description Anjuta is a versatile IDE for C and C++, written for GTK/GNOME. Features include project management, application wizards, an onboard interactive debugger, and a powerful source editor with browsing and syntax highlighting.
Documentation
Project GNU/Linux in One Stanza (GNU-Lost) Developer(s) Project Website http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/howtos (ML) Description GNU-LOST project that makes it easy to learn GNU/Linux by giving out one-stanza tips
Project Newbie's Guide to Linux Developer(s) Sameer Dilip Sahasrabuddhe Project Website http://db.ilug-bom.org.in/Documentation/NGL/ Description The most appropriate time to read the NGL is when you are seriously thinking of trying out Linux for the first time, when you have started planning towards your first installation and when you are about to try out your newly installed Linux box for the first time.
Project pdftexfaq
Developer(s) CV Radhakrishnan
Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/pdftexfaq/
Description Freqently asked questions about pdfTeX, variant of TeX??
Administration Utilities
Project Qryptix
Developer Sivasankar Chander
Project Website http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/qryptix
Description Qryptix,consists of a PAM object and utilities for session &
key management for encrypted Home Dir using the International Kernel
(CryptoAPI??
Project biosconfig
Project Website http://www.nongnu.org/biosconfig/
Description biosconfig reads or writes fields in the CMOS non-volatile
store, most of which are associated with various functions of the PC
Basic Input/Output System (BIOS). The fields, their types and value
ranges are specified in a configuration file in the style of GNUstep?.
This format is familiar to users of the WindowMaker??
Project Gluster Developers: Anand Babu, Balamurugan Project Website http://www.nongnu.org/gluster/ Description Gluster operating system provides an extensible framework for developing cluster extensions and applications.
Project Citybus Developer: Arun Sharma http://www.sharma-home.net/people/adsharma/projects/citybus/citybus.html Description Citybus is an open source project to help the general public in India (or anywhere else for that matter) view public transport information on the web. The data is not there yet, but the code was reported as being 80% complete.
Project RPCAP (Remote Packet Capture system) Developer: S. Krishnan Project Website http://rpcap.sourceforge.net/ Description RPCAP is a Remote Packet Capture system. It enables you to run a packet capture program (the server) on a target computer, which will sniff the network traffic on that system, and uplink the captured packets to another host (the client), where the captured packets can be processed, analysed and archived .
Project MGET Developer: Debajyoti Bera Project Website http://freshmeat.net/projects/mget Description mget is a command line download manager. "It splits the file into a number of segments and uses several separate threads to download each segment. It can handle proxies." It's by Debajyoti Bera. IIT, of course. dbera@iitk.ac.in. http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/dbera/index.html
Project httptype Developer: Philip S Tellis Project Website http://sourceforge.net/projects/httptype/ Description Perl based httptype reads a list of http hosts and optionally the port number for each of these. It then queries each of the hosts and displays the HTTP server software of the host.
Project GNU Freeipmi Developers: Anand Babu and team Project Website http://www.gnu.org/software/freeipmi/ http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/freeipmi/ Description "Remote-Console" (out-of-band) and "System Management Software" (in-band) based on IPMI v1.5/2.0 specification.
Project GNUSim8085? Developer: Sridhar R (ILUGC-Member & Final Year Engg Student) Project Website http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gnusim8085/ Description GNUSim8085?, Simulator and Assembler for the 8085 Microprocessor.
Project MayaVi?
Developer: Dr.Prabhu Ramachandran
Project Website http://mayavi.sourceforge.net/
Description MayaVi??
Project Tuxedo Developer: Ananth Shrinivas S Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/tuxedo/ Description Tuxedo is a distributed chess engine. It is an engine running a single chess game on a linux cluster for Deeper Ply Search and faster move generation.
Project Gipi Developer: Dinker Charak Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/gipi/ Description Gipi is a console based jumble like puzzle game. Guess is a word guessing game.
Project Ashish Gulhati's Perl modules
Developer: Ashish Gulhati
Project Website http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-authors/id/AGUL/
Description You can do "various things" with these Perl modules.
Checkboxes, radiobuttons, three styles of pushbottons, selection
listboxes, an extensible editbox, scrollable viewbox, single-line text
entry fields, menubar with pulldown menus, and full popup dialog boxes
with multiple controls... also an object-oriented interface to PGP5,
object persistence in SQL databases/PostgreSQL??
Project JavaDBF??
Project Perl extension for an Interactive Voice Response System Developer(s) Mukund Deshmukh Project Website http://search.cpan.org/search?mode=module&query=IVRS Description Mukund Deshmukh's Perl extension for an Interactive Voice Response System. Mukund is at Nagpur, visit http://www.betacomp.com/ Ivrs-0.07.tar.gz was released in Feb 2001. It works like this: someone phones a number, the system picks the call and a pre-recorded message is played out. 24 x 7. Your caller gets a voice menu -- to select the info (s)he wants. Besides, the caller can feed in his input info (access code, ID number, etc) through the phone dial-pad. Based on his/her choice, the relevant voice message is played back. It works in any language!
Project Ptf Developer(s) Davor Ocelic Project Website http://sarovar.org/projects/ptf Description Perl Information and frontend framework for the Prelude Hybrid IDS
Project Hymn (PlayFair?) Developer(s) Anand Babu (Maintainer Project Website http://playfair.org/ Description The project has been renamed Hymn, according to Anand Babu, the maintainer of the project. It is being hosted on two sites (http://playfair.org/ and http://hymn-project.org) by a U.S.-based hosting service provider.
Community Projects
Project Sarovar Developer(s) Project Website http://sarovar.org Description Sarovar.org is India's first portal to host projects under Free/Open source licenses. It is located in Trivandrum, India and hosted at Asianet data center. Sarovar.org is customised, installed and maintained by Linuxense as part of their community services and sponsored by River Valley Technologies.
Project GnuIndia??
Project StupidOS?
Free software projects list
See the listing at the site below http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/?IndianFreeSoftwareProjects
Linking networks with the next ------------------------------
Nithin Kamath
In addition, the large network of user groups (some active, some not so) act as a vital channel for news updates. Also see the GNULinuxInIndia? newsletter at http://www.freelists.org/list/linuxinindia
LUGs?, FSUGs?, GLUGs? -------------------------------------------
What is indeed surprising is the large number of Free Software User Groups, Linux User Groups and GNU/Linux User Groups, which are visible all over the country of 1 billion plus. See a listing at http://wikiwikiweb.de/LugsList
Below is a listing of user groups within India:
GNU/Linux links and lists (India)
All India networks Free Software Foundation of India http://fsf.org.in/ Linux India network http://www.linux-india.org/
Linux India General https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-general/
Linux India Help https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-help
Linux India Programmers http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-programmers
BSD India http://www.bsd-india.org
BSD India mailing list http://www.bsd-india.org/mailinglist.html
Linux In India http://www.freelists.org/archives/linuxinindia/
GNU/Linux localization http://indlinux.org/
Regional networks in India Northern India ILUG-Delhi http://linux-delhi.org/
ILUG-Indore http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-indore/
Kanpur LUGK http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lugk/
Linux-Chandigarh http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux_chandigarh
Sun City Jodhpur LUG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/suncityjodhpurlug
Apart from the mailing list, a website at http://www.geocities.com/sunnylug/
Linux Lucknow http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-lucknow/
Raipur http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug_raipur/
Bhopal http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lug-bhopal/
Rourkee http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rklug/
LUG of Dehradoon http://lists.asiaosc.org/mailman/listinfo/lugdoon
Address for posting is lugdoon at lists.asiaosc.org
Linux Gurus Bhopal http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux_gurus/
Southern India Linux Bangalore http://linux-bangalore.org/blug/
twincling - Professionally managed Linux society Hyderabad http://www.twincling.org/
Linux - Technical n Tutorials Bangalore http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vtplinux/
ILUG-Chennai (Madras) http://www.chennailug.org/
Chennai wiki http://www.chennailug.org/wiki/Main_Page
ILUG-Cochin http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-cochin/
ILUG-Coimbatore http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-cbe/
ILUG-Coimbatore http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cbe-linux/
ILUG-SREC(Sri Ramakrishna Engg College) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/srec-lug
KLUG (Kongu Engg College, Erode) - Mail list - http://mail.kongu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/klug
ILUG-KTM (Kottayam) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-ktm/
Website http://www.ilug-ktm.tk
ILUG-Belgaum http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-belgaum/
ILUG-Mangalore http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-mangalore/
ILUG-Hyderabad LUG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilughyd/
ILUG-Hyderabad http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-hyd/
ILUG-Trivandrum (Kerala) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-tvm/
GLUG-T(GNU/Linux User Group - Trichy) http://glugt.linuxisle.com/
ALUG - Andhra Linux Users Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alug_linux/
AP LUG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aplug/
ILUG-Hubli http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linuxhubli/
PSG-GNULinuxClub? http://groups.yahoo.com/PSG-GNULinuxClub/
GLUG-Madurai http://www.glug-madurai.org/
Mailing list at https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/glug-madurai-discuss
GLUGOT (GNU/Linux User Group of TCE) http://cepserver.tce.edu/glugot/
Mailing list at http://cepserver.tce.edu/mailman/listinfo/glugot
Tamil Linux http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamillinux/
Tiruvannamalai LUG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tvmalailug/
FSUG-Kochi (Kerala) http://puggy.symonds.net/~fsug-kochi
FSUG-Cusat http://fsug-cusat.port5.com
FSUG-Calicut http://www.geocities.com/fsug_calicut/
FSUG-Banglore http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/
FSUG-Thrissur http://groups-beta.google.com/group/fsug-tsr/
GLUGC NIT calicut http://glugc.nitc.ac.in
MyLUG? - Mysore Linux Users' Group http://mylug.org/
RVCE (Bangalore) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rvcelug/
Sona College of Technology, Salem Sona LUG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sonalug/
Western India India GNU/Linux Users Group Mumbai http://ilug-bom.org.in/
Mailing list at http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
ILUG-Nagpur http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nagpur-linux/
Nagpur http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nagpur-lug/
Linux At Ahmedabad http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linuxatahmedabad/
ILUG-South Maharashtra http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug_sm/
ILUG-Goa http://ilug-goa.swiki.net/ (On Swiki.net)
ILUG-Goa http://iluggoa.iosn.net/ (On IOSN.net)
ILUG-Goa mailing list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa
Linux Goa Help List http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linuxgoahelp/
Linux Ahmedabad http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-ahmedabad-users/
Linux Users Group of Ahmedabad (LUGA) http://www.lugaforums.org/
ILUG-DAIICT http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug_daiict/ Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of ICT, Gujarat
Gnunify, Pune http://gnunify.sicsr.ac.in/
Mailing list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gnunify/
Pune GNU/Linux User Group http://plug.org.in
Linux at UVPCE, Mehsana http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uvpce_lug/
Eastern India ILUG-Cal Kolkata Chapter http://www.ilug-cal.org/
Mailing lists link at http://www.ilug-cal.org/?q=node/view/3 Archive of list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-cal/
ILUG-Burdwan (West Bengal) http://ilug-bwn.org
Mailing list Burdwan http://www.ilug-bwn.org/mailman/listinfo/ilug-bwn_ilug-bwn.org Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-bwn Contact mail-id : thecyberzone at gmail.com, webmaster at ilug-bwn.org
- Bandel LUG
- CSSLUG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/csslug/
ILUG-Bhubaneswar (Orissa) http://ilug-bbsr.sf.net/
Mailing list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-bbsr/
Bihar Linux User Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biharlinuxusergroup/
Patna Linux Users Group http://lists.asiaosc.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
Mizoram http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mizolinxusergroup/
North East LUG Kokrajhar http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nelug-discussion/
LUG NGFOSS http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ngfossf/
Polar Players GNU/LUG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/polarplayersglug/
Nixal GNU/Linux User Group of Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata http://www.nongnu.org/gug-nixal
Miscellaneous Linux Council of India http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Linux_Council_of_India/
Linux on Yahoogroups http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux/
AMCLUG http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amclug/
Codebreaker http://groups.yahoo.com/group/codebreaker/
Promoting FOSS, in print ------------------------
India is one of the few countries in Asia (probably with Indonesia) which has a regular, commercially-published monthly magazine focussing on Free and Open Source Software. Called Linux For You it is available at http://www.linuxforu.com/
Software Freedom Day --------------------
Groups in different parts of the country have taken an active part in observing Software Freedom Day over 2004 and 2005. See http://softwarefreedomday.org/
One Day, One Command --------------------
One Day One Command is an initiative by Bharathi S. The idea is to share
skills about FLOSS through brief commands explained daily via email. This
does seem a useful idea to spread such technologies.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/ilugc/
A GTK widget every day ----------------------
Muthiah Annamalai (GTK-Octave Team) is started writing a simple intro about one GTK widget every day. URL: http://gtkbook.sourceforge.net/aboutdialog.html [Problem with URL, returning 404 on July 3, 2005]?
Overseas collaboration ----------------------
In May 2005, FOSS ideas were sought to be taken beyond software, and across the continents. Free Software Foundation of India organised a four-country meet, which brought participants from Venezuela, Brazil, Italy (and, for part of the meeting, Bangladesh too) together. "The Free Software movement has shown a new way of knowledge creation based of collaboration and social ownership. This conference explores the possibilities of applying the Free Software model in addressing broader questions such as governance, digital inclusion, development and culture," one of the event's key organisers Arun M said. http://fsfs.hipatia.net
Governance ----------
- FSF-Bangalore, the local Free Software network, has put up a site
- still in a rudimentary form at the time of writing (July 2005) -- which makes a case for the use of FOSS in government.
http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/?Proposal_for_wider_Free_Software_usage_in_Government
Challenging the software patents issue --------------------------------------
- FOSS software developers in India have strongly opposed
- and lobbied against -- patents on software, saying the move would hit small and medium software enterprises in the country while promoting the interests of multinational corporations. In December 2004, a presidential ordinance threatened to bring software under patents, causing much angst among software developers and geeks nationwide. After considerable lobbying, the software developers say they managed to avert the "threat".
"We've gone back to the status quo (pre-December 2004 situation). We're glad that the immediate threat to allow software patents has gone. But there are still issues of concern that remain," Dr G. Nagarjuna, chairperson of the Mumbai-based Free Software Foundation (India), told this writer. Nagarjuna said some parliamentarians, social organisations and the pharma industry had helped to get the government to do a re-think about software patenting in India.
"But we still want two things changed. We want four software patents issued
in India to be revoked, and we want the phrase which says that software per
se cannot be patented droppped," Nagarjuna said. "Patents on software don't
help the developers. In today's scenario, it helps the multinationals who
claim the most patents. In most cases, the developer is just an employer who
signs a contract saying all he develops is the property of the company by
which he is employed. Very rarely does an individual get patents," he said.
He brushed aside the official explanation that "software combined with hardware is patentable" as "illogical". Software never works by itself, but always in combination with hardware, he pointed out.
Nagarjuna criticised Nasscom, the apex software industry body, for not
protecting the interests of geeks in India, which has one of the most
influential software developer community in the world. Anand Babu, another
geek in his mid-twenties, said: "Even in the US, patents didn't help the
software industry. It's just the investors who get to own patents. Patenting
software is a stupid idea because software is about thousands of ideas that
go into even a simple programme". Babu is better known for building what
once was the world's second-fastest computer, Thunder, in the Bay Area of
Silicon Valley in the US. Abhas Abhinav, who heads the Bangalore-based
DeepRoot? Linux firm, said: "India did the right thing (by rejecting patents
on software). I guess if we campaign hard enough, it won't happen."
Links: G Nagarjuna nagarjun@hbcse.tifr.res.in Anand Babu ab@gnu-india.org Abhas Abhinav abhas@deeproot.co.in
See FSF-I representation: Representation made by the Free Software Foundation of India to the Government of India, urging the withdrawal of the Patents (Amendment) Ordinance, 2004, (Ordinance No. 7 of 2004) with regard to amendments made to Section 3(k) of the Patents Act, 1970. http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/?search=FSF-I+representation
Red Hat initiative in India ---------------------------
Red Hat has been offering incentives for young Indians to go into coding. In 2004, the firm announced Red Hat Scholarships -- The Open Source Challenge. It has been conducted jointly with the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, IIT Bombay. It says the Red Hat Scholarships are "the first ever open source program of its kind in the world designed to encourage young talent and spread the open source philosophy that has created world class software like [GNU]?Linux, Apache and many other programs".
Said Red Hat: "We believe that India can make an immense contribution to the open source community world wide. The Red Hat Scholarships are focused on solving practical, real-life problems that are of importance to Linux users worldwide. The experience of participating in Red Hat Scholarships will therefore help the students when they graduate and become part of the information technology industry."
Scholarships worth Rs 1 million were to be distributed. To participate in the program, students were required to develop a piece of "high quality open source software". The projects submitted to the Red Hat scholarships were expected to have effort contribution similar to that of a typical final year BE/BTech? project.
On the panel as the advisory board for the Red Hat Scholarships were Dr. D. B. Phatak founder of the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology at IIT Bombay; Prof.S Sadagopan, Director of the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore; Rajesh Jain, Director of Netcore Solutions; Sandeep Menon, IBM India; and S Ramakrishnan, M.D. CDAC. This was open to students of the B.Tech, MCA, M.Sc and M Tech level.
"The objective of the Red Hat scholarships is to speed up the adoption of open source software in India and make India a proud contributor to the global open source community," said Red Hat.
Priority areas it focussed on included: 1. Linux localization for Indian languages 2. Development of open source Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) frameworks 3. Meaningful applications for Small and Medium Enterprises e.g. MiniERP?, accounting and microcredit applications 4. Geographical Information Systems 5. Embedded Linux and associated applications for Net appliances e.g. smart cards, cell phones, handled PDAs?, general appliances etc. 6. Audio/video applications like VoIP?, Internet telephony, feature recognition, text-to-speech etc. 7. Network related e.g. protocols, security etc. 8. System software and tools. e.g. Linux extensions, open source databases, and their functionality extensions, software development environments.
Participants were instructed to create their own projects on Sourceforge (www.sourceforge.net) or join existing FOSS projects. Software was to be evaluated on the basis of (i) Quality of the project proposal submitted to Red Hat Scholarships (ii) Overall value of the project to the open source community in India and abroad (iii) Innovativeness of the software developed and (iv) Quality of code, documentation etc.
Red Hat promised online support to the contestants, and also a download site for tools and software programs. It was open to "bonafide students" of a college located in India.
http://www.in.redhat.com/community/rhscholarship.php
Sarovar.org -----------
Sarovar.org describes itself as India's first portal to host projects under Free/Open source licenses. It is located in Trivandrum, South India and is customised, installed and maintained by Linuxense as part of their community services and sponsored by River Valley Technologies.
Site documentation is at http://doc.sarovar.org
At the time of writing (July 2005), it had a total of 303 hosted projects, and some 1,955 registered users. Some of the most downloaded projects were
PSTricks? Tutorial (97,354 downloads), LaTeX? Primer (16,508), PDFscreen? (13,933), PDFslide? (9,992), PDFtricks? (9,912), Draft Copy for PDFTeX? (5,335), LuitLinux? - a bootable Live CD distro (5,151), JavaDBF? (5,119), TeXLive? (3,545), and Swathantra Malayalam Computing (2,418). While some of the interest in downloading may reflect the TeX? orientation of key individuals involved, the interest in Malayalam computing (the regional language of Kerala) is also noteworthy.
While there are diverse global names among the "most active" techies in the first week of July 2005, there are also Asian names visible among the top ten -- including The Thanh Han, Anil Kumar K., Suresh VP, E Krishnan and Kaveh Bazargan.
July 7, 2005
