[Fsf-friends] Young minds, pretty faces... and a greying beard

[FN]

THIS SET OF MINUTES is so outdated, that had I to delay any longer, it 
would have been criminal. The intention was to write a detailed report on 
the Feb 22 meeting at Panjim... it was a great meeting. But then, in the 
chaotic life of a freelancer (we're so busy doing nothing), this was not 
to be. Anyway, here are some highlights...

	o CSI'S SMALL HALL was almost bursting with participation. At
	  one stage the count touched 25. Impressive eh?

o IF YOU THOUGHT that was impressive, you should have seen the number of 
newcomers who were present. Besides, lady-participants touched nearly a 
one-in-four ratio! Who said GNU/Linux is for left-brained male geeks?

	o RAVI DEKA got started talking ... and man, this guy really
  	  knows to narrate a story. But before we went off-the-beaten
	  track on the subject of motorcycling across India (Banduji's
	  perchance for such themes makes it a lethal combination)
	  we hurriedly shifted gear to focus back on GNU/Linux.

o BIJON SHAHA, as planned, was prepared to tell the LUG about GNUnify, 
India's first free software festival held at Pune's deemed university, 
Symbiosis. Quotes: "There were 15 techie talks, two parallel sessions, 
each hall having at least 100 people. Basically, the audience was of 
students." "Some youngsters proved to be very good speakers. Nirav Mehta 
made two presentations on PHP." Among those speaking were the skilled 
orator and free software evangelist Prof Nagarajuna of TIFR, Sam Metryani 
of the Simputer team, Venky Hariharan and G Karunakar on Indic solutions 
for GNU/Linux... and of course hacker-guru RMS (Richard M Stallman).
	  
          Shaha also spoke on the presentations by Prof Shivakumar
	  and Prof Jeetendra Saha of VJTI, a very determined
	  campaigner for FLOSS. FreEDUC CDs (the latest rage, after
	  Knoppix) were handed around to demo the power of
	  educational free software that boots from a CD-rom.

Ravi Pradhan of Via (recently resettled in India from Silicon Valley, and 
determined to bring in low-cost GNU/Linux-based computers to the market) 
was also in Pune, presenting thin clients and inexpensive computing using 
Via's C3 chipset. The promise: notebooks for Rs 35K next year!

   	  Dr Ramakrishna of the DoIT presented the government's
  	  thinking on FLOSS. Basically, the idea would be to encourage
	  FLOSS, while not dictating any one route for computing, and
	  letting the market decide, Shaha quoted him saying. Shaha
	  was himself one of the speakers at Pune.

o ARVIND YADAV, founder-member of ILUG-Goa, narrated his experiences at 
COMPAS in Kolkata. The LUG had the biggest stall at this exhibition of IT 
and computers. There were demos of FreEDUC and LinuxRacer (which Arvind 
described as "less of a game and more of a simulation... with 50 cars and 
20 cracks".

IN NO time the debate shifted (don't recall how) to educational games -- 
free software fo maths, symbiolic maths, equations and J'compris (maths, 
language, shapes and colours for the very young). Octave, where the plots 
come out as graphs, etc...

	o SANGEETA NAIK, the coordinator of the Goa Schools Computers
	  Project, explained that 104 schools had been given once-used
	  computers under the Goa Sudharop project. Some 20-25 had LTSP
	  solutions installed. There was a need to extend this to enable
	  computer-aided learning and after-hours access for nearby
	  communities, she said. The need for locating relevant and
	  working software (given the hardware constraints) was always
	  felt.

o ASHLEY DELANEY SPOKE of his recent visit to Bangladesh, to share ideas 
with attempts at taking FLOSS to schools.

	o OTHER ISSUES throw up and spoken about as we interrupted each
	  other included discless-PCs, whether FLOSS could replace
	  Pagemaker and the needs of a DTP-ised magazine, 

	o IN THE ROUND of introductions that followed, one of those
	  present was Biju Chacko of Bangalore. He is an ex-coordinator
	  of the Bangalore LUG, and since last year has started his
	  own business. Biju said there were a "lot of companies"
	  in Bangalore moving to open tools, like PHP and Zope.
	  "But the basic problem is that if you're not selling
	  a thing (as against a service), they're iffy about
	  paying big amounts." Biju also suggested that a number of
	  B'lore LUGers getting active in their own businesses or
	  professions was a good thing, except activity became a bit
	  lax compared to earlier highs. But for big events like
	  Linux-Bangalore200*, large numbers did actively participate.

o IT WAS time for the meet to end, yet no sign of Tilmann Singer. Just as 
we were headed for the Navtara restaurant cuppa tea, we ran into a young 
foreigner, who could have been Tilmann Singer. He was!

Earlier we had promised that:

	o Tilmann Singer <tils@tils.net> from Europe will be briefly
	  speaking on OpenACS. This is a cool toolkit for building
	  community web applications. See http://openacs.org (specially of
	  interest for people into web apps).

	  Singer lives in Berlin, and came to know of us via the Wizards
 	  of Os conference. He is currently working for four months in
 	  Hyderabad, helping with setting up a small company focussed on
	  the development of a Free/Libre and Open Source Software web
	  toolkit (openacs) and is an open source campaigner himself.

Anyway, we at the restaurant, we kept discussing various things. Tilmann 
(who had got onto the wrong bus -- a slow-moving 'local') gathered a crowd 
around his table of those interested in web-issues. The rest of us simply 
couldn't follow what was going on; they understood each other. Miracles do 
happen....

o FOR US, THE debate looked at the Goa government's unnecessary gift to 
Microsoft of ten million rupees, strategies to popularise free software 
among students, and a whole range of other issues. By the time we looked 
at our watches, it was past 2030. So what if we started just after 1600?


o THOSE PRESENT INCLUDED B B Shaha (ETDC-Saligao), Mario Alvares 
(Alienwiz), Lisa Mendonsa (Phil), Flavia Lobo (Phil), Victor D'Souza (GU), 
Sharon Bothelo (Phil), Greta Mattos, Amey Hegde (Controlnet), Alka Pai 
and Ajay Cuncolienkar (Khandola College), Agraj Agranayak, Yogesh Teli and 
Ravi Deka, Sangeeta Naik (Goa Schools Computers Project), Rina Patel (NRI 
volunteer working in Goa of the America-Indian Foundation), Biju Chacko 
(Bangalore), Gurunandan Bhat (ex-GU/PlusThought), Anil Seth (head of dept 
IT, PCC), Arvind Yadav  (Online), Animesh 'Banduji' N Nerurkar, Sreenivas 
(Navy Hydrography School), Sanil Talaulikar (PCC), Mohandas Gopani 
(Selections).

	o LASTLY, don't forget the meetings for March. Margao
	  is on March 8 (Clinton, get working to arrange something
	  interesting... this was shifted for you!) and March 22
	  (Panjim). More details http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa

o PS: Don't ask what the subject-line has to do with this report. In case 
you didn't guess... it was aimed at getting you to read it ;-) 
-- 
Frederick Noronha    : http://www.bytesforall.org : When we speak of free
Freelance Journalist : Goa India 403511           : software we refer to
Ph 0091.832.409490   : Cell 0 9822 122436         : freedom, not price.