Truth

IT'S JUST "THE BEGINNING"

2011-09-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

With the birth of Free Software Movement started by Richard Stallman & his supporter’s, & an important decision taken by Linus Torvalds by licensing Linux kernel under GPL has revolutionized the computing world to an extent without which the computing world hadn’t taken it’s glorious form what we see today.

It’s almost 26 years Free Software foundation came into existence & Linux Kernel turned 20 recently. With a huge excitement I’m writing important achievements made by free software community & its contribution to the world.

Who use GNU/Linux?

· Humans ;-)

· Super Computing: 91% of the top 500 super computer run on Linux.

· Astronomy: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sees the universe more clearly.

· Aeronautics: German Air Traffic Control does it’s radar processing on Linux

· Mobility: Google’s Android was built on top of GNU/Linux.

· Education: HRD Ministry, Govt of India introduces Rs 1500/- tablet that runs on GNU/Linux with plan to distribute this tablet to 504 universities and 25,000 colleges across the country.

· Manufacturing: ThyssenKrupp Electrical Steel manages it’s production lines on Linux

· Financial Services: London Stock Exchanges new trading platform runs on Linux

· Banking: UMB Financial Corp secures it’s IT infrastructure with Linux

· Retail: Café Coffee Run’s it’s ERP on Linux. Mahindra Retail deploys SAP ERP+SUSE Linux on
commodity x86 hardware

· Insurance: ING Life, India migrates its desktop fleet from windows to Linux.

National Insurance Company migrates 1000+ servers from UNIX to Linux.

· Services Industry: Just Dial powers its mission-critical intranet and extranet applications on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. Tax Spanner, the best income tax intermediary runs its business on Linux.

______________________________________________________________________________________

As a result of freedom there are 300+ GNU/Linux distributions so far. High end movie productions are done on Linux clusters, recent example being the movie Avatar. Many famous one’s like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Orkut, Diaspora & many are heavy users of GNU/Linux.

GNU/Linux: The Journey so far

· 1983
GNU project is announced by Richard Stallman.

· 1985
The GNU Manifesto, a statement by Richard Stallman advocating the cause of free software is
published.

· 1987
MINIX was first released by Andrew S. Tanenbaum with its complete source code made available
for study and research which also inspired creation of Linux Kernel.

· 1991
Linus Torvalds creates Linux kernel.

· 1992
Linus licenses Linux under GPL, a license by Free Software Foundation.

· 1993
Redhat founded & releases it’s distro a year later.
Slackware becomes the first commercial standalone distribution.
Debian Linux distro released.

· 1995
First version of MySQL released.

· 1996
Apache web server is born.

SUSE Linux,a German Linux distro is released.

PCQ Linux version 1 is released.

· 1997
First “Linux virus” known as Bliss Discovered.

· 1998
OSI formed

GOOGLE is born, and runs on custom designed version of Linux.

Mandriva Linux released.

· 1999
Sourceforge.net is born.

The GNOME project gave birth to Gnome Desktop.

· 2001
The

National Security Agency (NSA) releases SELinux under the GPL.

· 2002
The Gentoo foundation released the first version of Gentoo Linux.

· 2003
Fedora OS,developed by Fedora Project and sponsored by Red Hat came into being.

Bill Reymonds released PCLinuxOS.

· 2004
Cannonical released debian based Ubuntu.

Cent OS project resulted in CentOS OS,bassed on RHEL.

· 2006
Linux Mint distro was released based on ubuntu targeted at people with less or no prior Linux
experience.

· 2010
The first smartphone based on Android, Google Nexux One was released.

· 2011
Linux kernel 3.0 released. 2,00,000+ apps available for Google Android.
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I'm happy that I had utilized two days of my bench period in writing this at Accenture :-)

Sources : PC Quest,Wikipedia,My knowledge ;-)
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Informatica

2011-05-09T02:22:00.000-07:00

These wallpapers were created with GIMP during some boring presentations during my training period at Accenture :P :) . I was assigned Datawarehousing and I use Informatica tool.

15 Day Software Industry Oriented Training Camp (Workshop)

2011-04-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

Swecha, part of Free Software Movement of India will be conducting a “15 Day Software Industry Oriented Training Camp” in the Summer from June 16th to June 30th of 2011 on Free & Open Source technologies (FOSS).

For more details CLICK HERE!

new pHasE of lyf! ;)

2011-04-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

1/3/2011 - B'Lore Chapter BEGINS! :)

Localising GNU/Linux to Telugu.

2011-02-13T23:07:00.000-08:00

Wishing everyone a happy Sankranti

2011-01-14T07:35:00.000-08:00

Reva :)

2010-12-29T06:59:00.000-08:00

I used GIMP :)

Views Module

2010-05-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

This is a small description about views module basics.

Views Module:-

What is Views?

1)It's a Query Generator.

2)It is to a degree a content renderer.
-Helps in putting content in a specific format.

How does it interact with Drupal?

1)Each Module which support views will have a supporting view files.

2)It wont always be obvious how a module exposes it's
functionality.So,read the README.

What can Views create?

-Pretty much anything which can output from database.
1)Nodes
2)Blocks of content
3)RSS feeds of data.
4)Segmented content according to categories.
-The categories which you create Taxonamy module.
5)Admin screens.

For more information on views type "views basics" in google.

Drupal Hyderabad Workshop at VNRVJIET.

2010-05-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

The Day Before

It was 11.55PM ,I was designing posters for sale of Ubuntu DVD's and certificates for the participants.I mailed the posters to Shiva and Hari.And I started my preparation for last mid exam .I studied for an hour and I was falling sleep. I quickly got to my bed.I was in deep sleep that i couldn't hear the alarm.Next day I had to go to college early to make sure that arrangements for the workshop are fine.By the time I got up it was almost 9.00AM.I was in a hurry,I completed my breakfast quickly and was almost running to catch an auto to college.

Drupal Workshop Day-1

I was greeted by VGLUG banner at security check.Thanks to all my VGLUG juniors.They already started the work and were busy in it.I saw Chinmaya and asked him about the status of arrangements,he said we had few tasks left.I Directly headed to CSE department to get the Online Examination Lab opened.While I was returning I was very happy to see large crowd coming in groups to attend Drupal workshop.I said to myself “ Drupal Revolution Has Begun”.After opening the lab, myself and Chinmaya went to principal office to invite him.After the arrival of the Principal,C.D.Naidu Garu, and Chief Guest Mr.Kiran Chandra ,General Secretay of FSMI ,the workshop started.

Sarath started addressing the gathering.He introduced guests (Suresh Reddy Sir,C.D.Naidu Garu,Kiran Chandra,Aruna Garu and Bhuvan Krishna) and thanked all the students,organisers and sponsors to make this workshop happen.Sarat also mentioned the efforts and necessity in forming the Drupal Hyderabad Group.

After that,Principal started addressing the gathering and was sharing his views.I would Like to summarise his talk,He spoke on:-

1)The necessity in building software for the utility of mankind.

2)Necessity for technological extension to Rural Areas.

3)Concrete proposals of Free Software projects from Swecha,Drupal Hyderabad Group and VGLUG for students and faculty.

4)Support for Free Software technologies ,seminars&workshop's from college.

5)Support from college in all aspects for Open ideas that can be turned into projects.

Followed by C.D.Naidu Garu ,Kiran Chandra had taken over.He spoke on:-

1)The evolution of free software movement and it's reach to the masses.

2)The evolution of content management systems.

3)The Technological trend from web 1.0 to 2.0.

4)The Danger's involved in accepting or using Proprietary standards.

5)Control over society by Big Monopoly Organisations

6)What should be our Stand on Cloud Compting and web 3.0.

After the innaugural we had a tea break followed by Drupal Talks.

Drupal Talks were carried out by Asif,Prajwala,Ipsita on Customising core modules ,Advancedtheming,Multiple and Single Sign on.I was sitting at last beside Siddu and was preparing for my mid exam :P .It was a kind of Remix for me while preparing for mid exam and also listening to the Drupal talks.I handed over my cam to shiva and had gone to write my last mid exam of my engineering life :D .The drupal workshop was continuing and It was 1.30 PM by then.All the participants moved for Lunch.They all had a good Lunch.

After the Lunch drupal talks got started and were headed by Asif and Prajwala.Medhamsh Spoke on Community contribution to drupal.All the talks were over and it was 5.00 PM.Srujan and myself got busy in managing the workshop and we missed our farewell :( .Last session was a kind of debate on cloud computing.It was a healthy discussion and I was happy to see a great participation. The workshop got over.We moved out of the lab and felt the awesome cold,dark weather.

Drupal Workshop Day-2

Large number of students from various engineering colleges had participated.On day-1 it was developer community and on day two-2 it was student community.This day was aimed at imparting basics of drupal to students.

Various sessions such as Hosting and web development basics,Introduction to drupal,Core Modules& their configuration,cck and views,theming,community support were dealt by Medhamsh,Srujan,Asif,Saitanay,Prajwala & Ipsita respectively.All the sessions were interactive & informative.

At last feedback regarding the workshop was collected and a Valedictory session was taken by Siddarth .

We all dispersed .Funniest part of the whole day was Harri along with few people got stuck in the lift due to power cut(Look in the picture below).They got rescued by the power again. It was raining heavily,we enjoyed the cool weather and took fewsnaps of our college.

Note:Click on the images for clear view :)

My World of Free Software.

2009-04-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

This is a small survey.Do participate.
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Start Survey (After survey get back here)

Please don't leave the survey incomplete.
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Results
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Results will be uploaded after considerable entries.Link this survey in your blogs and website's.Please do promote the survey.

My favourite one's are ......

2009-04-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

OS Wars!

Desktop Environment's

What does FREE in free software mean?

2009-03-15T12:05:00.000-07:00

Free Software and Free ware are not one and the same!
Free in Free Software indicates Freedom not price,where as free in free ware indicates zero price not freedom.

So be careful when you Speak!
Yahoo Messenger is a Free ware.
Pidgin is a Free Software .
i-Tunes is a free ware.
VLC player is a Free Software.

By these example's I think everyone is clear about what free in free software means!!!

Watch this small video for more clarity!

Visually Challenged Show the power of Free Software.

2009-03-15T11:17:00.000-07:00

No Words just WATCH!

Happy Holi!

2009-03-11T00:56:00.000-07:00

Indian Free Software Community wishes every one a colourful Holi.

About Free Software:-
Free software is all about keeping knowledge open for a better society.Free Software protects community from harmful software patents. It's Community contribution & social values strengthen it.
www.fsf.org

Tell them it's Linux!

2009-03-07T12:57:00.000-08:00

These guys took kde4 onto street's and just see the reaction out there!!!
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Source: ZDNET

Creative GNU!

2008-12-14T11:09:00.000-08:00

These snaps were taken by Pradeep when we were in kerala !We must really appreciate his creativity :)

note:click on the images for greater resolution.

IT@School - Kerala's successfull mission!

2008-12-14T09:40:00.000-08:00

note:Click on images for better view :)

We were on an Industrial tour a few days back .We visited almost all the famous places in South India , Munnar remains my favourite.

More than the beauty of Munnar I was happy for one reason ; The freedom state 'Kerala' . By now you might have figured it out , yes it's the state where more than 2500 schools ,many colleges & organizations have got transformed to FREE(dom) software.Some of my friends & I were very curious to visit the schools there.

I rang Bhuvan (student coordinator FSF-AP) to ask if he could help us,he gave me contact details of Anvar Sadith(Executive director of IT@School ).I called Anwar sir that night , he gave me his appointment at 10.00 am the next day.

We were in Thiruvanthapuram then, we were new to the place.In the morning i rang Anvar sir to know the location of the Education department of Kerala.He spoke to us in a friendly manner ,that made us a lot comfortable.He gave us the route details in a clear manner .Shashank & I took an auto from our hotel.On the way we came across a central prison,it was really big and we were having communication problems with the auto driver as he was talking to us in Malayalam & Shashank was making fun out of our funny conversation with the auto driver.We only knew Telugu,Hindi and English.We were asking him about various places that came by , we managed to understand what he spoke.Finally we reached the Education department.

We met Anvar Sadith Sir ,he cleary explained us about the project IT@School .More than 2500 schools were using only GNU/Linux.He said
“It all started back in the year 2002 when IT@school mission was actually planned.In 2003 teachers were given computer training to empower them in IT.By the year 2006 many schools were completely transformed to GNU/Linux.Free software was taught to teachers by SPACE( Society For Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment). By 2007 all the schools were stabilized with GNU/Linux and IT subject was made compulsory.New text books were created that taught school children free software tools.”

I was able to see his spirit and dedication behind this successful mission. Finally our conversation with Anvar sir was over.We asked him whether we could visit some schools nearby, he readily agreed.

We visited a girls school which had 5500 students studying there.We met the principal and spoke to her,luckily a master trainer was present in the Principals room.She took us to labs and we were very happy to see GNU and TUX residing in computer labs.We spoke to the students and teachers there.Jayashree Mam (one of the Master trainer) is an excellent trainer,we could see her skills while she was troubleshooting some of the GNU/LINUX systems.She was very friendly with us and gave us a clear idea about free software adoption in schools.

Initially we visited a lab where PC hardware training was going on,many teachers from other schools were getting trained.Even though we interrupted them we had a nice interaction with them.

Then we moved to different labs .In one of the lab ,children were learning HTML and in the other lab they were practicing Open Office.We asked students about their favourite software , many shouted GIMP and some shouted Open Office Presentation.We also asked them about the usability of GNU/Linux ,all the students said they were very comfortable.People who say Linux is not user friendly should really meet these kids :)

This experience remains a memorable one.I am wondering when such movement will happen in the remaining world.We really thank Anvar sir and the Swecha foundation for helping to see free software in action at schools.

Difference between copyrights and patents.

2008-10-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

I was not clear about this issue for a long time,most of the sites and wiki entries just end up in copying the definition of copyrights and patents from official sites(patent and copyright commissions).They don't try to convey the meaning to normal people with examples.So i decided to write on this issue.

&

Copyrights
A copyright protects original works that fall under the categories of literature, dramatic, musical, artistic, and intellectual property.

For example:-
If I write a book on "Imagination" and copyright it,no one has a right to copy my work but they can write another book on imagination in a different manner.A copyright protects a form of expression, but not the subject matter of the work.

Patents
A patent for an invention grants a property right to the inventor that will prevent anyone else from making, using, or selling an invention.

For example:-
If someone invents a technology(product or process) and patents it,it ensures anyone else from making a similar technology & using similar technology unless the inventor gives the right to do so.And lets us assume I invented the same technology next day , still i cant call it my invention as someone had patented it.

Lets us assume two groups namely A and B started working on telephone technology since 15 years(ex:CDMA ) and these A and B are no where related to each other and they live in different parts of the world.If A invents CDMA technology a day after B,he cant call it his invention as B had already patented it.So what happens to all the effort(15 years) made by A ?

This situation may or may not happen, but think of something where inventions are rapid as in a software industry.

Why Software patenting is bad??
In software industries(small scale or large scale) the inventions are rapid, every day a new algorithm or a process is developed ,patenting them is dangerous.

If our programming teacher asks us to develop a search algorithm ,many students come up with different ideas and they want to implement their own ideas and just imagine if all the search algorithms are patented by proprietary companies!!!

Many software industries are patenting very basic things to maintain their monopoly. And this is the reason that makes me to go against apple and microsoft.These people(many proprietary companies) are responsible for killing innovation in software industry.

For in depth analysis just google or visit this site http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en

A simple difference between copyright and patent.
copyright says:- you can laugh ,but dont laugh like me.
patent says:- dont laugh.

Update:-
Even "double click " is patented??If there's a button, i need to click it once or twice, why should it be patented? How stupid is that?

To find out what type of patents Microsoft ,apple and other proprietary companies implement, just try these keywords in Google "stupid Microsoft patents" ,"stupid apple patents , "Microsoft patent facts" etc.

note:- I am no way related to microsoft ,apple.They are not my enemies ,i go against them becoz they do stupid things such as software patenting and I do have a right to criticize them as I live in a democratic country :)

When do we actually define freedom?

2008-07-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

In certain situations I feel I don't have freedom.Especially while listening to boring classes for the sake of attendance,using windows operating system in our college,hiding truth in certain situations and so on.Even you might had experienced some of these situations.When a parent forces his child to study while he is playing , the child really thinks he is not given freedom to play.You shout,scream,cheer for your friend while performing in a cultural event.Birds live in freedom , they can fly to any extent they want to, unless someone stops them from doing so .Freedom is experienced in many forms in many situations, If you ask me to define the word freedom ,I cant .Becoz I think, we can only define freedom when we don't have it.

Do we remember them?

Che Guevara.
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout Latin America and was transformed by the endemic poverty he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region's ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of monopoly capitalism, neo-colonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being world revolution.

Gandhi.
He was a leader of the nonviolent resistance movement against British colonial rule in India during the first half of the 20th century.It is his effort and struggle we Indians enjoy today.

Nelson Mandela.
He was a fighter. Instead of bowing down to this unjust system of government, he became a lifelong warrior in the battle to free South Africa.
Starting out as a leader of an underground political movement called the African National Congress (ANC), Mr. Mandela played a part in many dramatic demonstrations against the white-ruled government.
Mandela has frequently credited Mahatma Gandhi for being a major source of inspiration in his life, both for the philosophy of non-violence and for facing adversity with dignity.

Bhagat Singh.
He was an Indian freedom fighter, considered to be one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement. For this reason, he is often referred to as Shaheed Bhagat Singh (the word shaheed means "martyr").

These were the people fighting to get back the freedom of commons.And there are many great personalities in the world who always worked in the interest of commons and for welfare of human society.We all need to pay a great tribute to them.

But still these things happen!

The world still lives in poverty, may be you are fed with silver spoon,live in rich bricks,go out in luxury cars, but there are many people who are struggling hard for basic essentials and thousands of people die of hunger everyday.

The United Nations said it takes 35 billion dollars to eliminate poverty in the world and provide people with basic essentials.I wonder how United States govt spent more than 80 billion dollars for IRAQ war.This was the worst war ever happened in the human history.The war was privatized.Many corporate companies encouraged the war and participated in it.US claims:the reason for IRAQ war was the use of biological weapons in Iraq,but none of the biological weapons were found.Lakh's of innocent people in Iraq were killed.

In any freedom movement we find three kinds of people ,The people who fight for freedom ,people who under estimate the former,people who just watch the things going on.The problem is with the last two.
For example , there were few Indians who joined the British army and served them during the freedom struggle,they were selfish,they didn't care for their own people and some were just watching the crime that was going on.Now In the present social crisis compare ourselves with the above ,which category do we belong ???

No matter how rich you are,the ones who do social service in the form of wealth,knowledge,peace will make difference and will always remain in the hearts of people.

note:The real inspiration behind this article is free software movement which had changed the computing world with its social values. Still many people don't realize its importance and still world lives on proprietary culture.Every Individual should fight for Digital Freedom.Hope you join hands to spread freedom in computing.