The GnuVision Blog

Happy New Year to all readers!

This paper suggests restoring the criterion of reliability to its rightful place above efficiency in the list of important criteria for socio-economic decision-making. This would be the first step in rescuing society and economics from the dead-end and possible catastrophe created by pure gain-maximizers. Reliability and modularization sit on the very solid theoretical foundations of the engineering sciences and system design. Hopefully, they can provide better theoretical guidance for the difficult socio-economic decisions that we must make today.

Read more …

Mike Chege writes:

“Free as in speech, but not free as in beer,” is the refrain made famous by Richard Stallman, the standard bearer of the free software movement. However, many free software advocates seem to be of the opinion that the purity of free software is somehow tainted by any preoccupation with money or profit. Inevitably, this has implications for the economic sustainability of free software, for without a source of income, how can free software hope to survive? The challenge of finding a way to ensure economic sustainability without sacrificing the ideals of free software is what we have termed the “software dialectic.”

Read the full essay

Here is how Romeo Anghelache responds:

So, because what defines humanity prevails over if you prefer pork or more pork, the question of Mr. Chege should be reframed: how can we correct the market so that the free software ideals get preserved? Better yet, how should we redefine the market so that humans can survive too?

Read more …

“…observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort. The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization. Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows.
”

Linux - stop holding our kids back

I recommend that Karen be sent for some kind of “teacher training” at a government school in Kerala.

Update: Character-Assasination-Ain’t-Us
(Thanks to Anish for the link)

I am back home after participating in Free Software, Free Society.

For me, the high point of the conference was the chance to listen to people like RMS, Eben and Jimmy Wales - and a lot of other very interesting people with very interesting ideas.

Because we were sort of immersed in ideas for three days, I shall structure this report around these “ideas”.

How many Einsteins studied Physics?

That’s what Eben Moglen asks - and that is something which we have to think about seriously.

It is silly to imagine that out of the millions of “brains” in the world, only a small number have the genius and the aptitude to become an Einstein - it is much more likely that tens of thousands of Einstein-brains are wasting away because they never got a chance to study Physics and Maths. The invention of the printing press was perhaps the first big revolution in the “networking” of brains - and we are now witnessing a tremendously more powerful revolution in the form of the digital computer and the Internet. For the first time in history, we have a chance to make the whole of human knowledge accessible to each and every individual on earth - imagine the amazing potential of this revolution!

The software patent stupidity

But this revolution is being threatened by monopolists who wish to control the generation and dissemination of knowledge. Venkatesh Hariharan, Eben, Mishi and Marco gave presentations on the current state of that stupid idea called software patents.

Think about this - there are thousands of patents in just one narrow field called “e-commerce”. It is impossible to create any new e-commerce application without “infringing” on multiple patented ideas. In a field like software where innovation is heavily dependent on the mixing-and-matching of ideas, patents are an absurdity. Venkatesh gave an interesting example of the importance of the “playing field” in the outcome of the match - Indian hockey started declining from the 1970’s when the game switched to artificial turf where the emphasis was more on power and aggression rather than artistry. A patent-enabled playing field is detrimental to the interests of everybody except a few monopolies who have large patent portfolios and can engage in cross-licensing.

A New Revolution?

In the olden days, bringing together a large number of people and making them work on something (this is what a “factory” does) required large amount of capital, power and authority (the actual mix of these three depending on the mode of production - feudal, socialist, capitalist …). We are witnessing the birth of a new mode of production enabled by massive interconnectivity. Without anybody actually compelling them to do so, large number of people are getting involved in producing useful stuff (think of Wikipedia and Free Software). The peer-to-peer networking revolution was the topic of Michel Bauwen’s talk.

The natural question is - can peer production deliver actual, material goods? We don’t know. But here is some food for thought - many material things (say a car) have a substantial “information” component in them, which can be peer produced. Open Electronics Hardware is now as much of a reality as Free Software, rapid prototyping machines are going to be on our desks sooner than later and yes, people are trying to build an “open source” car.

Here is yet another food-for-thought item:

Wikipedia, Quality and a new kind of search

Jimmy Wales delivered one of the best talks of the conference. The Wikipedia is one of the most influential products of the “Network Civilization” - ranked as the 5th most popular website in the world (with 244 million unique visitors monthly).

Wikipedia’s popularity comes from extensive coverage of topics as well as the high quality of it’s articles (note the similarity with Free Software). Conventional wisdom says that quality is the result of extensive use of heavy “processes” (like say CMM in software). But we now know that conventional wisdom is often wrong - intrinsic motivation, and passion towards work, combined with peer review, can ensure very high levels of quality.

Google is soon going to get some competition - and no, it won’t be from Microsoft. Won’t it be cool to have a completely free search engine which gets improved by constant feedback from users? If Jimmy Wales has his way (and the community gets interested), this may become a reality. Google, if it becomes yet another Microsoft, will be a far greater threat than Microsoft ever was, or would be.

Malayalam Wikipedia

It seems that Malayalam Wikipedia is reaching out to greater heights - I met a few people who are actively involved in improving it. The youngest of the group is an 11th standard student!

A Malayalam Encyclopedia was donated to the Wikipedia project by a Kerala government instituition.

The real “value” of Free Software

Is it the case that objects which have no monetary “sale” value, have no value at all?

Stupid question - isn’t it? What then would be the value of say love?

Even when you don’t “buy” or “sell” free software, even when there is no “money” involved in it, it has tremendous practical value to society.

Free Software is being used by organizations involved in tribal welfare. It helps in educating fishermen. It’s being used by visionaries like Krishnakant to improve accessibility to people with disabilities. And, FSFS 2008 saw many people talking about how they use Free Software to make the world a better place to live in.

FOSS and Gender

Does the hacker culture have a gender bias? As a teacher, I see that only a very small number of students are passionate about technology - and most of them are males. Lack of role models (and associated social conditioning) may be one reason. Cheekay Cinco was right when she said that female hackers should seriously do a bit of self promotion - they should at least make sure that they are *visible*.

Other talks

I have covered only a few of the non-technical talks which I attended. There were many, many other interesting sessions - like the keynote by Neville Roy Singham, the CEO of ThoughtWorks:

And, of course, the inimitable RMS - he delivered his “standard” lecture - complete with the hilarious “saint ignucius” act and an auction!

A great conference for the students!

There were 12 students from GEC Thrissur (the FSUG-Thrissur team) and about 30 from MES Kuttippuram (thanks to the “Shyam effect”) - all of them were in as volunteers managing the stalls at the Free Software exhibition. I am sure that they have had an incredible experience, having got a chance to listen to some of the great minds in the Free Software movement and network with peers.

The Free Software Exhibition

I didn’t have too much time to spend at the Exhibition venue - FSUG Thrissur team was there, explaining the working of some interesting Free Software tools for scientific computing. MES Kuttippuram students were there to explain how to do electronics/embedded systems work with GNU/Linux.

There was a group of Electronics enthusiasts exhibiting the Arduino board and the Processing visual programming framework.

How to befriend speakers, Unni style!

This is what Unni does - he draws a picture of the speaker (in real-time, during the talk) - once it is over, he approaches the speaker, shows the picture to him/her and asks for an autograph! He tried it on Eben Moglen:

OpenMoko Hack session

Arky arranged an OpenMoko hack session with Dr.Nagarjun giving a great informal presentation. Check out what Arky has to say about it! Besides myself and a few GEC students, there was a student from Tajikistan and another one from Solvakia!

Check out Arky’s FSFS.in 2008 Full Roundup

The Free Software User’s group of Thrissur had its first public gathering at the Sahithya Academy hall on Dec 4th; if the interest and enthusiasm shown by an audience numbering about 300 is any indication, the new year is going to witness a dramatic change in the way people in the Cultural capital of Kerala use computers - it’s going to be good bye and good riddance to Microsoft, and welcome to the wonderful world of GNU/Linux and Free Software!

After the brief inaugural ceremony and speeches by Prof.Manoj Kumar, Mr.K.Venu and others, Hiran started his “Celebrating freedom” talk. His example of a bicycle (later upgraded to a motorcycle and then to a car) sold by a company under an EULA was well received by the audience.

Subsequently, Mahesh did a presentation on technical aspects of GNU/Linux and Free Software (which was dangerously close to becoming *too* technical):

Hussain sir and Suresh (of Swathanthra Malayalam Computing) gave presentations on the use of Malayalam in Free Software:

But the real “star” of the morning session was this guy:

There was some problem with our laptop audio output and we were showing Bunny as a “silent” picture - the amazing thing was that even then, the audience enjoyed every bit of it! Unny explained the “open movie” concept behind Big Buck Bunny, but there was not enough time to develop the idea further. There is plenty of scope to explore ideas like Free Culture at a place like Thrissur which has such a deep association with the arts - this is something which we should discuss during the next FSUGTSR meeting.

Not to be outdone by Big Buck Bunny, Aswin (the local Compiz enthusiast) decided to wow the audience with a flashy demo of what the GNU/Linux desktop can do. Before diving into the demo, he gathered ground support by declaring himself to be the guy who is “trying” to study B.Tech at GEC Thrissur (reliable sources say that this was carefully rehearsed performance)! I am sure that those who saw the demo will, in the future, never be impressed by any kind of silly eye candy offered by “other” operating systems! Unny delivered the killer punch by declaring that “we” (GNU/Linux) have no need to “show-off” flashy stuff because we have a lot of other things which are much more important - only those who have nothing of significance to offer try to fool people with eye candy!

The evening session had an installation demo by Alex and Devidas. Some time was spent in a Q&A session with the audience.

Jain Basil demonstrated some useful GNU/Linux tools. As he was demonstrating the amazing Stellarium, we asked him to check out the night sky at around 7:00 pm in India on Dec 1st. In a few seconds, we saw the amazing spectacle of Jupiter, Venus and the crescent moon forming the “celestial smiley” on the screen!

An install fest as well as a CD/DVD burning session was running in parallel to the talks throughout the day - a lot of people approached us for GNU/Linux distros - many of them asking for as many as 3 distributions!

“A window to Freedom” came to a close at about 4:30 in the evening - the response from the public very much exceeded our expectations. We are excited by this, and hope to continue with our activities with renewed vigour.

Check out report in The Hindu

Also, reports by Aswin, Alex,
Devidas.

Poster was designed by Hiran in Inkscape using his own GPL licensed font Perizia!

Wiki page of the event

Intellectual self-reliance, which is an essential step towards economic self-reliance, can be achieved by ensuring that our education is not a subject to market forces. The syllabus and curriculum needs to be free from vendor lock-in. We need to focus on concepts, applications and on non-proprietary technology rather than on products. We want our students to be free to explore technology, learn from it and then apply this knowledge to develop India’s economy.

Read more

The success of this campaign in Bangalore is very important - knowing very well that today’s students are going to be tomorrows developers and decision makers, Microsoft has started seriously peddling its stuff to students (check out stunts like DreamSparkIndia ) - we have to get the word out loud and clear that rather than “chasing your dreams and creating the next big breakthrough in technology” (as the DreamSparkIndia site tells us), you are more likely to end up as a glorified typist at any one of the “big” Indian outsourcing firms (that is, if you are lucky - with recession already setting in, even that might be beyond the reach of many people) if you go after Microsoft technologies. These days, you are much more likely to be chasing (and achieving) dreams and doing wonderful things with technology if you grow up with Free Software. The hypothetical “benefits” obtained by working with so-called “professional” quality tools which MS has to offer pales into insignificance compared to the real world engineering (and social) skills a student learns by working side by side with talented developers all over the world on Free Software projects. I am sure Bill.G understands this - and that’s why we will definitely be seeing more and more stunts like DreamSpark in the future …

Check out:

fsfs.in

The list of speakers include RMS, Eben Moglen, Jimmy Wales …..

Belgaum: The Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) and Microsoft Corporation, U.S., will partner in curriculum development programmes, students’ projects, continuing education, research and development.

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Arun Raghavan offers an amusing perspective:

Today, the VTU (the university that granted me my bachelor’s degree) did something incredibly smart. In one fell swoop, they have achieved what Kerala and Andhra Pradesh have been trying to do for years, in vain.

Thank you, VTU!

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