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Campaign to promote free software in Karnataka

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Aim

To spread the awareness and adoption of Free Software to strengthen the Free Software Community in Karnataka.

Ideology behind Free Software

Check these links: GNU and GNU India

On Richard Stallman, the founder of this movement RMS Homepage

On Eben Moglen, the architect of the GPLv3 http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/

Action Plan

  • Target the Software Developers community.
  • Target Engineering and Degree colleges.
  • Target Schools.
  • Take help from active communities in Bangalore.

Howto Implement Action Plan

In a free knowledge society, anyone who wants to obtain knowledge can do so without any problems. Hence in that spirit I would like to put forward the rationale behind the above 'action plan'. By the sheer number of school students, schools have a decisive role in making the swatantra software movement a success. But to take free software to the schools and make it a part of the curriculum we need to generate the huge technical support required to execute this plan ie., the engineering/technical students who are technically adept.

However, this too is a tough endeavor as most engineering students are not 'swatantra software' oriented. We need to convince these students by showing them practically that swatantra software works. This can be accomplished by supporting them with college projects and mentoring them. Of course, to bring them on par with the projects, we need to have multiple technical sessions at the Institution level.

As Professionals, it is a tough job to provide 'constant' support and hence we come to the concept of the Swatantra Software Users/Developers Groups at the Institution level. This group consists of students of the institution who will form a self-sustaining support system with support from the Professionals. Thus an efficient ecosystem is created. The local unit needs to stay in touch with each other through online groups and collaborative wiki pages.

Now we come to the Developers community. This is the first line without whom the swatantra software movement cannot kick off(And yes, the long-term goal should be to liberate the swatantra software movement from the developers community). Our responsibility is to reach out to a maximum number of educational institutions and work to generate swatantra software activists and contributors because the students are the life of this Movement. We need to constantly enlist the help of non-free-software developers as well and get them to also contribute to the Movement.

Last but not the least is the effort of FSF-Karnataka whole-timers. We need to contribute to the support of FSF-Karnataka whole-timers who will work full time to build the swatantra software movement. I cannot stress enough the necessity of whole-timers.

Without following these basic steps it is going to be very tough to take the Swatantra Software Movement to the next level here in Karnataka.

FOSS in schools

http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Schools

FOSS Development Cell

"I think the "FOSS Development Cell" is definitely a good idea. As many of you who were involved in the Summer Workshop in Angadipuram know, that a similar idea regarding Technical support teams had come up during the discussion there and the 'FOSS Development Cell' (FDC) would be taking that idea to a much wider region and scope. Currently one of the main issues is the proficiency of the local hardware vendors in GNU/Linux support. So, we need to introduce the local hardware vendors to the scene. They already have a small, still efficient support staff their own (Most of them are not well trained in GNU/Linux). In order to leverage this current setup we need a three tiered structure. At the very top level, we professional will given necessary technical and guidance support to the students of the "FOSS Dev Cells" in various engineering colleges. At the next level, these trained students can then impart this knowledge to the technicians of the local hardware vendors. If this is in place, then just as we do it now, these local hardware vendors can now provide assured service to all the technical problems that may be faced by the schools. This structure would be faster and efficient than any support that Red Hat staff can deliver in Kerala. In addition, this framework helps build community-level interaction, wherein people at the local level try to solve their own problems."

Ref: http://mm.gnu.org.in/pipermail/fsf-friends/2007-June/004967.html

Coordination

The campaign will be co-ordinated through this page, fsug-bangalore mailing list and orkut community

  • Come, Lets Meet and discuss - 3pm, 19th May 2007, Cubbon park (Enter through the Victoria Statue at St Marks Cathedral circle on MG Road, Walk straight in) - some one who came for our earlier meetings please give a clearer picture.

Volunteers

If you would like to help out in the campaign

  • add your name here
  • Link to your user page (create one if you have not done it yet, sign up if you haven't, it helps us in communicating updates)
  • Add your contact information (emails, phone numbers) in your user page
  1. Praveen A
  2. Sujith Haridasan
  3. Shashank Bharadwaj
  4. Vikram Vincent
  5. Mallikarjun
  6. Kiran Kumar
  7. Akshay
  8. Karthik R
  9. Senthil S, senthilsos@yahoo.com
  10. Justin Joseph, justinjoseph007 at gmail dot com
  11. willy

Participating Organisations

Free Software Users Group, Bangalore

Forum for Science and Development 

  #Dr. S. Chatterjee,  Indian Institute of Astrophysics. 
  chat99 -at- vsnl -dot- com (Convenor)
  #Dr. Vijoo Krishnan, St. Joseph's College, PG Dept. 
  vijookrishnan -at- gmail -dot- com (Jt. Convenor )

Swatantra.Org [Kannada Localization project]

Swatantra.Org The necessity to localise the computer in our mother tongue

For Swatantra Kannada localisation, particularly w.r.t. Debian and GNOME contact Vikram Vincent.

Contribute to the Swatantra.Org project at http://translate.swatantra.org/

Do sign up to the Debian mailing list to coordinate all activities related to Swatantra.Org Kannada Localisation projecthttp://lists.debian.org/debian-l10n-kannada/

Sampada Kannada Localization Initiative

There is an initiative that has been going for a long time now at Kannada Localization Initiative - Please join hands there and take part in the translation drive. There is a mailing list for discussion related to Kannada translation.

List of active communities/people that you can garner help from

Events to come

Events that were

Reference

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