GNOME translations upstream..

Really glad that we were able to translate the gnome strings and update it to upstream. Special hats off to our Team Member, Vasudevan.

Now we need to focus on quality of translation and maintaining it and so does the documentation work.

Software Freedom Day, Chennai

Had been to St Peter’s Engineering College to share my experiences so far on Collaborative Tools for Software Development yesterday.

And in the mean time we had a rocking Software Freedom Day Celebration at Jaya Engineering College. Detailed report of it can be had from one of its participant’s experience expressed at our GLUG group chennai.

Link: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/pipermail/ilugc/2007-September/036801.html

Then it was today, the actual date of SFD.. We had a gathering of Students at AU-KBC research centre to Celebrate Software Freedom. We had discussions on FOSS philosophy, FOSS in education, FOSS activities around Chennai, Contribution to FOSS etc.,

Then some fun for new-bies with Games in GNU/ Linux.. 🙂

Here is the report: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/pipermail/ilugc/2007-September/036823.html & Snaps at: http://amachu.net/kadambam/main.php?g2_itemId=61

do we need to dedicate time to focus on money?

Following this http://www.joeterranova.net/2007/09/09/loco-teams-dont-need-money/ here are my thoughts on how we manage.

We haven’t met with a great need as such for raising money for managing activities of ours.

Whenever we needed them, it has come so far.. thanks to the activities that we did.. and it has paid us..

We launched the CD distribution through post scheme with me putting my pocket initially and those who benefited  out of it came forward to share later.. and we have a joint bank acount to maintain it..

remember we din’t have thoughts of opening an account initially.. our activites made people to come forward to contribute.. then we started this account to manage the fund raised..

Though the balance there is pretty low.. its sufficient till now.. we do not want to dedicate our focus on money.. but on work.. and we believe money if at all needed will come automatically… 🙂

our activities paid us.. so far so good.. focus on activities.. and if at all something is needed, we believe, it will come.. if that which comes if gonna be huge.. then some time is really needed to manage them… but not now.. AT this moment…

its becoming regular these days

it is becoming regular these days.. people asking help to migrate to gnu/ linux..

friends who were reluctant to even consider gnu/ linux have started trying it.. thanks to efforts of various user groups in and around chennai..

and am personally visiting friends home, at least once in a week, on their request, to help people install ubuntu..

yesterday it was also a pleasant news that the friend whom i visited wanted have ubuntu only and not as a dual boot.. we had two installations on two acer laptops with one running ubuntu & other kubuntu.. successfully

alarm for the future 🙂

gnu articles in tamizh…

it has grown from where it started a year back.. and now we have quite a number of articles of gnu available in tamizh…

1. http://www.gnu.org/home.ta.shtml
2. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.ta.html
3. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.ta.html
4. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-doc.ta.html
5. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.ta.html
6. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.ta.html
7. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.ta.html

and one more in progress AT why software should be free. We are in  process of documenting the same in a single document and it can be downloaded from http://amachu.net/download

FOSS penetrates – Down deeper

NRCFOSS organized a two day FOSS awareness workshop at Manonmaniyam Sundaranar University, Thirunelveli, Tamizh Nadu.

Ponnu Sami, Sanjay and myself conducted these sessions for around 50 students of the Computer Science Department.

Installing GNU/ Linux as dual boot, Commands, Free Software philosophy, Desktop Environments, LAMP were among the various concepts shared and discussed.

Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora distros were used for demonstration purposes. Earlier the Registrar of the University Dr Chellappan inaugurated the event on 3 September in presence of Dr Sadasivam, the head of the Computer Science Department.

Mr Murugan, Lecturer of the CSE deparment helped us in organising this event and we now have four students Ramesh, Stella, Sowmya and Priyanka to take up the responsibilities and move deeper and deeper.