The 5 types of FOSSites

So..which one are you? This is an endeavor to find what is in the minds of the FOSSians about themselves. Just to find how many are fanatical, how many are pragmatic and how many are opportunist with respect to FOSS. Add your opinion as a comment to the blog post and let the community know the minds of every FOSSian.

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5 Types of FOSSites

I and HereBeDragon were discussing about the various kinds of people we have in the Indian FOSS community, when he started listing the different types of FOSSians.

Here’s a 5-point classification of FOSSites. What type are you?

a)The Diehards - They are firm believers in FOSS philosophy and will not accept anything other than FOSS and sometimes feared to be fanatics too.

b)The Dedicated - They are dedicated to FOSS and are also believers of FOSS philosophy, but are not fanatical. Though they personally advocate and follow FOSS, they leave the choice to others to decide for themselves.

c)The Didactics - They are one who make a lot of noise about FOSS but have little to contribute or mostly they themselves do not follow FOSS.

d)The Pragmatists - They are very practical in nature. They give the importance to solving issues than sticking on to philosophies. Though they are admirers or followers of FOSS, if they seem to have a better solution in non-FOSS they do not feel bad in implementing them.

e)The Opportunists - They do not have real interest in FOSS philosophy, but consider it as a means of gaining something or moving higher up in their professional ladder. They neither advocate FOSS nor contribute.

What Am I ? Hmm… /me is (b + d) What about you ? :-/

Words of the day - 15 (Aussie Slangs)

For a difference, I would like to post some commonly used slangs from the land of Kangaroos. The original source of the slangs is australian explorer.

Ace! : excellent

Arvo : afternoon

Big Mobs : loads, a lot of

Blue : argument/mistake

Bodgy : poor quality

Bull dust : rubbish

Cark it : to die, stop working

Chocka : full up

Click : kilometer

Come a gutser : a bad mistake or have an accident

Cost big bikkies : expensive, cost a hell

Dinkum : fair, genuine, true

Docket : receipt, bill

Doco : Documentary

Drink with the flies : drink alone

Dunny rat : cunning

Exy : expensive

Fair go : a chance / break

Furphy : rumour

Give it a burl : try it, have a go

Give it away : give up

Good oil : good idea, useful information

Good onya : well done

It’s gone walkabout : it’s lost, can’t be found

Kick the bucket : to die

Mate’s rate : cheaper rate for a friend, discount

Nun’s nasty : very dry

Piece of piss : easy task

Pig’s arse : I don’t agree

Rack off : get lost, get out of here

Reckon! : for sure

Rooted : broken, ruined

She’ll be apples : it will be alright

Strewth : exclamation

Stoked : very pleased

Zack : not worth of anything

Biscuits, Songs and Free Software’s Philosophy Explained

G0SUB has forwarded an interesting mail regarding Ubuntu, giving it Free and how about making money with it. As the guy who posted the original query did not have any idea of philosophies associated to Free/Open Source Software, I decided to write a enlightening reply to him. A couple of years of performing GNU/Linux advocacy, especially to the student community, has made me a really good story teller which will be evident from my reply to the OP. Here is the query and the reply of mine.

OP’s Question..

> Hello, i am shailendra patidar doing engineering in the mechanical
> stream (in 2nd yr) from indore (m.p.).and recently i got a PC eddition
> cd for linux from my friend. and i want to know about what is ubuntu ,
> and the main thing is that is there any thing in the world which is free
> of cost or they give us for his publicity. or they are using us and can
> they do something for you or me. i can make a lot of users which will
> use the linux.Because i know that it is easy for me and the other reason
> is that the i know very people who want some changes in their computer
> operating system and the linux can make this.but is their any financial
> help to me from ubuntu because nothing is free today. so i am waiting
> for some useful tips or some help from you .and if u can forward this
> request ,then this is too good for me.i am waiting for your response .

And here comes my l00ng reply

First, there are some things in this world which is available as *free as
in free of cost* as well as something which should be rendered so. One
such thing is *humanity*, i.e. helping another fellow human without
expecting something in return. For example, when an old woman tries
getting into or out of the bus, you go and help her but you do not
charge her for doing so? Your neighbor’s kid is not able to solve a math
problem, (considering that you can solve the problem) you help the kid
with solving the problem as a gesture of humanity or friendship. But,
you do not go to his/her mother and get money for the help (This is not
about taking tution classes to the kid!).

Second, consider you and me. You have a biscuit and I have a pappad in
our hands. You give me half of the biscuit and I give you half of the
pappad, we both get some biscuit and pappad but only half of them. Similarly, consider that you know a Hindi song and I know an English song. I teach you to sing the English song and you teach me the Hindi song. Now we both know both of the songs but we did not lose our original knowledge (as in biscuit, we did not end up knowing half the Hindi song and half the English song!).

The reason for the latter comparison leading to gain of something from
other, without losing something which we have, is possible only when the
thing being shared is *knowledge* and not in any other cases.

Now, coming to another reality which is very close to our subject of
actual discussion is, we have been seeing Software as a product. I should
rather say you see it wholly as a product, but we the FOSS community
see the Software as Knowledge. Taking the essence of the above
comparison, since Software is considered as Knowledge, it should be
*freely* sharable. The problem is people have been used to charging for
any service did to the society as well as considering Software as a mere
product which is sold in the market, similar to biscuits, electronic
gadgets and what not.

Software is an idea of getting a job done. Software has this capability
that you can create 100s of copies of it without incurring much cost.
For example, for making 100 monitors and distributing them you incur
heavy monetary cost, you make a voluminous investment and hence, you
charge the customer for each monitor (which is completely justified).

But software is not so. You create a software and for giving it to
100 people you just need to burn them in CDs. The cost you incur is for
creating of the software first time (which is very small compared to
come out with a monitor model) and then cost of 100 CDs.

Another point to remember is “Software is knowledge”. If you can convert
and idea into a software, I have equal chance of converting the same or
similar idea into a software. Also, for your idea to become better and
your software to grow into a high quality one, what you need is
feedbacks from the users, additional ideas from people, encouragement
for you to continue with the software and make it better. This is what
we call it as collaborative development and community participation.

This is how Linux kernel grew into what it is now, from what it was as a
college project. Its all because Linux Torvalds went ahead of just making
money; he shared the kernel code he created, he welcomed people to send
in feedbacks, criticisms, bug reports; he allowed people to participate
with him; he allowed people to contribute in bits and pieces as well as
large features; and important of all, he gave equal respect and
importance to every individual who was ready and tried to help
him, as well as considered every contributing individual as a
co-developer. He never charged any one for using his code and he never
gave money to any one sending bug reports, patches, new codes etc. As a result, more people (in thousands?) took participation, contributed
as much as they can and you now see its result as a Linux Kernel having been wholly
evolved out. This is how things work in FOSS world.

Our philosophy is “share the knowledge you have, you will experience that
you gain many times more than what you gave”. This philosophy, adding to
the humanity concept I told in the beginning, is what Ubuntu follows. We
have a Linux Kernel or rather a GNU/Linux OS around. We have the
ability to use GNU/Linux, add freely available packages around to it and
make a bundle of it called as *Linux distribution*, naming it as Ubuntu
to remind our actual philosophy behind all these is *humanity* and we
finally share it with Humans. This is why we have a tag line “Linux for
Human Beings”.

We are giving it free of cost because we ourselves have been getting
these things free of cost. So, we are ready to share it free, we are
ready to put in a bit more effort and making GNU/Linux suitable for
being used by ordinary household desktop users. We think we are doing a
service to our own society in the way we know. Though we are software
people, we are proving the humanity within us by sharing our capability
to create down-to-earth GNU/Linux distribution and share it with our own
fellow Humans.

And before closing this mail (which is already too big), that what we
mean as *Free* generally is *Free as in freedom*, freedom to share
things with others without anybody preventing or prohibiting us to do
so. We give it *Free as in Free food* as well because, we got it for
*free cost* and we do not want to do injustice.

Tired of reading ? Have some *Free* biscuits

(Thanks to Barkha for helping me with a suitable title for this weblog post )

Second foot in the web space

Am not rich enough to get a web space for me and hence been calling this blog as my home page. Happened to see googlepages today through one of my friends and checked it out. Thought of creating a page to see how good it is and it came out not so bad, though some complained that it has a blog-like look. Here it is, my second foot in the web space.

Words of the Day - 14

One of my friends had a couple of words in the status message she had in the messenger. Though I know what they meant, wanted to know more about them. Here are the outcomes,

mundane : adjective : worldly, earthly, belonging to this world; common, ordinary, day-to-day.

Common usage : mundane life - routine life, mundane affairs - worldly affairs.

monotonous : adjective : unchanging, lack of variety;  continuing on one note; boring, dull, uninteresting; spoken in an unvarying tone.

Common usage : monotonous scenery, monotonous rhythm, monotonous TV show.

From Edgy into Feisty

Since I bought my laptop been running Ubuntu in it. Started with Dapper Beta, upgraded it to stable, then moved to Edgy Beta and then to stable and now, I have moved to the latest Ubuntu Feisty (not sure whether it is Beta or RC). Dapper is still the best distribution out there, though succeeded by Edgy and now Feisty. Edgy was initially highly unstable and got better with time. I had a horrific experience moving from stable Dapper to Edgy beta, breaking a lot of things and having tough time mending things all the way.

When tuxmaniac announced that he had upgraded to Feisty, the first thing I asked was how stable it is? He assured me that he had a smooth installation and really did not have to mend anything. So, I decided to upgrade mine too. The only problem I had was, mine was a Ubuntu installation over which kubuntu-desktop was added later and now I completely use KDE. So, I was wondering from where to start the upgrade, KDE or GNOME. G0SUB clarified the doubt and I started my upgradation.

The upgradation started with the command “update-manager -d”, downloading 1729 files in almost 13 hours. When the download ended, it spewed some error on the screen and the installation stopped. I had to start the installation again with  “apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade”. It again fetched some 41MB of files and finished installing them. I went for a reboot, praying that everything should work fine.

Nice to see the kernel 2.6.20 but not pretty impressed with the new usplash theme. Thankfully, it showed the login screen. Logged into KDE (default) and was surprised to see a new icon for power manager and network manager. Indeed, network manager has changed way much and has become more easier to use. Also, xchat now gets placed in the system tray.

Ok, time to check GNOME. When I logged in as a temporary session, there lay the mine. The welcome screen hung in the middle and I could see the panel blinking many times. Then it said some error message stating that it tried to restart the panel many times but in vain. OMG!, things have screwed up again. I went back to KDE for a bit more shock, the terminal was not showing me the bash prompt that I had to use Alt+F1/F2 to get the prompt. I tried installing gnome, gnome-desktop, gdm, metacity and gnome-panel. The gnome-panel installation was the reason for the trouble which got solved in the last re-installation. Luckily the terminal also came back to normalcy without doing anything. Though I new its going to mess up, I tried Beryl and it did mess. I got no window border, windows hung where they were and I couldn’t enter text into them (Xchat and Firefox address bar).

I was determined not to upgrade until the final stable version is out, but giving away to it had thought me some lesson. But, having suffered the worst during Edgy has given me enough courage to fight and solve things. The truth is, I took a back up of important stuff in my /home and was readt to make a new installation of Sabayon. I wanted to give a last try as the installation of new distro and setting up things again would be a PITA. That was a good decision at the end, or else I would have been spending the next couple of days installing, configuring and tweaking stuffs back to where I was (luckily, where I am also ).

Off late I have been seeing too many people migrating out of Ubuntu, inspite Ubuntu still being one of the best distros out there. Am surprised at this as well as pained that I can not just stop them because their experience left some bitter in their mouths. Hope the final and stable release of Feisty Fawn breaks the Ice and does much more in Desktop GNU/Linux than what Dapper did around a year ago

Words of the Day - 13

Time for updates from this month’s RD, some ‘ad’ words.

adage : verb : proverb; a traditional saying.

advent : noun : arrival of; beginning of; coming of;

adept : adjective : skilled.

adamant : adjective : unyielding or inflexible.

adverse : adjective : highly opposed to; not in favor of.

adherent : noun : supporter; compliant.

admonition : noun : advice in warning tone.

adduce : verb : to cite an example in favor of an argument.

adulterate : verb : made impure by adding additives.

advertent : adjective : attentive; watchful.

ad hoc : adjective : targeted on a specific purpose or result.

adjunct : adjective : temporarily associated with.

addle : verb : to confuse or muddle.

adumbrate : verb : give a brief outline or sketch.

VLBJCET Workshop - Experimentation Success

Every time we conduct a workshop in some college, we try to improve our method of delivering. We started years ago by taking our  own computers and trying to show things with them. With time it improved to they providing us some computers and we try to show with them. Things further changed that we have laptops and they just need to provide power supply, projector and other logistics, and indeed audience. With improving facilities we tried to improve the method, making it more interactive from what was once running through boring slides. Still we need to have a minimal presentation with slide for the basic introduction. What all can be shown interactively do not have slides.

When we were invited to conduct a workshop on GNU/Linux and FOSS by VLB Janakiammal College of Engg and Technology, we decided to introspect on our methods a bit and likewise prepare. We learnt from earlier experiences that doing is better than viewing. Second, having general topics first and deciding on specific topics during time of delivery depending upon the situation will also be better. Our last workshop wasn’t very much satisfactory as we were provided with a small projector while the hall was longer and had around 250 students packed, most of them would have been just sleeping all the day.

When we landed there we were told that we will be having only students from MCA and hence a very limited audience. Its better to talk to MCAs than BEs because [1] they already have completed 3 years of college education and hence are more molded, [2] they do not have the mind set that they are BEs and know things more than others do, and [3] MCAs know they have to do something extra to keep them competitive with their BE counterparts. We were also surprised that most of them had knowledge of Unix and their labs were running FC4 in dual-OS mode.

Hence we decided to try a new method, though it might reduce the total time available. We were more interested in making them understand and enjoy what we were to show them for the 2 days than the volume of knowledge we were to deliver. What we did was, after every topic we covered we called one or two volunteers from the audience and asked them to have an hands on experience. Thus, students actually tried out installing, using the desktop, networking, using Glade and QT Designer, database with PostgreSQL and some perl and python scripting as well. Though the first volunteer was hard to get, once he was able to do things the other were looking for an opportunity to try their hands as well. We got a very good feedback from the students as well as the faculty. They are actually looking back to do more things like workshops on specific topics, covering more depth in each one as well as even a faculty training program for all interested faculties.

We have decided to follow the same in our future workshops as we have found this experimentation to be really successful. In addition we will try to find where we might have done better and correct it out in our next endeavor. At last, landed on an occasion to feel contented for all the efforts we have been taking for the past couple of years. Got to carry the same spirit forward and enlighten more minds

Photos are already in my Flickr, do not forget to check them

Incubator at Kongu Engineering College

We landed at the campus of Kongu Engineering College on the afternoon of 6th April 2007, being driven in a Tempo traveler which was big enough for 4 of us. On our way, we interacted with the two students who had come to pick us up from Coimbatore and tried to get as much information as possible about the college and the students. As we were to be there only for a couple of hours, we decided to present about LTSP and Linux High Availability.

When we went to the campus, we were really amazed to see that it was almost a township within. We had our lunch at the guest house and was accompanied by the H.O.D of I.T department to the seminar Hall. CSE and IT departments shares the huge building called as IT park. We had our talk in the Seminar Hall 2, which was enough to seat a 100. After we closed our session and had an hour of personal interaction with a few people, we were taken for a tour around the campus. We visited the labs, all equipped with latest computers and facilities, and to the server room which was otherwise “administrators only” area.

After finishing the initial tour around the IT Park, there was something more interesting in the same building. Located on the basement of the IT park is the Technology Business Incubator, known as TBI. TBI is a joint venture of Kongu Engineering College and Department of Science and Technology, Govt of India. This projects enjoys a funding of Rs.4 crores for providing infrastructural support for budding entrepreneurs.

What’s there in TBI is technical/hardware infrastructure for manufacturing products in the domains such as Embedded Systems, Digital Signal Processing and Electronic Card Design, Assembly, Testing and Repair. These facilities are available for students and entrepreneurs under a nominal fee. This includes access to state-of-the-art tools and computers to design, manufacture, test and research products in the above said domains.

The idea is like this, any entrepreneur having a requirement for an industrially demanded product can make use of this facility. He can bring in his own workforce or make use of the student resources in the college. Similarly, students who have brilliant ideas can make use of the facility to bring out their own products and make business. The end product which gets developed using the facility will lie with the original creator to whom the idea belongs. Thus, the TBI will not claim any right over the products that gets developed using it, rather will support every passionate entrepreneur by rendering him all possible infrastructure and resources.

Thus it gives an opportunity for students to get exposure to industry and the industry to interact and make use of the student resource. the following products have successfully been developer in the TBI, Power electronic controllers, temperature controllers, electronic tagging of book-like objects, electronic control panel for scrubber drier machines, Universal power regulator for DC Motor, controller for automatic bell ringing system and last but not the least, bus ticket vending machine.

This is a wonderful endeavor by Dept of Science and Technology by funding a project which is the very requirement in an academic environment. This also sound similar to the purpose of NRCFOSS, which is also a Govt of India funded project. We also aim to create entrepreneurs rather individual developers and contributors in the software and IT industry.

Any young and passionate entrepreneurs looking for infrastructure facilities for developing their first product can approach the TBI-KEC. Visit them at TBI-KEC.

PyProgram #4 - Who is on duty ?

We had an interesting problem posed in python mailing list, though it is not a very tough one. But still, practical problems are a fun to solve. This guy wanted to know how he can find which group is on duty. There are 4 group of fire-fighters each cycled on duty for a day one after another. Poor guys, they do not get any off even for holidays. The 4 groups all joined on a single day, so the start day is common for all. Based on this starting day, we have to find which group is on duty if given a particular day. This is a simple and interesting problem to solve. So, we all jumped in and used the datetime module. Here is my code dutycycle.py,

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""Data Cycle Finder
Find which group takes charge on a corresponding date.
There are four groups, each working on a 24-hour cycle
one after another. The groups work one day after another
in order, without any break for holidays.

Given a date, it is needed to find which group is on
duty. All the groups have a start date and a group
number. Hence given a date, the output should be the
group number which is on duty.

The input date is of the form dd/mm/yyyy.
"""

from datetime import date
import sys

def dutyfinder(_date):
    start = date(2007,1,1) # the duty cycle started on 1st jan 2007
    return (date.toordinal(_date)-date.toordinal(start))%4

inputdate = sys.argv[1]
indate = sys.argv[1].split('/')
enddate = date(int(indate[2]),int(indate[1]),int(indate[0]))
onduty = int(dutyfinder(enddate)) + 1
print "The group to report for duty on %s is %s" %(str(inputdate),str(onduty))

Now, we need to call this file with the input date as the argument. The starting date is set to 1st January 2007 and the input date format is dd/mm/yyyy. To find which group should report to duty on 10.01.2007,

$ python datacycle.py 10/01/2007

The group to report for duty on 10/01/2007 is 2

I had mailed the OP the code and he has thanked me for it