Work the Net - A Management Guide for Formal Networks
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The guide 'Work the Net' addresses networking practitioners, as well as
other professionals wishing to set up a network, but also established
networkers will find some useful tips. It was developed by professionals
with sound experience in designing and running networks.

This hands-on guide in concise A5 format describes on 140 pages how
formal networks can be set up, managed and used in an efficient and
effective way. The process-oriented approach is explained with a flow
chart, and checklists summarise the crucial steps. A resource section
provides relevant publications and websites.

'Work the Net' is one of the results of the German Technical Cooperation
(GTZ) project 'Networking, Information and Knowledge Management by
Regional Organizations' (NeRO), which provided an exchange platform for
information and knowledge management approaches and instruments between
regional development organizations focusing on the management of natural
resources in the Asian context.

Up to two hardcopies of the guide are available for free. For more
copies, the mailing expenses and an administration fee will be charged.
Copies of the guide can be ordered at the following address:

Skat Publications, Vadianstrasse 42, CH-9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland
Email: publications@..., Fax: +41 71 228 54 55

The guide is also available on the KM4Dev website for download:
http://www.km4dev.org/index.php?module=uploads&func=download&fileId=317

_______________________________________________________

Dr. Urs Karl Egger
Skat - Swiss Resource Centre and Consultancies for Development
Vadianstrasse 42, CH-9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland

phone +41 71 228 54 54
fax      +41 71 228 54 55
skype  ukegger
web     http://www.skat.ch

Forwarded for information by:
-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.7/410 - Release Date: 8/5/2006

From: general-bounces@...
[mailto:general-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Noumaan Yaqoob
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 5:43 PM
To: Linux Pakistan Mailing List
Subject: [LinuxPakistan] Urdu Font Rendering in Firefox For Linux

It seems like many Linux distros are distributing Firefox with Pango
support enabled only for selective locales. This issue didn't allow
Nafees Web Naskh and Urdu Naskh Asiatype to render properly in Firefox
and other web browsers based on Mozilla. If you are unable to see Urdu
fonts using Firefox on Linux then try this solution:

I tried it on my Ubuntu Dapper using default Gnome Desktop environment
but I guess it would work fine for KDE or Kubuntu aswell as Fedora.

Open the file /etc/environment with administrative priviledges:

gksudo "gedit /etc/environment"

and add this line:

MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=0


If you are using some other linux distro and find that you need to do
that in some other way please add your how to in this thread. What you
need to do really is to make Pango available system wide for all mozilla
based applications. You would see pango enabled in about:buildconfig but
in effect it is not really enabled.

_______________________________________________
General mailing list
General@...
http://mail.linuxpakistan.net/mailman/listinfo/general_linuxpakistan.net

Hosting Provided by Inspedium <http://www.inspedium.com/>


--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.2/422 - Release Date: 8/17/2006


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.2/422 - Release Date: 8/17/2006

Investing in your IT Skillset
Anthony Barker

http://www.xminc.com/linux/hottest_it_skills.html

September 8, 2002

Often friends of mine ask me - "What is the hottest IT skill?"

There is a problem for many IT workers that I think is best illustrated by
the MCSE designation. You study hard to memorize menu systems and hands on
practical information regarding the use of Microsoft Technologies. You then
pass some exams which may or may not really reflect your understanding of
the technology - and two years later the information you worked so hard to
memorize is out of date and can be discarded.

So how do you safeguard your career and ensure that your skills are
marketable in the future ? Three rules for investing in your skillset are -
study what you love, focus on value-add, and invest in fundamental longer
term skills.

Study what you love

Study what you love is fairly self explanatory - but a foreign idea for many
people who entered the IT industry simply as conduit to a higher paying job.
Typically, we are better at things we like and learning the associated
skills comes more easily. If what you love isn't that marketable, often
times the skills you develop can be use as a stepping stone to commercially
applicable skills.

For example some programmers love python or ruby - two programming languages
which do not yet have the similar commercial demand as other languages such
as c++ or Java. If you learn Python extremely well - you can use this to
learn object oriented programming, functional programming, the unix
programming environment (sockets, pipes, etc) the windows programming
environment (COM, OLE, etc) and the vast majority of programming concepts as
well as the C programming language.

For those who love the system administration of linux - learning all the
commands, shells scripting and perl can lead understanding the
administration of solaris, linux or aix.

While studying what you love - try to learn what ever it is thoroughly - and
not jump around from one thing to another.

Make sure you choose what you love not simply out of habit. For example I
knew " vi " , the unix text editor fairly well and I considered moving to
emacs to edit code because it has more functionality. Initially I didn't
like it - the keystrokes with CTRL and ALT felt strange. I persisted - and
now am beginning to like it.

Remember these things are just tools - and while you can love a tool - what
you should really focus on is enjoying and improving the process or act of
using the tools.


Focus on Value Add

Value-add is mostly common sense - but common sense many IT professionals
miss as their vision is clouded by technical details. How can you add the
most value to your customer ? i.e. " What is my current/future
customer/employer's biggest problem - and what can I do to fix it most
efficiently and effectively in the long term ?".

Try to learn skills in areas that are "must have's" - a litmus test is " If
the service was unavailable for 1-7 days could the company continue to
function like normal ? ".

Many people focus on the value add marketed by vendors. For example a major
corporation I know was thinking of moving their desktops from Windows 2000
to Windows XP. The true value add in this case is questionable. In general
it is wise to question all claims from vendors for materials particularly if
they include the terms "legacy" and "upgrade".

Skills with Open Source software immediately make you of value. You can
implement a File server for 500 users for only the cost of the hardware and
consulting time ? A firewall/proxy server on a reused server ? Cost to the
client = Nothing + Cost of your labor = a real win.

For programmers it is good to focus on learning environments that allow you
to more rapidly produce useful quality code. Open source gives you access to
tons of tested libraries that can speed your development time. Using
dynamically typed and interpreted programming languages such as Python, Perl
or LISP will reduce the number of lines of code you have to write and debug,
and speed the code-compile-debug cycle, which can cut the cost of
development(1).

Open Source tools give you access to the guts of the application - which
allow you add more value to the customer. In traditional proprietary
software solutions such as MS SQL Server if you have problems you need to
pay a lot of money to call the vendor to get access to some hidden debug
parameters that you can then apply to the application. You then try to
interpret the debugging information, submit it to the vendor and then wait
for a patch. This is much like trying to fix a car when you can't open the
hood. Save the $20,000 part of the service contract and do it yourself.
Often times this takes a mixture of system administration and programming
talent.

Recognize most people adapt very slowly and typically resist technological
change. For example replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office on 1,000
desktops may sound great in terms of reducing total cost of ownership.
However, the truth is that the amount of time for retraining and resistance
from the user community would probably make this project fail. Lock-in to
proprietary systems is the anathema to value-add.

Try to understand the economics of technological change(2), understand how
to do a business proposal, and how to sell software projects. If you do -
you are more likely to get " what you love " accepted as a corporate
solution. Typically with sales of software solutions you sell to the
business decision makers - not necessarily IT. Get the product or solution
in their hands so they can evalgalize it and make sure you sell at multiple
levels in the organization - have multiple people "going to bat " for you
and your solution.

Avoid monopolies if possible. Software vendors can reduce the value add of
the "total solution" that you are working on by arbitrarily changing
licensing agreements and increasing prices. By using open standard or open
source software that is not controlled by one company you ensure that you
solution will have longer term value. Open software generally has a longer
staying power than proprietary solutions. Witness the staying power of ANSI
C programming environment or the X86 hardware platform(3).

Different operating systems allow you to add different amounts of value. The
unix philosophy has been to create a number of " small sharp tools ".
Tapping into those tools in Unix or windows and using a glue languages such
as Perl, Python or Bourne Shell to string them together allows you to
automate much of your job. Automation adds value to your customer and often
allows them to service themselves.

Crosstrain yourself to add value. For example if you are a programmer learn
to do basic administration of a database server. Ask the dba what his/her
biggest challenge. If you are an administrator study python, or perl. Having
a bigger picture understanding allows you to add more value.

A final thing you need to understand is the value of standardization and
consolidation. For example for a large company who has standardized on Java
Servlets may have reason to use PHP on some website - however, the value of
PHP as a superior method of RAD development of dynamic content is
significantly reduced. The company will have to staff and support this
additional technology - often maintaining overlap in staffing and expertise.


IT has improved companies in terms of Communication, Workflow, Job
Automation, Financials (which could be communication - but I put it
elsewhere) and customer service delivery. However each company is different.
I would recommend if you are committed to your employer figure out what
makes their business tick. An easy way to do this is to read how stock
market analysts value different companies in that industry(4). For example,
commercial banks are upgraded or downgrade often on their corporate loans.
Therefore, loan risk evaluation and the workflow around those loans is a key
item. Business schools teach method on how to determine what a businesses
key success factors are. What are your customer or employers keys success
factors and how can you improve them ?



Invest in fundamental longer term skills

An administrator who learned Microsoft's version of Unix - Xenix in the
early 80's would have no problem picking up and administering a modern Unix
or Linux style system. Would a DOS user be able to administer a Windows XP
box ? The best way to avoid the loss of you skills is to try to learn skills
that are open, fundemental to the computer industry, and don't tend to fade.


Try not to learn skills that are controlled by one company. IT Companies can
be fickle - dropping technologies if they don't seem to be meeting ROI
expectations. C/C++, SQL, TCP/IP, Perl, XML, Korn Shell and others are all
not controlled by one interest and will last into the near future.

Unfortunately the superior technology doesn't always win - so how do you
pick what to learn ? If you can get your hands on a copy of the competing
technologies play around with them for a while, read reviews from
intelligent reviewers and keep your fingers crossed. Try to identify
"Silicon Snake Oil " by using your good judgment.

Some products are necessarily proprietary and you will have to deal with
that. For example to manage Cisco routers I would focus on learning routing
technology via setting up Linux as a router and then learn how Cisco has "
applied " that technology. Learn RDBMS systems via Postgresql - and then
learn how Oracle has applied and extended that technology. Learn to
administer email systems via postfix and then see how MS Exchange has
applied their technology to the protocols. For developers the same applies -
learn open technologies first and then you can see how vendors have applied
them. For example learn C++ on a linux box using toolkits such as wxWindows
or QT and then see how Microsoft has modified standards in their C# + .NET
environment.


Finally you have a strategy for learning and career development- write down
your 3, 12, 36 month skill development goals. Join a user group such as the
Perl Mongers or Linux User Group and meet people with similar interests.
Post a message to the usenet to get study mates. Look at signing up to
mailing lists for new users - for example the Learning Python mailing list
is excellent and keeps you on track. Put aside 3 times per week for
learning. Steady learning is the best.

Avoid 1-5 day crash courses. They are the industry norm - however all the
current learning research points to the fact that we learn better over an
extended period of time. So much so that if you tried to cram your learning
into 1 day - you would only learn 60% as much if you studied 1.3 hours per
day over a work week.

Make a project of it. Most people learn best in situations where we apply
what we have learned immediately. So if you are learning something related
to your current project - great. If you are learning something for the
future I would recommend making a project out of it. So if you want to learn
firewalling - setup an old machine at home using linux and later learn
"CheckPoint " or a similar application of the technology or join an open
source project to apply your programming knowledge.

The IT job market is now slowly picking up after months of decline, make
sure you are in a position to take advantage of it.



Anthony lives in Toronto, Canada and enjoys teaching his daughter and wife
the wonders of zsh ;-)
He runs a small consulting company that advises firms on email security and
develops email based solutions.


(1) The Mythical Man Month, Brooks

(2) http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/slow.evolution.txt

(3) Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance,
Micheal Porter

(4) http://finance.yahoo.com


Regards
-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
General Secretary - FOSS Advocate
FOSSFP: Free & Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan ® Secretariat
Office of the General Secretary
E-Mail: bajwa@...
URL: www.fossfp.org ; www.ubuntu-pk.org
Disclaimer:
This e-mail message is intended for its recipient only. If you have received
this e-mail in error, please discard it. The author of this e- mail or
FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan (R) takes no
responsibility for the material, implicit or explicit.


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.2/422 - Release Date: 8/17/2006

----------------------------------------

Croatian government adopts open source software policy Tuesday August 22,
2006 (08:01 PM GMT)
By: Koen Vervloesem
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/08/11/1855229

Last month the Croatian government adopted an open source software policy
and issued guidelines for developing and using open source software in the
government institutions. The Croatian government is concerned that
proprietary software leads to too much dependence on the software suppliers.
Open source software will make the government's work more transparent,
according to the government's document, entitled "Open Source Software
Policy."

The document includes the following guidelines:

     * Government institutions will choose and/or develop open source
solutions as much as possible, instead of using closed source alternatives.
     * The government will support development of closed source solutions
that use open standards for protocols and file formats, and which are
developed in Croatia.
     * The government will support the use of open source programs and open
standards outside of its institutions.
     * The government will support the use of open source solutions in
educational institutions; both closed and open source solutions will be
equally presented to students.

Domagoj Juricic, deputy state secretary at the Central State Administrative
Office for e-Croatia and the leader of this project, explains what made the
government publish the policy: "The use of information technology in
government administration bodies is increasingly becoming important. So far,
most of the software we use is proprietary software, so we cannot modify or
complement it, or link software from different vendors. These software
products impose rigid commercial conditions of use and limit our
possibilities. In this way, government administration bodies may be led into
a dependent position on the supplier of the software. This could lead to
closed information systems, which make the success and efficiency of our
eAdministration project more difficult.

"This is a policy document," Juricic emphasizes, "which means that the
Croatian government has recognised the importance of market alternatives
considering the platforms, tools, and other solutions that could help us
build a qualitative e-society. As in other political or economic examples,
our government should have an opinion on something that is rising on the
market and that is interesting from the point of building a domestic ICT
market. The Croatian government has never discriminated against any
platform, but never before we have put that as a political statement, and
that's what this policy is all about. This is our first public document that
mentions the use of open source software, and it presents some kind of
recommendation to our administrative bodies. The policy is not about
replacing something, it is about treating things equally."

Inspired by the EU

The Croatian guidelines are inspired by activities of the European Union in
the same spirit. The European Commission Action Plan 2000 had already
established a set of goals for the development of a European information
society. Stimulating the use of open source software in the public sector
and the development of an electronic government administration were the two
main goals. "The dependence on a supplier of proprietary software has been
identified as one of the most significant obstacles for the new EU i2010
programme, entitled 'A European Information Society for growth and
employment,'" Juricic says. "The same obstacle has been pointed out as the
reason for slowing down market competition in the information and
communications sector. Therefore, it has been established that open source
software and open standards must be built into the EU information and
communications market."

Croatia applied for membership of the European Union in 2003, and the
European Council granted it candidate country status in 2004. This could be
one of the reasons Croatia wants to follow the European guidelines for the
information society. In late 2003, the government of Croatia adopted the
eCroatia 2007 programme, in accordance with the EU recommendations. The main
goals of the programme are to provide the citizens and firms of the country
with timely information and to become a transparent and efficient service.
"In order to achieve this task," Juricic says, "we have to use open
standards and open source software that will enable interoperability of
computer systems in different administration fields."

Interoperability, transparency, and money

"The state administration bodies create and exchange a lot of electronic
documents," Juricic says. "There is a great danger that documents cannot be
opened and presented in readable form after a certain time, because we don't
have the licence anymore of the proprietary software, or the vendor can
seize support of the old types of documents. Therefore we require the state
administration bodies to use open standards for creating electronic
documents."

One of the key factors in the reform of the Croatian government's
administration is transparency. "The public has the right to have full
insight into operations of state administration bodies, including the
computer software. Proprietary software providing services to the citizens
reduces the transparency of the government."

It's also about money, Juricic says. "Because of the dependence on a small
number of proprietary software vendors, the competition on the domestic
information and communications services market is reduced, while the
administration bodies often do not have sufficient funds.
Therefore, we will obligate principles of openness and freedom of use for
the procurement of public information services. This will direct the
administration bodies towards open source software and open standards. Open
source software enables more rational distribution of state budget funds,
because it creates the environment in which domestic suppliers and
manufacturers may be more actively involved in any phase of the development,
maintenance, and use of the systems.
This will also reduce the total public expenses of providing services to the
citizens, thereby managing the taxpayers' money economically."

These guidelines are in sharp contrast with the present situation. As a
result of having no clearly established guidelines for procurement and use
of software in state administration bodies, IT experts of the different
bodies procure software which, in their opinion, is best suited to their
requirements. This is often proprietary software, which makes modifying the
software difficult, and often impossible.
Mostly, the administration bodies keep using the same software because of
existing business relations.

With the new guideline, the Croatian government will to the greatest
possible extent avoid the use of software that makes connecting with other
software or date exchange between different information systems impossible.
In case this is not possible because of already operational proprietary
software, Juricic says, "All subsequent upgrading and modifications have to
be based on open source software and open standards."

Vlatko Kosturjak, president of the Croatian Linux User Group (Hrvatska
Udruga Linux Korisnika), calls the guidelines "a pretty good start for a
quicker adoption of open source software and open standards in Croatia. In
the past, the government IT bodies have to take risks themselves if they
want to use open source software. With the open source software policy, even
the more conservative IT departments will feel safe now implementing open
source software."

If the Croatian government develops its own software, it will to the
greatest possible extent create software based on open standards. It will
also promote development of open source software and the development of
proprietary software based on open standards. It will promote the use of
open source software and open standards outside the state administration
bodies: in the public sector, the economy, and public services. And it will
promote translation into Croatian of open source software.

The Croatian government will also promote the development of course
materials to educate civil servants in the area of open source software and
open standards. It will promote integrating the knowledge of open source
software into educational programmes. Open source and proprietary software
will be presented equally in order to prepare the younger generations for
independent decision-making.

The future

It's still unclear what the practical consequences of the policy will be.
"There are still many questions to be answered," Juricic admits.
"We will see what this policy will bring to us in real life. For the moment,
it is important to declare that we're really open for all solutions which
are secure, interoperable, and cost-effective. Our next step will be forming
a list of ICT standards to use."

Kosturjak warns against euphoria with the policy. "Although the Croatian
open source community is very positive about the open source software
policy, we'll see how serious the Croatian government is when the next step
comes: the implementation of the policy. This will not be easy, as there are
obvious practical problems. For example, most of the government bodies have
now proprietary technologies together with proprietary file formats
implemented in their IT systems. Migration to open standards and open source
software can be technically difficult and painful. From the non-technical
point of view, this is also a political and financial issue. We (the open
source advocates) hope that the Croatian government will have the strength
to actually implement the open source policy. Until that moment, the policy
is just like an unsent letter."

----------------------------------------

Forwarded for information purposes by:

----------------

Fouad Riaz Bajwa



--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.4/424 - Release Date: 8/21/2006

Computerworld Report: Linux Rising

Linux is now firmly entrenched in the enterprise. Computerworld's new
Executive Bulletin on the open-source operating system will get IT managers
up to speed on the latest Linux developments, ranging from its impact on
database sales to competition with other operating systems.

http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/752841/1953095/29035/0/

Information forwarded by
-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.10.7/410 - Release Date: 8/5/2006

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.5/426 - Release Date: 8/23/2006

Unicode Font Guide For Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems

----------------------------------------------------------------

Special thanks to Ed Trager and Ann Arbor for their contributions to the
FOSS Movement

Source: http://www.unifont.org/fontguide/

Introduction

Unicode Font Guide For Free/Libre Open Source Operating Systems is a
selective guide to Unicode-based fonts and script projects that are ideal
for free/libre/open source (FLOSS) operating systems like GNU/Linux and
FreeBSD.

The project includes those fonts only that:

1. Contain Unicode CMAPs for mapping Unicode values to glyphs.

2. Can be downloaded and used legally for free.

3. Preference is given to high-quality vector fonts that have been released
under SIL International's Open Font License (OFL), the Free Software
Foundation's GNU General Public License (GPL), and similarly open licenses.

4. Also included are other important Unicode fonts, including a few notable
shareware fonts where the authors request payment of a fee after an initial
free evaluation.

Although the focus of the project is on vector fonts that would work well on
free operating systems, the fonts presented will also work well on
Unicode-capable Windows operating systems (Windows 2000 and XP) and on Apple
OSX.

Also worth noting is that other, more extensive online font guides do exist.
In particular Alan Wood's "Unicode fonts for Windows computers" is an
extensive resource which covers commercial, shareware, and free fonts. In
contrast to Mr. Wood's site, this project focuses on Open Source,
non-governmental organization (NGO), and government-sponsored font and
script initiatives that aim to facilitate computing in national and
indigenous languages throughout the world.

Some of the included font projects provide numerous fonts. An effort has
been made to include images of a representative sample of the available
fonts. For many of the sample font images, the project has made use of the
first article of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) which has been translated into hundreds of languages. If anyone wants
to compare translations of just the first article, they can try Xavier
Nčgre's excellent déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme page at
www.lexilogos.com.

Instructions on installing these fonts on GNU/Linux and similar free
operating systems are provided on the project's main Unicode page. It is
worth noting that many fonts are packaged in .zip files for the convenience
of Windows users. Under free Unices, just use the unzip utility from your
terminal. Some fonts are packaged in self-extracting .exe packages for
Windows. Here again one may simply use the unzip utility since the .exe
basically consists of a short executable stub with the zipped font files
attached to it.

A new tool for the impatient
If today anyone is feeling impatient and wishes to just download all the
fonts referenced on this site while blithely sipping their coffee or tea --
well, they can almost do just that by using a simple shell script on the
link provided. The script will attempt to download the vast majority of
fonts referenced on this site. The script requires that one has the wget,
tar, and unzip utilities, as well as the fontforge font editor. The script
will download font files to a fonts subdirectory under the current working
directory. Everyone can try it!

The project complements and appreciates support by Ritu Khanna and Monisha
Sharma for their generous help with testing and preparing the Indic font
samples which appear in the South Asian section of the project guide.

The authors may be contacted at
<ed dot trager at gmail dot com>

Regards
-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
General Secretary - FOSS Advocate
FOSSFP: Free & Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan ® Secretariat
Office of the General Secretary
E-Mail: bajwa@...
URL: www.fossfp.org ; www.ubuntu-pk.org
Disclaimer:
This e-mail message is intended for its recipient only. If you have received
this e-mail in error, please discard it. The author of this e- mail or
FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan (R) takes no
responsibility for the material, implicit or explicit.


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.5/426 - Release Date: 8/23/2006

===============================================================

ANNOUNCING THE APC CHRIS NICOL FOSS PRIZE IN 2007

Making it easy to use free and open source software

===============================================================

The APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize recognises initiatives that are making it
easy for people to start using free and open source software (FOSS). The
prize will be awarded to a person or group doing extraordinary work to make
FOSS accessible to ordinary computer users.

The APC FOSS Prize has been established to honor Chris Nicol, a long time
FOSS advocate and activist who for many years worked with APC.

We are looking for initiatives that:
* improve the accessibility to, knowledge of and/or usability of FOSS
* are user-oriented
* are documented so that others can learn from and replicate the model
* have demonstrable impact and have increased the number of people using
FOSS on a day-to-day basis

THE PRIZE IS OPEN TO: Any person or group anywhere in the world who supports
or promotes user-oriented free and open source software. The application
form must be completed in either English or Spanish however there are no
language restrictions regarding the language of the project. Small-scale
activities are encouraged to apply.

THE PRIZE: US$ 4,000.00 may be shared by up to two initiatives at the jury's
discretion.

DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS: March 30 2007

MORE ABOUT THE APC CHRIS NICOL FOSS PRIZE:
http://www.apc.org/english/chrisnicol
http://www.apc.org/espanol/chrisnicol or write to fossprize@...

ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION FOR PROGRESSIVE COMMUNICATIONS (APC)
http://www.apc.org The Association for Progressive Communications is an
international network of civil society organisations dedicated to empowering
and supporting groups and individuals through the strategic use of
information and communication technologies, especially
internet-technologies.

===============================================================

Courtesy of
_______________________________________________
APCNews mailing list
APCNews@...
http://lists.apc.org/mailman/listinfo/apcnews

Forwarded for information by
-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
General Secretary - FOSS Advocate
FOSSFP: Free & Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan ® Secretariat
Cell: 92-333-4661290
Tel: 92-42-5030039
E-Mail: bajwa@...
URL: www.fossfp.org ; www.ubuntu-pk.org
Disclaimer:
This e-mail message is intended for its recipient only. If you have received
this e-mail in error, please discard it. The author of this e- mail or
FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan (R) takes no
responsibility for the material, implicit or explicit.


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.5/426 - Release Date: 8/23/2006

This event is supported by the Linux and Free & Open Source Software
Community in Pakistan, FOSSFP & Ubuntu-Linux Pakistan LoCo Team
-----------------------------------------------------

CHASE-2006 --

Conference on Hacking And Security is one of the first of its kind of event
being organized in Pakistan. It is entirely non-profit and is aimed at
promotion of knowledge sharing in the important area of hacking and security
in our country. It was a desire to serve Pakistan in the wake of increased
number of attacks on Pakistani Internet frontiers that we thought to develop
a community and to share knowledge that has culminated in the shape of
CHASE.  We want to provide a platform and develop an organization where
professionals can exchange their knowledge and ideas and network with each
other so as to result in the mutual benefit for all and our country in
particular. You can visit the conference website at:

http://chase.org.pk/


Call For Papers
------------------
If you are a hacker or a computer and internet security professional and
have something to talk about, then you have an opportunity to do so at CHASE
2006. Please fill out submission form and send your presentation as early as
possible to:

cfp@...

Last date for filing submissions is Friday, September 22, 2006.

All those individuals who can present are urged to at least send their
abstracts as early as possible to the conference mail above. To see
guidelines for submission, please visit the following
page: http://chase.org.pk/en/index.html

  Call For Participation
--------------------------
Those who just want to participate may please register as early as possible.
Just visit the website or send an email to: register AT chase DOT org DOT
pk. To see how you can register, please visit the following page:
http://chase.org.pk/en/register.html

Call For Volunteers
-----------------------
Organizing this event is a demanding task which is quite not possible
without the participation of community. We are looking for competent
individuals who are team players willing to volunteer for this task. Those
who would like to help organizing the conference, please first see the areas
where help is needed at the following page:
http://chase.org.pk/en/team.html

--
CHASE Team
chase@...

-------------------------------------

Forwarded for information purposes by

-------------------------------------

Fouad Riaz Bajwa
FOSS Advocate
FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.6/427 - Release Date: 8/24/2006

FOSS hits mainstream media in Pakistan! "Open it up" SPIDER Magazine's
September 2006 issue on FOSS. Highlights from the September 2006 issue.

Editorial: http://www.spider.tm/sep2006/ednotes.html

Cover Stories

Tune your brains,
by Fouad Riaz Bajwa

Open source software has gradually made its way across the shores to
Pakistan. It is not only major organisations but also interested individuals
that can benefit massively from its arrival

http://www.spider.tm/sep2006/cstory1.html


The open and closed case
by Nizar Diamond Ali

A study of open and closed source software reveals why more corporate and
home users are making the shift towards open source

http://www.spider.tm/sep2006/cstory2.html

My Ubuntu experience,
by By Noumaan Yaqoob
A computer user explains his reasons for switching from the near-ubiquitous
Windows operating system to a user-friendly version of Linux called Ubuntu

http://www.spider.tm/sep2006/cstory3.html


Forwarded for Information Purposes by

----------------

Fouad Riaz Bajwa

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.7/436 - Release Date: 9/1/2006

Tune it Up

Open source software has gradually made its way across the shores to
Pakistan. It is not only major organisations but also interested individuals
that can benefit massively from its arrival.

By Fouad Riaz Bajwa

Source: http://www.spider.tm/sep2006/cstory1.html

In a world dominated by proprietary software and closed-source software
giants like Microsoft and Oracle, another software technology ecosystem has
emerged disrupting traditional proprietary software development engineering.
Its marketing practices have evolved a global demand and supply ecosystem of
its own dominating the world through enabling Information and Communication
Technologies and is known today as Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). A
community-based software development engineering model, FOSS is the usage of
open standards and open software engineering principles that are not
restricted by proprietary licenses that have enforced per user or per
machine agreements and charges in the past.

The word “free” in “free software” stands for freedom of use and not
free-of-cost as the source code is available either free or at no more than
the cost of the compiled version of the software. The FOSS model today is
widely recognised by the United Nations, academia, civil society,
governments and businesses worldwide. FOSS has been fueled in the last three
decades by a community formed by hackers, professionals, and founders of the
internet and the web inclusive of open innovative software engineering
principles encouraging knowledge sharing for everyone who contribute or want
to benefit from it. Silicon Valley today hosts hundreds of startup companies
basing their products and service delivery on the FOSS model. FOSS has also
facilitated breaking the monopolies of proprietary software companies and
their patent attacks that have been known to close down the publicly
available code on the internet chaining it down with per user or per machine
licenses and patenting software code as trade secrets.

The history of FOSS dates back to the efforts of Richard M. Stallman, a
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate and scientist working
at the MIT Labs in the 1970s. Stallman made the philosophical and
technological foundation for FOSS. In 1984, Stallman founded the GNU Project
with the goal of developing an operating system comprising entirely of free
software similar to the environment by Unix but without the unsocial and
proprietary restrictions on the use of software that were imposed by Bell
Labs on Unix. Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1995 to
back the GNU project. During early 1990s, Stallman and the FSF volunteers
developed the required editors, compilers, libraries and the operating
system shell to host the kernel but were unable to put that kernel together
in order to operate the system. Meanwhile, a student of the University of
Helsinki, Linus Torvalds, used a simplified Unix-like system called Minix on
his own computer. Minix, however, did not allow extentions to its code thus
motivating Torvalds to create a replacement for Minix from scratch so that a
free operating system could exist without carrying such restrictions. This,
in effect, gave birth to the most popular open source operating system
called Linux.

Linux has made way to supporting 32 and 64-bit computing environments,
enabling the fastest ever super computing systems, grids, clusters, and
network farms. Linux leads on the internet and intranet telecommunications
front while continuously making way into rich clients such as PDAs, embedded
devices and television set-top boxes. Linux has challenged the proprietary
Symbian operating system found in cellphones as well as the Windows CE and
standard Palm operating systems.

Since the free software could not carry proprietary source code or could not
be made part of proprietary initiatives, only free software initiatives
licensed through the FSF GNU-GPL could benefit from free software. Thus
another group from the free software community comprising of Eric Raymond,
Larry M. Augustin and Bruce Perens in 1997 was formed in an effort to market
the free software concept to people who wore ties initiated the Open Source
Initiative (OSI). Facilitating this concept was Eric Raymond’s seminal
research paper titled “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” that clearly
differentiated between closed source and open source software development
and the threats associated with proprietary software development models.

This group removed some of the political language of Stallman’s license
hoping to make OSI more pragmatic and persuade the business community to
release their source code under OSS licensing. This addition to the concept
of community sharing extended to business users and created the base for
open standard telecommunication companies as well as formation of Red Hat
that based its primary profit model on distribution of Linux. The OSS model
proved to be quite a catch-on for business and industry and both ideologies
of FSF and OSI combined to form the basis for FOSS.

So, if such privacy infringements are so common, why is Gmail or Google
Desktop not being shunned by the everyday user? Why is it that services such
as Gmail seem to expand its user base at an explosive rate? The sad answer
to these questions is that users really do not care. Even with the hue and
cry that was made about the Google Web Accelerator, customers have yet to
refrain from using similar programs. This is because the apparent utility
presented by these services outweigh the security threats bundled within. As
long as these services present a novelty that is demanded, customers will
rush for them no matter what the critics might say.

The FOSS philosophy ensures the distribution of the software with its source
code and under free and open licenses. Therefore, FOSS refers to computer
programs that transfer the freedom to other parties to openly review source,
comment upon, refine, and perform additions to it and release it while
recognising the original contributors. Anyone can take the programs,
understand how they work and use them without asking for any additional
permission. This approach is a good model for producing resilient software.
The “open” concept allows further customisation of the software to the
user’s needs. This allows a major reduction in costs incurred by the user
while depending less and less on imported technology and customizing
software according to local languages and needs.

Looking at the opportunities that FOSS brings to Pakistan, it is a highly
useful and fruitful alternative to pirated proprietary software. It also
brings the opportunity for the country to benefit from ground-up or
bootstrap innovation, research and business opportunities that are cross
platform and multidisciplinary in nature. Its success can be attributed to
various FOSS communities including the largest and oldest, Linux Pakistan
User Group, boasting over 3,500 professional as well as amateur Linux users.
The second largest community group is Free and Open Source Software
Foundation of Pakistan (FOSSFP) and is dedicated to promoting the overall
adoption, development and usage of FOSS throughout the region as well as
globally. FOSSFP promotes ICT software freedom for everyone and has over 850
Ubuntu Linux user group members and over 4,900 registered certified users.

Large businesses, industrial groups and banks have benefited from FOSS and
have reduced their costs by eliminating licensing offered by proprietary
software giants. The Pakistan Software Export Board and Ministry of IT&T
established the Open Source Resource Center (OSRC) to encourage an open
source demand and supply ecosystem within the region. The OSRC is working
towards promoting FOSS throughout the various public and corporate sectors
through capacity development and provision of open-source based enterprise
resource planning systems to various industrial associations.

There are companies based in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Multan and Islamabad
that are providing various solutions throughout the desktop, server and
middleware stacks including extensive enterprise level technical support
related to RAC and Cluster computing. Hardware and various operating system
desktop, server and enterprise solutions are available through multinational
organisations like IBM Pakistan, Hewitt Packard distributors, Red Hat
Channel Partners, Novell Distributors and Ubuntu Commercial Support by
Canonical. This creates a healthy ecosystem for the corporate enterprise
sector to benefit from total solutions.

Companies in Pakistan that have shifted over to FOSS completely or certain
portions of their IT infrastructures
1 Kohinoor Maple Leaf Group
2 Crescent Group of Industries (Crescent Bahuman)
3 Dollar Industries
4 Bank Islami Pakistan
5 Askari Commercial Bank
6 Dancom Online Services Islamabad
7 Inbox Computers
8 Siemens Fugitsu
9 Ideal Distribution
10 Sui Northern Gas Pipelines
11 Pakistan Software Export Board
12 Open Source Resource Center
13 Ministry of IT and Telecommunication
14 Ministry of Defence

Anticipating the benefits and cost-cuts, a lot of local businesses have
embraced FOSS completely or certain portions of their IT infrastructures.
This creates tremendous amount of human resource demand and supply
opportunities and it is prime time to acquire the necessary skills required
by all these local projects and businesses that are adopting FOSS as their
business support systems. The best combination of skills includes Linux OS
installation and administration as well as LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL /
POSTGreSQL-Php / Python / Perl) software development skills.

As well as learning all the essentials online, users in Pakistan can benefit
from various educational institutions offering courses to cater for such
requirements. A number of universities and corporate training centres
including Peshawar University, SZABIST, MAJU, NUCS-FAST, OpenTech, Oracle
University, and APTECH are providing intensive professional technical and
managerial trainings. On the integrated multidisciplinary higher educational
sectors within the fields of Engineering and GIS, institutions like GIK,
NED, UET, NUST-NIIT have intensively incorporated FOSS into their curriculum
thus providing opportunities for FOSS research.

After acquiring the FOSS development or administration skills, it is prudent
that one chooses to join or initiate FOSS projects on the internet. There
are many websites that host FOSS development or catalogue FOSS programs.

The wide variety of FOSS information available on the websites may become
really cumbersome for an average user choosing to adopt FOSS. However, to
make life easier, the Ohloh service is a one-stop resource to learn about
prominent FOSS projects.

An immediate way to engage in FOSS development is to create volunteer Linux
or FOSS user groups within universities, colleges, schools, and companies to
share personal experiences by contributing information and case studies
regarding the use of FOSS and list them as FOSSFP chapters. Secondly, since
Ubuntu-Linux is freely available, everyone irrespective of their location
can order CDs and share them with their family members, friends and
colleagues.

Apart from operating systems and general business applications, FOSS has
contributed to human and social development through applications that
empower individuals, promote economic growth, reduce inequality, support
human rights, gender empowerment, microfinance development, employment
creation, news sharing, information and knowledge dissemination. Apart from
its low-cost and free-of-cost models, its greatest benefit particularly for
Pakistan is that FOSS can be localised into the 70 regional languages spoken
in Pakistan. This will provide versions of FOSS that use Urdu, Punjabi,
Sindhi, Balochi, Pushto, Sariki, Himalaya as an alternative to the widely
available software interfaces in English. Similarly, the availability of
localised graphical user interfaces or visual display can be further worked
upon to develop localised computing, and programming in Urdu as well as
typing in domain names in Urdu into your browsers to access localised web
resources over the internet.

Pakistanis are carrying out Urdu localisation efforts around the globe. The
most widely accessible and usable tool to localise Ubuntu distribution is
called Rosetta. This is an opportunity for Pakistanis to volunteer by
donating their time and effort to share the translation activity covering
over 1,100 translation tasks. To support localisation, the regional
BytesForAll FLOSS Localization Consortium gathers FOSS resources for
carrying out localisation efforts for various regional languages spoken in
South Asian countries.

BytesForAll FLOSS Localisation Consortium
A list of useful online resources
for choosing from over two million
FOSS projects
1 Savannah.gnu.org by the founders of FSF
2 Sourceforge.net and Freshmeat.org by the founders of OSI
3 Launchpad.net by the founders of
Ubuntu-Linux
4 Gforge.org
5 Apache.org
6 Mozilla.org
7 Drupal.org
8 Joomla.org

It is prime time for our academia, researchers, civil society and business
and industry to adopt FOSS development and technologies for ICT-based
production. The strategy is to embrace the innovation opportunities that
FOSS extends. With the source code for every FOSS program in one’s hand,
Pakistan can develop extensive and highly marketable products at virtually
no cost for global markets. Similar business opportunities are available for
extending the software freely without any licensing costs while charging for
supplementary services built around the product including hardware,
networking, consultancy, training, trouble-shooting, debugging, maintenance
and upgrades through patches. The IT Business and Industry can be revived
through adopting FOSS, developing commercial grade products for foreign
markets, disseminating world class FOSS education and research positioning
ourselves as one of the best FOSS knowledge workers and product developers
worldwide as well as recreate the interest in IT that once was heard in all
corners of the nation.


The Site

OSI www.opensource.org

Linux Pakistan User Group www.linuxpakistan.net

Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan
www.fossfp.org

Ohloh service www.ohloh.net

FOSSFP chapters www.fossfp.org/chapters

Ubuntu-Linux www.shipit.ubuntu.com

Rosetta
www.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/dapper/+lang/ur

BytesForAll FLOSS Localisation Consortium
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_floss




--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.7/436 - Release Date: 9/1/2006

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [GOF] Linux Development Opportunity
From:    "Saud Ansari" <saud_ansari20@...>
Date:    Tue, September 5, 2006 02:47
To:      "GOF" <gof@yahoogroups.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Aglix(Pvt.) Ltd.
(Agile linux development)

Linux Development Opportunity
Software Engineers
(5  Vacancies)

We are looking for Software Engineers with a thorough understanding of the
TCP/IP Stack and excellent programming skills in C/C++. You will be
involved in the development and release of a TCP/IP Stack.
Requirements:
• BCSE/BSCS or equivalent.
• Outstanding Software development experience (Course Projects).
• Excellent C programming skills, command of scripting language such as
Perl and experience using the Socket API.
• Must have good understanding of TCP/IP networking protocols and
network configurations.
• Knowledge of Socket programming, Linux Kernel and Network interface
(MAC, Ethernet).
• Proficiency w/ open source tools like gcc, CVS
• Must be experienced in installing, configuring and using Linux/Unix.
• Experience with sizing, creating and executing software module or
application level test plans.
• Must be a team player.
Excellent compensation package, great work environment, details at
www.aglix.com. Please email your CV to jobs@....

Regards
Saud S. Ansari

--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.7/437 - Release Date: 9/4/2006



--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.7/437 - Release Date: 9/4/2006

Aglix(Pvt.) Ltd.
    (Agile linux development)
    Linux Development Opportunity
    Software Engineers
    (5 Vacancies)
    We are looking for Software Engineers with a thorough understanding of
    the  TCP/IP  Stack and excellent programming skills in C/C++. You will
    be involved in the development and release of a TCP/IP Stack.
    Requirements:
    ⢠BCSE/BSCS or equivalent.
    ⢠Outstanding Software development experience (Course Projects).
    ⢠ Excellent C programming skills, command of scripting language such
    as Perl and experience using the Socket API.
    ⢠ Must  have  good  understanding of TCP/IP networking protocols and
    network configurations.
    ⢠Knowledge of Socket programming, Linux Kernel and Network interface
    (MAC, Ethernet).
    ⢠Proficiency w/ open source tools like gcc, CVS
    ⢠  Must   be   experienced  in  installing,  configuring  and  using
    Linux/Unix.
    ⢠ Experience  with sizing, creating and executing software module or
    application level test plans.
    ⢠Must be a team player.
    Excellent  compensation  package,  great  work environment, details at
    www.aglix.com. Please email your CV to [1]jobs@....
    Regards
    Saud S. Ansari
    [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


References

    1. mailto:jobs%40aglix.com
    2.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/message/11195;_ylc=X3oDMTM2OGVhc2N2BF9TAzk3MzU\
5NzE0BGdycElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BG1zZ0lkAzExMTk1BHNlYwNmdHIEc2x\
rA3Z0cGMEc3RpbWUDMTE1NzQ0MjY0MAR0cGNJZAMxMTE5NQ--
    3.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJxcHE3dnVxBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdy\
cElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BG1zZ0lkAzExMTk1BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3JwbHkE\
c3RpbWUDMTE1NzQ0MjY0MA--?act=reply&messageNum=11195
    4.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJlaTAwY2E1BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdy\
cElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA250cGMEc3RpbWUDMTE1NzQ0\
MjY0MA--
    5.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/messages;_ylc=X3oDMTJlMTVvajNtBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0\
BGdycElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA21zZ3MEc3RpbWUDMTE1\
NzQ0MjY0MA--
    6.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/files;_ylc=X3oDMTJmc3RxZTAzBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGd\
ycElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA2ZpbGVzBHN0aW1lAzExNTc\
0NDI2NDA-
    7.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/photos;_ylc=X3oDMTJlYzhtdHA0BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BG\
dycElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3Bob3QEc3RpbWUDMTE1Nz\
Q0MjY0MA--
    8.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/links;_ylc=X3oDMTJmdTQ2OGNzBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGd\
ycElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA2xpbmtzBHN0aW1lAzExNTc\
0NDI2NDA-
    9.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/database;_ylc=X3oDMTJjaDlxZWZ0BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0\
BGdycElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA2RiBHN0aW1lAzExNTc0\
NDI2NDA-
   10.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/polls;_ylc=X3oDMTJmMXB2MXVmBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGd\
ycElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3BvbGxzBHN0aW1lAzExNTc\
0NDI2NDA-
   11.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/calendar;_ylc=X3oDMTJkODZiYnM4BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0\
BGdycElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA2NhbARzdGltZQMxMTU3\
NDQyNjQw
   12.
http://groups.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTJkdmU2YXZtBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzEwMTQ3NT\
IEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA2dmcARzdGltZQMxMTU3NDQyNjQw
   13.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/join;_ylc=X3oDMTJmcWdvbHY4BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdy\
cElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA3N0bmdzBHN0aW1lAzExNTc0\
NDI2NDA-
   14.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof;_ylc=X3oDMTJkY2oybzJlBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkA\
zEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA2hwZgRzdGltZQMxMTU3NDQyNjQw
   15. http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
   16. mailto:gof-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe
   17.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof/members;_ylc=X3oDMTJmNnAyMDA0BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0B\
GdycElkAzEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwN2dGwEc2xrA3ZtYnJzBHN0aW1lAzExN\
Tc0NDI2NDA-
   18.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gof;_ylc=X3oDMTJlaWNwN2s0BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkA\
zEwMTQ3NTIEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNjAwMDQzNzc5BHNlYwN2dGwEc2xrA3ZnaHAEc3RpbWUDMTE1NzQ0MjY0M\
A--
   19.
http://groups.yahoo.com/gads;_ylc=X3oDMTJjNTY2MHFlBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BF9wAzEEZ3JwSW\
QDMTAxNDc1MgRncnBzcElkAzE2MDAwNDM3NzkEc2VjA3NsbW9kBHN0aW1lAzExNTc0NDI2NDI-?t=ms&\
k=Karachi+pakistan&w1=Karachi+pakistan&w2=Hotel+in+karachi+pakistan&w3=Karachi+p\
akistan+hotel&w4=Karachi+hotel+pakistan&w5=Pakistan&c=5&s=123&g=2&.sig=pAoJWAV8D\
RJp0hEPTuu4qQ
   20.
http://groups.yahoo.com/gads;_ylc=X3oDMTJjaTBqaDZ1BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BF9wAzIEZ3JwSW\
QDMTAxNDc1MgRncnBzcElkAzE2MDAwNDM3NzkEc2VjA3NsbW9kBHN0aW1lAzExNTc0NDI2NDI-?t=ms&\
k=Hotel+in+karachi+pakistan&w1=Karachi+pakistan&w2=Hotel+in+karachi+pakistan&w3=\
Karachi+pakistan+hotel&w4=Karachi+hotel+pakistan&w5=Pakistan&c=5&s=123&g=2&.sig=\
shQv1okiSIQBGDVZNgg8Bw
   21.
http://groups.yahoo.com/gads;_ylc=X3oDMTJjYnByZWw5BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BF9wAzMEZ3JwSW\
QDMTAxNDc1MgRncnBzcElkAzE2MDAwNDM3NzkEc2VjA3NsbW9kBHN0aW1lAzExNTc0NDI2NDI-?t=ms&\
k=Karachi+pakistan+hotel&w1=Karachi+pakistan&w2=Hotel+in+karachi+pakistan&w3=Kar\
achi+pakistan+hotel&w4=Karachi+hotel+pakistan&w5=Pakistan&c=5&s=123&g=2&.sig=z0C\
XhQO444nTSAhJvEweqQ
   22.
http://groups.yahoo.com/gads;_ylc=X3oDMTJjYjU5YWpzBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BF9wAzQEZ3JwSW\
QDMTAxNDc1MgRncnBzcElkAzE2MDAwNDM3NzkEc2VjA3NsbW9kBHN0aW1lAzExNTc0NDI2NDI-?t=ms&\
k=Karachi+hotel+pakistan&w1=Karachi+pakistan&w2=Hotel+in+karachi+pakistan&w3=Kar\
achi+pakistan+hotel&w4=Karachi+hotel+pakistan&w5=Pakistan&c=5&s=123&g=2&.sig=Pen\
05Tlnq1q6SQpoTntfoQ
   23.
http://groups.yahoo.com/gads;_ylc=X3oDMTJjNGxlbGdkBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BF9wAzUEZ3JwSW\
QDMTAxNDc1MgRncnBzcElkAzE2MDAwNDM3NzkEc2VjA3NsbW9kBHN0aW1lAzExNTc0NDI2NDI-?t=ms&\
k=Pakistan&w1=Karachi+pakistan&w2=Hotel+in+karachi+pakistan&w3=Karachi+pakistan+\
hotel&w4=Karachi+hotel+pakistan&w5=Pakistan&c=5&s=123&g=2&.sig=-s7gUw9mkqXrRj44X\
KgBgA
   24.
http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12htd73j8/M=493064.8985657.9760727.8674578/D=groups/\
S=1705043779:NC/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1157449842/A=3848567/R=0/SIG=12jvenc9k/*http://us.rd\
.yahoo.com/evt=42408/*http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/handraisers
   25.
http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12hdf14an/M=493064.8985655.9760766.8674578/D=groups/\
S=1705043779:NC/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1157449842/A=3848630/R=0/SIG=10p8tommg/*http://photo\
s.yahoo.com
   26.
http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12h9dsnka/M=493064.8985659.9760753.8674578/D=groups/\
S=1705043779:NC/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1157449842/A=3848577/R=0/SIG=12e714ic8/*http://us.rd\
.yahoo.com/evt=42403/*http://messenger.yahoo.com/feat_photos.php

_______________________________________________
General mailing list
General@...
http://mail.linuxpakistan.net/mailman/listinfo/general_linuxpakistan.net

Hosting Provided by Inspedium <http://www.inspedium.com/>

On behalf of bytesforall.org, it is our profound privilege to invite you to
kindly join Pakistan ICT Policy Group
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/pakistanictpolicy/.

We are organizing this space to discuss, highlight and monitor ICT policy
issues, particularly from civil society perspective in Pakistan. Using this
forum, you are welcome to deliberate upon a whole range of issues around ICT
policies in the country. Let's join hands in our endeavor to call for people
friendly-people centered ICT policies in the country. Please spread the
words about this group among your friends and colleagues and help us gather
as many interested people as possible. It will greatly help to further
strengthen this initiative.

Overall objectives of Pakistan ICT Policy Monitoring group are:

- to highlight and capture ICTs and development related campaign issues in
Pakistan and register civil society perspective to those issues.

- to launch policy advocacy campaigns around various ICT policy issues in
the country.

- to work as an information bridge in between ICT and development
professionals, technologists, policy makers, academia, media and larger
civil society.

Pakistan ICT Policy Monitor Network website is accessible at
http://pakistanictpolicy.bytesforall.net/

Regards
-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
FOSS Advocate
BytesForAll Network
BytesForAll FLOSS Consortium
www.bytesforall.net

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.12.1/440 - Release Date: 9/6/2006

GO UBUNTU & SPREAD THE WORD - FIGHT SOFTWARE PIRACY!

Ubuntu (ooh-bun-too) Linux for human beings is a GNU/Linux distribution
optimized for home and office use. It has been designed for the ease of use
and installation. Ubuntu is available free of charge for anyone.

Ubuntu can be run directly from the CD without changing the existing
Operating System or can be installed alongside another operating system
without disturbing the previous configurations.

Ubuntu comes with a full desktop office, including the Mozilla FireFox
Browser, Evolution email client, the GIMP (graphics editing suite), GAIM
Messenger, and much more. Ubuntu is immune to viruses and malware. Ubuntu
offers automatic updates as well as thousands of software packages available
for free and legal download without causing violation of Intellectual
Property Rights preventing and combating software piracy.

Ubuntu is fully customizable according to your tastes and needs even more
than mainstream operating systems.

License - Ubuntu is licensed mostly under GPL, entirely under free software
licenses. This means it is free and will always be free.

Hardware Requirements - Ubuntu requires 128 MB RAM (For LiveCD sessions 160
MB Minimum) CD ROM drive. A full install will take about 2.5 GB of disk
space.

Where can you read more about Ubuntu? - News, How-tos, downloads:
www.ubuntu.com and free nonstop round-the-clock support from IRC volunteers'
at #ubuntu (Freenode).

Spread Ubuntu - Ubuntu does not have commercial advertisements. Help us
spread the word. Ubuntu is community driven and is supported by community
based word-of-mouth or software/CD sharing based promotion.


A detailed introduction to Ubuntu:

----------------------------------

Ubuntu is “Linux for human beings”, a complete open-source operating system
which aims to make Linux simple and a solid option for everyday desktop use.
It includes common applications such as a web browser, e-mail client, and a
complete office suite that is compatible with Microsoft Office and other
document formats, such as the new ODF standard, the rapidly growing format
for the future of office documents.

Ubuntu is available completely free of charge, in keeping with the founding
principles of the Ubuntu distribution. Ubuntu's active, growing community is
one of the core aspects of Ubuntu, with users participating in such ways as
providing free support for others, exchanging ideas and suggestions, and
developing software, all as volunteers.

Ubuntu is much more stable and less prone to security holes, viruses, and
spyware than Windows due to a different security model, is entirely
customizable to fit your needs and preferences, and has huge quantities of
software available to go with it, all easily accessible and free. Many of
these applications, including the office suite, are even available for
Windows, so you can use the same thing on both systems.

You don't have to give up everything you know and jump in headfirst.
Ubuntu's Live CD lets you run Ubuntu entirely off a CD without touching your
existing Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X installation at all, with no risk of
losing data or breaking the existing installation. You can even install
Ubuntu without erasing your other operating system, in a “dual-boot”
configuration which allows you to simply choose which one to use when you
start the computer.

Ubuntu is also available with multiple “graphical environments”, since
everybody has different tastes for the “look and feel” they're comfortable
with. This disc has one called “Gnome”, but if you'd like to take a look at
others (notably KDE and XFCE), screenshots of all versions (called Ubuntu,
Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and one even specially tailored towards use with children
and schools called Edubuntu) are available at http://shots.osdir.com/.

This pair of CDs is from the 5.10 (October 2005) release and being given to
you to make Ubuntu available to people who might otherwise not have been
aware of its existence or of free software in general. There have been
massive improvements between this release and 6.06 which just came out on
June 1st, as open-source projects such as Ubuntu develop at a rapid pace, so
keep that in mind. If you like this one, you'll love 6.06. So, feel free to
try out the one labeled "Live CD". If it doesn't really appeal to you,
please pass it on to a friend, relative, or coworker you think might be
interested or leave it somewhere, like the in your college library, with a
computer vendor or at the reception at work perhaps.

The current release supports PC (Intel x86), 64-bit PC (AMD64), and PowerPC
(Apple iBook and Powerbook, G4 and G5) architectures, so if you need a
different CD, they can either be provided by Ubuntu-Pakistan Team members
near you or for free [https://shipit.ubuntu.com/].

Ubuntu can also be downloaded [http://www.ubuntu.com/download] or get
shipped for free [https://shipit.ubuntu.com/]. Let me know if you have any
questions. For more information, you may start by accessing the Ubuntu
website located at [http://www.ubuntu.com].


Disclaimer:

Ubuntu and the Ubuntu logo are registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd.
Pressed CDs and shipping is paid for by Canonical Ltd. and private donors.
The GNU/Linux Operating System is the result of the work of hundreds of
thousands of volunteers around the world, as is most of the software coming
with it. The author of this document (Team Leader, Ubuntu-Linux Pakistan
Team) has no material gains there from.


Forwarded for information purposes by

-----------------------

Fouad Riaz Bajwa
Team Lead
Ubuntu Linux Pakistan
General Secretary - FOSS Advocate
FOSSFP: Free & Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan ® Secretariat
Office of the General Secretary
E-Mail: bajwa@...
URL: www.fossfp.org ; www.ubuntu-pk.org
Disclaimer:
This e-mail message is intended for its recipient only. If you have received
this e-mail in error, please discard it. The author of this e- mail or
FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan (R) takes no
responsibility for the material, implicit or explicit.


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.12.4/449 - Release Date: 9/15/2006



--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.12.4/449 - Release Date: 9/15/2006

Welcome!

   Free/Open Source Software/Code (FOSSC) is dedicated to promoting the
Open Source Sofware or code for the good of the community, rights to
use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs, This
site gives a detailed overvie of Free and open source softwares(FOSS/
FLOSS) related news, events, jobs, resources, links and conferences.
  Visit the site http://www.fossc.com

  To subscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
  http://www.fossc.com/join_form

From: general-bounces@...
[mailto:general-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Tahir Abdul Rauf
Butt
Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 11:59 AM
To: general@...
Subject: [LinuxPakistan] Translating Debian Installer in URDU

hi,
     We are working to translate the debian installer for UBUNTU in Urdu
Language.Please address our queries if you can.

   1) We have translated some programs of UBUNTU as Nautilus, and OpenOffice,
but now  we need to translate Installer for URDU.

   2) How and where to get the Source code of installer such that we could
translate the pot file, and compile the installer to get the working system
so that i could install debian from this installer.

   3) How should we test our translations for the installer, For example if
we have translated some strings of the installer, how should we test it.

                  We are looking forward for your immediate response.



Tahir Rauf Butt
Bsc(Hons). CS
PU College of IT
www.geocities.com\linux_kernel_worm

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.407 / Virus Database: 268.12.11/460 - Release Date: 10/1/2006

From: Atul Chitnis <mail@...> Add Address
Date: 2006/10/05 Thu PM 01:06:40 GMT+05:30
To: "FOSS.IN" <foss-in@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [foss.in-announce] Heads-up: FOSS.IN/2006 talks registration
ending Oct.08

Move To:

All:

A gentle reminder that talks registration for FOSS.IN/2006 ends on
Sunday,
October 8th.

If you wish to present a talk/workshop/tutorial at FOSS.IN/2006, please
put in your talk proposals *now* at

http://foss.in/2006/cfp/speakers

Make sure that you have read and understood the Call for Participation

http://foss.in/2006/info/Call_for_Participation

To summarise, FOSS.IN is primarily about three objectives:

1. Highlighting Indian participation/contribution to FOSS projects

2. Enabling/empowering qualified people to get involved with FOSS projects

3. Sharing of non-introductory, advanced information or techniques related
to FOSS technologies.

We are most interested in Objective #1 (that's the .IN in our name :),
but
#2 and #3 are equally important.

Also, I strongly suggest that people submit multiple talks on different
subjects - that way your chances of getting selected improve
considerably,
because it is entirely possible that several people will submit talks on
the same subject, but we obviously can choose only one of them.

So go register and start submitting your talks! Time's tickin' away! :)

Atul

--
FOSS.IN/2006
Nov 24-26, Bangalore, India
http://foss.in/2006
Talk Submission now open!

(Apologies for such a long message, it's worth it!)

Dear FOSS/Linux Users and Community Members,

We are committed to promote Community and Commercial FOSS Ecosystems and
combat software piracy in the country. Various FOSS/Linux Service Provider
Companies, Academicians, Open Source Consultants and Professionals have
teamed up as a "Professional FOSS/Linux Club" to organize Meetings on a
regular monthly basis in Lahore in the beginning that can be replicated to
other cities. Membership is open to anyone related to any field having an
interest in FOSS and Linux.

Special Features of these meetings include corporate, professional and
scholarly presentations, research sharing, Tips & Tricks, free or subsidized
professional trainings, free information and software CDs, tours of
companies and universities, joint larger scale events and sessions visited
by members of Foreign F/OSS IT Companies including leading IT Industry
Leaders and Businessmen.

We invite all Linux, Open Source Software experts, professionals and
community members based in Lahore to join us in these 2 hour duration
meetings that will take place on Friday or Saturday Evenings with two
meetings per month. Three venues have been proposed and offered that will be
finalized upon confirmation on the number of confirmed participants.

The topics for the first meeting will be "Developing a Corporate Linux
Business Ecosystem in Pakistan", "Upgrading to Linux Ready Professional
Skills", and "Marketing Tactics for Selling Open Source". The topics will be
presented by participating companies and professionals that will be followed
by other short presentations on expert topics in FOSS by various
participating members. All meetings will be followed by sponsored Tea/Snacks
:o)

Participating companies include various software/hardware vendors and
distributors of IBM, Novell, Red Hat Linux; Ubuntu & Canonical Ltd. etc
where as Scholars, Teachers and Trainers from leading local Universities
will also be participating.

If you have a laptop, we encourage you to bring it along to share your
experiences or presentations. We are also exploring the possibilities to
setup a wireless LAN to share Linux and FOSS applications and conduct
install fests.

Expression of Interest for Membership and Participation in Meet-ups!

----------------

All interested community members are requested to subscribe the FOSS
Meet-ups mailing list on our group at Yahoo

Group name:    Foss Meet-ups
Group home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foss_meetups
Group email:    foss_meetups@yahoogroups.com

After subscribing, kindly send a request for participation email specifying:

1. Name:

2. Age:   /   Gender:

3. Preferred Badge Name (Leave empty if same as above):

4. NIC Number (For Security Reasons)

5a. Are you a FOSS/Linux user? [Yes] or [No]

5b. Select your user/expert level one from [Beginner] [Home User]
[Intermediate] [Professional] [Business]
or
[Exploring various options to combat software piracy]

5c. Are you interested in presenting during meetu-ups? [Yes] or [No]

6. Contact Address

7a. Tel
7b. Cell
7c. Fax
7d. Email (Compulsory)

8. Website URL (if available)

9. Have you joined our group on Yahoo [Yes] [No]
(Not yet? Please visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foss_meetups and join
so that you can be notified about meetings and topics)

10. Title of Company or Educational Institution

11. Address Company or Educational Institution (If different from above)

12. Are you interested in bringing guests with you, kindly fill similar
information for all accompanying guests/participants.


* Decorum of Meetings

---------------------

The Dress code will be "Professional"; geeky getups will be receiving a
beating from Tux the Penguin.

All meetings will be started at the time intimated before hand.

There will be prayer breaks.

The language of delivery will be both English and Urdu.

All participants should practice mutual respect for each other and should
introduce themselves exchanging visiting cards or clearly display their
badge names.

Speakers may book presentation slots by sending us an email specifying the
name of the presenter, topic of the presentation, a copy of the slide or
handout.

Equal participation from both genders is encouraged.

The Club will not take responsibility for the participants' personal
belongings so secure your mobiles, laptops and any briefcases when leaving
the meeting venue.

The Club will not take responsibility of business commitments or financial
transactions between them.

If your company or institution is interested in sponsoring a meet-up, kindly
contact us at least 7 days before a meet-up. The gap between meetings is of
14 days unless otherwise notified.

The organizing committee reserves its right to accept or reject requests for
participation by individuals or ban a company from future meetings any
miscommitments or lack of professionalism reported by the club members.

For more information about adding value to this activity, you can drop me a
call during working hours at: 0333-4661290

Regards
-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa



--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.4/476 - Release Date: 10/14/2006


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.4/476 - Release Date: 10/14/2006


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.4/476 - Release Date: 10/14/2006

Results of Ubuntu Linux desktop tests in the VCS
Monday 16 October 2006 by Chris Bailey

Testing use of Linux on desktop computers

10 desktop computers using Ubuntu Linux were distributed to VCOs in the East
of England Region for testing and evaluation.

The organisations were:

Fenland CVS
Ipswich CVS
West Norfolk CVS
Cambridge Independent Advice Centre
Voluntary Action Luton
Colchester MIND
Crossroads, Cottenham
Community and Voluntary Forum: Eastern Region (COVER)
Cambridge Online
Herts Citizens Advice


A range of suitable FOSS programs were included:

Open Office - FOSS equivalent to Microsoft Office
Evolution - FOSS equivalent to Microsoft Outlook
Firefox - FOSS equivalent to Internet Explorer
Scribus – Desktop publishing
Project Planner - Project management
GnuCash – Finance

Methodology

The organisations involved were invited to an initial session where they
were introduced to FOSS and Ubuntu Linux. They then all received a personal
training session at their own premises. After three months the organisations
were invited to submit an interim assessment of their use of the computers.
At the end of the project they were asked to fill in a questionnaire.

Assessment of results

Feedback from actual users was generally very positive regarding use of the
software. They found it intuitive and, with only occasional difficulties,
quickly adapted to its use. Many of them seemed very surprised at this and
at the range of good quality free software available. They had clearly been
influenced to believe this would not be the case, but soon overcome any such
prejudices.

Resistance to more general use of the software was however much stronger at
managerial and decision making level. There were a number of factors
involved:

* Strong resistance from some contracted technical support staff who saw it
as a threat to their entrenched monopoly position of using Microsoft
software. In at least two cases they put strong pressure on the
organisations involved to switch the computers to using Microsoft, making
clear that they would not supply any support for Linux and implying that
there were unstated dangers to mixing its use with Windows. This raised
fears with decision makers about being able to get longterm technical
support for Linux.

* Managerial staff often considered that they had invested so much money on
technical support and solving past problems that they felt that moves to
Linux would be a waste of the money already spent. Obviously people don’t
change just for change sake and need good reasons to change to Linux from an
environment they have already heavily invested in. Linux desktop migration
is sometimes difficult when they have already heavily committed to a
Microsoft server environment, particularly if they are using Exchange
server.

* To a certain extent these problems were compounded by our own initial
approach to the project. We had initially envisaged, and indeed were funded,
to only supplying 10 desktop Linux computers for testing FOSS on a stand
alone basis. However, when the training visits to premises took place it
immediately became obvious that everyone was expecting us to integrate the
computers fully into existing networks and work environments. Without this
they were not really prepared to test the computers properly. We therefore
had to carry out a lot of additional work not originally envisaged without
adequate funding and resources. This meant we had to draw a line somewhere
on how far we could go with integrating the computers into existing network
systems and gave a false impression concerning the full capabilities of
Linux.

Despite these problems, in a number of cases managers were pleased to have
been made aware of FOSS as an alternative to proprietary software and said
they would certainly consider its use when making new major ICT investments
in future, providing the issue of good longterm technical support could be
dealt with.

Some conclusions

From the experiences of the overall East of England FOSS in the VCS project,
not just the Linux on the desktop project, it is clear that FOSS use by the
VCS can be a viable and extremely cost effective alternative to proprietary
software. It could also eventually result in software solutions much better
adapted to VCS use than present proprietary "off the shelf" solutions that
are often aimed primarily at users in the business sector.

The rapid recent development of user friendly Graphical User Interfaces for
Linux distributions, particularly Ubuntu, have created products that can
quickly convince end users of Linux usability. However for FOSS to be able
to establish itself within the sector it will need to adopt a clear strategy
aimed primarily at decision makers:

* Concerns about longterm technical support have to be addressed. Much of
this will need to be done nationally through development of a Linux user
group dedicated to the VCS, training ICT circuit riders in Linux support, a
national VCS help desk and knowledge base for Linux, etc. Pressure needs to
be put on technical support suppliers to force them from entrenched
positions of only supporting Microsoft operating systems.

* Although there are clear parallels between the ethos of the VCS and the
Free Software community few VCS decision makers will decide to switch to
FOSS solely on ethical or political grounds. Cost is a much more viable
reason in their eyes and it is most effective when they are considering new
ICT investment. Management are open to the argument that they are not doing
their job properly if they are not considering the cost savings that arise
from using FOSS, other things being equal. This can be taken advantage of
initially through developing a number of very cost effective FOSS solutions
to key needs of the sector that involve little disruption of existing work
practices - use of Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird cross platform FOSS
programs, LAMP based CMS websites, Linux file server and backup systems,
suitable LAMP based groupware programs running on an internal Linux server,
etc.

* By proving the viability, stability, security and cost effectiveness of
even a relatively small initial number of FOSS solutions the conditions can
be created for convincing management to seriously think about moving more
widely to FOSS when it comes to times for considering major new ICT
investments, such as replacing old hardware, software upgrades, etc. This
present project represented an initial step in that direction.


References and Sources:

1. Source: http://foss.ciac.org.uk/article43.html

2. Interim assessments of using Ubuntu by participating organisations.
http://foss.ciac.org.uk/IMG/doc/Interim_assessments.doc

3. Herts Citizens Advice interim assessment. Longer interim assessment from
Herts Citizens Advice.
http://foss.ciac.org.uk/IMG/doc/Herts_Citizens_Advice_interim_report.doc

4. Voluntary Action Luton interim assessment. Longer interim assessment from
Voluntary Action Luton.
http://foss.ciac.org.uk/IMG/doc/Voluntary_Action_Luton_interim_report.doc

5. Questionnaire Replies. Questionnaire Replies from all 10 participating
organisations. http://foss.ciac.org.uk/IMG/doc/Questionnaire_replies.doc

Forwarded for information purposes by

Fouad Riaz Bajwa
FOSS Advocate



--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.4/476 - Release Date: 10/14/2006

From: general-bounces@...
[mailto:general-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Noumaan Yaqoob
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 4:05 PM
To: general@...; ubuntu-l10n-urd@...
Subject: [LinuxPakistan] Urdu Editor - Developers Where areyou?

We are discussing a project to develop an Urdu Note Pad for Linux.
Unfortunately we do not have the programming skills and developrs to carry
on this project.

There is a demand for an Urdu Notepad like application for Linux. Something
that quickly enables users to write in Urdu, save it, print it, create pdf
files and send it to their friends via email.

See Urdu Editor Lite for Windows with source code:
http://www.urduweb.org/blog/2005/05/36/

See Urdu Editor
http://www.urduweb.org/blog/2005/04/28/

And join the discussion here:
http://www.urduweb.org/mehfil/viewtopic.php?t=5326

Regards
Noumaan
_______________________________________________
General mailing list
General@...
http://mail.linuxpakistan.net/mailman/listinfo/general_linuxpakistan.net



--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.4/477 - Release Date: 10/16/2006

Pakistan takes to alternative software

By Indo Asian News Service
India eNews, Linux Today, October 24, 2006

Pakistan, often criticised for software 'piracy', is placing its faith on
the Free Software and Open Source options to get out of this trap and also
build local skills.

Also called Free/Libre and Open-Source Software (FLOSS), it is a family of
software liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change and
improve its design through the availability of its source code.

Fouad Riaz Bajwa, general secretary of a network called the Free and Open
Source Software Foundation of Pakistan (FOSS-FP), told IANS: 'FOSS-FP was
(thought of) in February 2004, and set up actually in 2005. Our goal is to
help people identify open alternatives to 'pirated' (or illegally copied)
software.

'Our aim is also to identify processes by which people, governments,
enterprise and the civil sector can use Free/Libre and Open Source Software
for their sustainable economic development.'

Bajwa said this was being done by working with universities, linking up with
the Pakistani public sector infrastructure and seeing whether it can be
utilised for FLOSS education.

Free Software and Open Source still has only a marginal presence in the
world of computing. But it is becoming increasingly attractive to a range of
governments, for a diverse - sometimes conflicting - set of reasons.

Kerala recently took a major decision to officially shift education in
schools to Free Software. Countries like Brazil and South Africa also
support its use, as does China, though some of the latter's concerns are
based around security.

In Pakistan, the attempt is also to build skills. FOSS-FP has been holding
short-duration, single-day literacy campaigns. 'We give (students) free
training on installing and using Ubuntu Linux, Open Suse, Red Hat Fedora
Core,' Bajwa said.

Free Software comes in the form of different 'distributions'. Although each
works in somewhat different ways from each other, there is commonness, and
learning the different 'distros' can be a challenge.

FOSS-FP is also trying to promote and build the FLOSS software developer
community in Pakistan.

'We want to build a community around FLOSS, and help them in terms of making
available open source resources, advocacy and collateral (marketing
materials), mailing lists, wikis (to share information) and portals,' he
says.

FOSS-FP's site claims to have received nearly 600,000 hits, and has 580
members. 'We have members in Malaysia, India and Dubai,' Bajwa says with
pride.


Sources:
* Pakistan Takes to Alternative Software
[http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2006-10-24-014-26-NW-DP-PB
Linux Today]

* India E-News "Pakistan takes to alternative software"
http://www.indiaenews.com/technology/20061024/26059.htm By Indo Asian News
Service

* NewKerala.com News
http://www.newkerala.com/news4.php?action=fullnews&id=39787 Pakistan takes
to alternative software

* Pakistan takes to alternative software
http://www.teluguportal.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=18717 Telugu
Portal



--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.11/496 - Release Date: 10/24/2006

Dear Linux Pakistan and Ubuntu Linux Community

It gives us great pleasure to announce an accomplishment of the Ubuntu
Pakistan Team Urdu-l10n International Translation Team (Noumaan Yaqoob, Team
Lead) for localizing and including the new "language-pack-gnome-ur 1.6.06+2
Pack" in the latest Ubuntu Linux version 6.10 global distribution giving
support for Urdu at installation. The latest version comes with an
installable Urdu Pack by default and is also available when you upgrade your
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS version to Ubuntu 6.10. We encourage you to test the new
features and report them to Noumaan at
noumaan{at no spam}ubuntu-pk{dot}org

I must point out here that the Ubuntu Pakistan Team members Noumaan and his
Team have done an excellent job by creating and contributing Pakistan's
first public Urdu Word Bank and Dictionary accessible at
http://l10n.urduweb.org/dictionary as well as translating the latest
versions of Gnome Interface into Urdu. This marks a whole new avenue and era
of localized Urdu computing not only for Pakistan but for the whole Urdu
Speaking Linux Users Community worldwide.

Also it is important to note here that Saadat Saeed (Ubuntu Pakistan Team
Member) has also made an excellent contribution by introducing the first
Ubuntu Linux Urdu Editor "PyUrduEdit" that will further accelerate further
community translation efforts. The Urdu Editor project is accessible at
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pyurduedit.

Waqas Toor, Team Lead Localized Documentation Team is shortly introducing
the Ubuntu Desktop and Server Guides in Urdu that will also be available in
the future versions of Ubuntu Distributions as default availability. You may
contact Waqas at waqas{at no spam}ubuntu-pk.org

I congratulate all the Linux communities, Noumaan, Waqas, Saadat including
their team members and the Pakistan IT community that today we have an
alternate and free-of-cost long term community supported Linux Operating
System in Urdu! (A solution to combat software piracy)

We are now gearing up for Sindhi and Punjabi Translations so all of you
interested volunteers out there, join the Ubuntu Pakistan Team that has over
40 volunteer developers and contributors with localization efforts going on
at:

Register at:

https://launchpad.net/people/ubuntu-pk (Ubuntu Pakistan Team)

https://launchpad.net/people/ubuntu-l10n-ur (Ubuntu Urdu l10n Team)

And subscribe to:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-l10n-urd

https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-pk

And participate in translation services at:

Urdu:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/edgy/+lang/ur

Sindhi:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/edgy/+lang/sd

On a separate note, Open Office 2.0+ is already available with Urdu Support
done by our neighboring country but that has to be added as a separate
language pack.

A gift to Pakistan by the Ubuntu Community on the occasion of Eid. Ubuntu
Rocks in Pakistan!

Best Regards
-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
Team Leader
Ubuntu-Linux Pakistan LoCo Team
Cell: 92-333-4661290
Tel: 92-42-5030039
E-Mail: bajwa@...  
URL: www.ubuntu-pk.org
Mailing List: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-pk 
Disclaimer:
This e-mail message is intended for its recipient only. If you have received
this e-mail in error, please discard it. The author of this e-mail or
Ubuntu-Linux Pakistan LoCo Team take no responsibility for the material,
implicit or explicit.


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.14/502 - Release Date: 10/27/2006

(FOSS Industry Analysis by Fouad Riaz Bajwa for the International FOSS
Movement)

Is Oracle finally buying its way into the FOSS Movement?

Oracle Unbreakable Linux Enterprise Support is the name of the new game by
Oracle Corporation for taking its step in to the global FOSS Movement big
time with partners including Dell, Intel, HP, IBM, Accenture, AMD, BP, EMC,
BMC, and NetApp joining in on the Unbreakable Linux Program. With a catchy
name for a Linux Distribution as well as support package, Oracle may believe
to win a share of the global Linux market by buying out an existing Linux
vendor or service provider company to offer a complete configurable Database
offering coupled with the Linux Operating System bundle.

This news isn't new as Oracle made its first move in 2005 by releasing a
free stripped down version of its Oracle Relational Database Management
System product suite Oracle Deluxe XE that widely supported interaction with
a variety of open source technology platforms including the LAMP stack.
Oracle has already offered trials of "Enterprise Linux", "Oracle Database
10g Release 2" and the "Oracle Application Server 10g" as free downloads.

Larry Ellison, Oracle's Chief Executive made a statement earlier this year
declaring Oracle was looking forward to launching its own Linux operating
system with the possibility of buying a main supplier of the technology that
was clearly identified as Oracle's clean move into the FOSS Ecosystem and
accepting the FOSS model that allows customers to use applications for free,
paying only for custom features, maintenance and support.

Oracle is now offering Enterprise Linux Operating System software thus
completing a complete stack of Oracle Technology and Application software
products including those running on the Linux Operating System. Industry
analysts are also referring to Oracle's plunge in 1999-2000 surprising
investors with quick unanticipated growth in new software licenses over the
past two financial quarters boosting its stock to the highest of levels
since 2001. The company has already gained 50 percent on its stocks and
continues adding to it recent buyouts of PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems
proving it can buyout any company that is beneficial to maintaining and
growing its market outreach and dominance.

Earlier this month, SAP SD conducted released a press release that Oracle
runs 40% faster on Linux as compared to Microsoft paving the way for Oracle
to take up Linux big time on the basis of performance and scalability. This
bags a world record on performance testing for Oracle. The Sales and
Distribution Standard Application Benchmark was run using Linux on Fujitsu
PRIMEQUEST 580 Server. Within various self funded and market researched
reports, Oracle has proven to be breaking the back of both Microsoft
database and operating system offerings. Now that Oracle has finally decided
that it will also rule in the Linux market game, Oracle might bundle and
configure products together in such a way that simple clicks will install
all the critical software including dependencies safely and optimized for
scalable performance.

Oracle may now be directing itself towards delivering custom-made complete
packages that will include both the operating system and all applications
needed to bundle a complete Linux offering. This should be putting a
considerable pressure for other vendors of commercial Linux including Red
Hat, Novell and IBM but again, Oracle is not about hardware, its software
that is the core of its business and that would still be an option for
considerable commercial strategic partnerships with these vendors and
service providers. The companies that are on the possible hit list for
buyout analyzed by market researchers may be Canonical Ltd or Red Hat and if
either one of these reports are true, this may prove to be the biggest Open
Source deal of the millennium.

Oracle is not alone in the game for new Linux distributions, various sources
have also reported Google taking interest in creating a new distribution
from Ubuntu Linux from Canonical Ltd that itself is a derived from the
Debian Linux Distribution. The Linux world is becoming a very interesting
place for both commercial and public sector organizations worldwide. Oracle
may have taken this decision for a number of strong reasons including the
increase of use of Open Source products like MySQL and PostgreSQL including
Enterprise DB.

Another major interest may be the fact the most of the Linux servers world
wide run the Apache web server that was already built into the Oracle
Application Server architecture supporting Java. At the backend of every
serious and mission critical organization, Linux is proving to be the best
choice for use and Oracle has been shipping Oracle products supporting a
variety of Unix and Linux distributions so the relationship tends to be a
strong proposition for the future that the Open Source models have proved
support services around the software to generate encouraging revenues.
Moreover Oracle has always been the preferable choice for Fortune 500s as
well as customers worldwide but this does not imply that these customers
have not tested or are not running any other type of Open Source in their IT
infrastructures already.

Where these moves represent an interest towards Open Source offerings, they
also tend to give an image of violating the essence of the FOSS Movement
based on the interesting factors of Oracle Licensing Schemes that one has to
agree to use Oracle's products that in no way show any resemblance with the
Open Source or GPL licenses and copyrights. The products also limit use in
prohibited countries like Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria
etc. Secondly the license retains ownership of all software to Oracle thus
the software falls completely into the proprietary software domain and does
not allow users to share or modify the software which is the common
philosophy of all FOSS technologies and platforms. Also where proprietary
software companies provide software and code back to the community, it is
usually a generation old in terms of the fact that the community free
offering is always a couple of versions old whereas the proprietary version
is more advanced in terms of features and offerings with lots of built in
custom code that may or may not fall into the FOSS domain.

Experts worldwide are also presenting a mix of different point of views
concerning whether such a move will be beneficial for the big corporation.
According to various sources Stuart Williams, senior analyst at Technology
Business Research, quoted on Network World that “Ease of use and ease of
installation would be of primary importance because [small and midsize]
firms don’t have the IT support of a larger enterprise. Because Oracle has
this pre-integrated stack, they can preconfigure everything you need and be
[service-oriented architecture] ready . . . and, because they use these
common networking protocols, they could also integrate with the existing
Windows environment. You drop it off, set it up and it’s ready to use.” CNET
News reports that Ubuntu (Canonical) chief Mark Shuttleworth says "I don't
think Oracle is going to make large amounts of money selling support for
Linux. I don't think it will ever be a high-margin, high-profit, exciting
growth business for them. It's becoming more and more of a commodity. But
that doesn't mean there isn't some tactical value to them in influencing or
playing in the space".

Whether the industry is happy or skeptical about Oracle's move into FOSS,
Oracle has already offered existing clientele 50% off on support offerings
under Unbreakable Linux Enterprise Program and moreover, the logo shows the
Linux mascot TUX in an armored suit to beat the odds. Results from Oracle
Corporations decision will be a great interest for the industry and users
will be seeing more similar offerings from other companies such as MySQL and
Enterprise DB. Community developed Linux, Ubuntu launched a LAMP
(Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Perl/Python) stack offering built into its server
distribution released earlier this year in June and Larry Augustine has
already been funding the VA VistA architecture built into a Linux
distribution for the medical care and hospital markets.

The industry will be seeing more buy in from commercial software vendors,
developers and service providers in the future towards the FOSS trend but
how many of these deals will buck the cash, is yet to be witnessed.

References:

http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/index.html

http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=03808#0

Oracle Joins The Free Standards Group As A Platinum Member, Redwood Shores,
Calif.m, 25-Oct-2006
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2006_oct/oracle-fsg.html

SAP AG Standard Application Benchmarks were developed to provide comparative
load analysis of SAP solutions. http://www.sap.com/benchmark

Oracle Sets World Record for Two-Tier SAP® Sales and Distribution Standard
Application Benchmark Running Linux on Fujitsu PRIMEQUEST 580 Server.
http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2006_oct/oracle-fujitsu-wr-sapsd-bmrk.
html

Download Oracle Enterprise Linux Operating System software
http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux

-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
FOSS Advocate
Member BytesForAll Network South Asia
Article released under
Creative Commons Share Alike 2.5 License

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.14/502 - Release Date: 10/27/2006

Piracy creates jobs, but [Free Software and] Open Source and Open
Standards create opportunity, create entrepreneurs.  And I think
that's the challenge for the IGF as well, how to look at it is a
public interest forum, the Internet is a public space, and how can we
facilitate maximum sharing, maximum creativity, peer production, new
models, innovation. --Anriette Esterhuysen, at the Internet Governance
Forum, Athens, November 1, 2006
http://www.intgovforum.org/IGF-Panel2-311006am.txt
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org  9822122436 +91-832-240-9490
http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/fn-goa/
Free Software gives you the freedom to run, study, copy and improve software!

Wireless Rural Connectivity Conference & Hands-on Workshop" Nov 15,
2006, Lahore

Dear Community Members,

Everyone is invited to the "Wireless Rural Connectivity Conference
and Hands-on Workshop" Nov 15, 2006 in Lahore. Registration is free
and open to all but nominations with name, contact address and phone;
organization should reach the President P@SHA Ms. Jehan Ara at
jehan@... as soon as possible. If anyone wishes to
participate in this initiative, we would welcome the support with the
possibility of identifying a town or village in Lahore that can be
utilized for a hands-on workshop. Please also inform as many people
as you can so that we have a good turnout and a larger number of
people benefit. NGOs, technology people, government reps, students
etc all need to be a part of this.

READ BELOW THIS LINE:

Wireless Rural Connectivity Conference and Hands-on Workshop Nov 15,
2006 in Lahore - Everyone is invited!

P@SHA (Pakistan Software Houses Association) is planning a Rural
Networking conference and Hands-on Workshop on Nov 15, 2006 in Lahore
in collaboration with Cisco Systems and the Punjab IT Board. The
intent is to have a one day conference followed by a hands-on
workshop and actually deployment in one of the towns or villages
close to Lahore if an effort can be identified that will benefit and
can benefit from local support for the first 3 months while they are
learning the ropes. BytesForAll Network South Asia is spreading the
word to all corners of the country.

INTERNATIONAL SPEAKERS

Jim Forster
Co-author of the book "Wireless Networking for the Developing World"
and Cisco's 30th employee (they now number in the tens of thousands)
is coming to Lahore at our request for the Keynote address and to be
part of several panels.

Malcolm Maston
An entrepreneur in the telecoms and IT sectors. In the early 1980's
he was a pioneer of the UK broadband industry and eventually sold his
interests to the US RBOC, Pacific Telesis. As a result of this
experience, he began to develop and enunciate the principles for the
emerging digital world of an OPLAN (open public local access network)
as the "4th Utility". He then formed COLT Telecoms as an OPLAN -
Europe's first all-fibre public telecommunications network but exited
the Company when it abandoned the 'open' strategy. Since then he has
promoted the OPLAN concept consistently around the world - doing so
now in the name of the OPLAN Foundation
(www.oplan.org) which he founded in 2005 as a not-for-profit body
dedicated to 'opening minds to open networks'. In late 2004, The
OPLAN Foundation was appointed to advise the World Bank on the
relevance of 'open access' for the developing world. He is an advisor
to various European cities developing their own OPLAN strategies and
has written widely on the topic for bodies such as the Institute of
Economic Affairs and the Technical University, Delft, Netherlands.
Educated at the University of Nottingham and the Harvard Business
School, he serves on the boards of various private companies
including OpenPlanet Ltd. (www.open-planet.net) which partners cities
and communities to develop their own OPLANs - serving citizens above
all others.

Bjarke Nielsen
An educational leader at DIIRWB (Djursland International Institute of
Rural Wireless Broadband) and he founded the DjurslandS.net, one of
the World's biggest non-commercial rural wireless networks,
connecting rural schools, -institutions, -firms and -up to now more
than 5000 rural households to the Internet.

DIIRWB is an institute for training builders of cheap rural wireless
broadband, based on the experience of establishing and running of the
DjurslandS.net. DIIRWB is a cooperation of the "Computer Support
Community of Djursland" and "the Grenaa Technical School".

Bjarke founded the Computer Support Community of Djursland in 1993
and has been its chairman ever since. He is also the chairman of
GrenaaS.net, the area-network of Grenaa, the largest city on
Djursland. He also chairs all pilot projects on rural wireless
networks in the EU-funded "Baltic Rural Broadband Project" in the
countries around the Baltic sea in Northern Europe, and are also
project-responsible for the Danish part called "Networking
Djursland". He is a member of the EU-funded think-tank or advisory-
board on "Broadband Access, Innovation & Regional Development" for
the North SeaArea. He is also one of the trendsetting coordinators of
the World Summits on Free Information Infrastructures.

Corinna"Elektra" Aichele.
Elektra's main interests include autonomous power systems and
wireless communication (antennas, wireless long shots, mesh
networking). Shemadeasmall Linux distro based on slack-ware geared to
wireless mesh networking.

Vickram Crishna
Vickram Crishna has worked in the fields of engineering, media and
management consultancy for over 25 years since his graduation from
IIT Delhi in 1975.

Today his focus lies in expanding the use of communication and
computing to reach a wider audience than has been possible in the
techno-economic scenario we live in. This builds from his original
training in engineering and technology, gained at the Indian
Institute of Technology, Delhi, one of the finest institutions of its
kind in Asia. He widened hisoutlook at the Indian Institute of
Management, Calcutta, where he graduated in management studies, and
followed this by working in and around industry in India for twenty
five years in various capacities.

He has worked for over eighteen years as an independent management
and technology consultant and journalist. He believes that IT has
made a serious and direct impact in the lives of most of India's
population. This will involve more than just changes in technology,
many of which are already happening, but also in ensuring that
suitable and appropriate technologies are applied to spur economic
growth and social development as rapidly as possible across India's
far-flung reaches. Many things that happen in India may safely be
said to apply to other emerging nations too, hence this is not an
isolationist viewpoint. His effort is to ensure that technology be
applied to leverage emerging growth in economic and social terms
across as many social, economic and geographic boundaries as can be
managed. To this end, he is involved with several initiatives in data
communication, software development, policy definition and education
and has been working in several of India's far-flung regions
examining, customizing and helping to implement technologies that
work in each individual situation.

Dr. Arun Mehta
Dr. Arun Mehta is a graduate of IIT Delhi. He is a computer scientist
with a PhD in Computer Science from Germany. His work for the most
part has focused on bringing technology to the less advantaged -
whether it be those with special needs or those in India's vast rural
sector. He is presently, amongst other things, head of computer
science at a university in Radaur, about 4 hours drive from Delhi. He
is the developer of Elocutor, the software for the famous Dr. Stephen
Hawking.

In 1989-91, Dr. Arun Mehta was part of Amnesty International's
Computer Communications Working Group which set up an international e-
mail network, taking into particular account problems related to poor
communications networks and lack of resources in developing countries.

He has since then been an active participant on cpsr-global, the
World Bank's INFOCONF, the Internet Society's Internet Societal Task
Force (ISTF), the Global Knowledge for Development mailing list, and
the Global Learn Day organising team set up by the Benjamin Franklin
Institute of Distance Education. He moderates many lists:
     * India-gii@..., looks at India's progress on the
information super-highway
     * netradio@egroups.com, an attempt to come to grips with the
technology needed for Internet radio to become widely accessible in a
poor country
     * free-india@egroups.com, cyber-activists in India
     * cyberlaw-india@egroups.com, which examines cyberlaw issues in
India
     * sasianet@..., a pre- and post discussion for the
workshop I conducted in Dhaka entitled: "The Internet in South Asia:
Opportunities and Realities" in 1999.
     * interact-kl@..., a pre- and post discussion for a
conference entitled Converging Responsibility - Broadcasting and the
Internet in Developing Countries.

In 1994, he was a founder of FREE, the Forum for Rights to Electronic
Expression, a telecom watchdog in India. Arun is currently the
President of the Society for Telecommunications Empowerment, which
seeks to bring the benefits of modern telecommunications to the poor
through technology showcasing, training and policy interventions.

LET'S BENEFIT TOGETHER

This is a team of individuals who each, in their own field, are
actively participating in the ever-expanding Internet by pushing its
reach farther than ever before. The massive popularity of wireless
networking has caused equipment costs to continually plummet, while
equipment capabilities continue to sharply increase. The following
experts will be visiting Pakistan for the conference and hands-on
workshop.

By taking advantage of this state of affairs, people can finally
begin to have a stake in building their own communications
infrastructure. This is not only possible, but has been done. This
team intends to provide the information and talk about the tools that
are needed to start a network project in our local community.

Wireless infrastructure can be built for very little cost compared to
traditional wired alternatives. But building wireless networks is
only partly about saving money. By providing people in your local
community with cheaper and easier access to information, they will
directly benefit from what the Internet has to offer. The time and
effort saved by having access to the global network of information
translates into wealth on a local scale, as more work can be done in
less time and with less effort.

Let's take advantage of this team being here and if any of you can
identify an effort close to Lahore where deployment can take place
right away, these people can actually show hands-on how it's done. We
will also have local Pakistani experts present who can help expand
this initiative into a mass effort.

If any of you wish to participate in this initiative, we would
welcome the support. Please also inform as many people as you can so
that we have a good turnout and a larger number of people benefit.
NGOs, technology people, government reps, students etc all need to be
a part of this.

At BytesForAll, we are already spreading the word to relevant people
and wish all the success to this event.


ABOUT JEHAN ARA

Ms. Jehan Ara, President of P@SHA (Pakistan Software Houses
Association), is an active Bytesforall.org admin member as well as
part of Pakistan ICT Policy Monitor Network. She is known to be
always very keen on bringing ICT revolution into mainstream
development agenda and see it contributing for people's good.

In an email conversation Jehan informed that for this event she took
advantage of a major connectivity Summit called AirJaldi Summit
http://summit.airjaldi.com/ held in neighboring country India (in
Dharamsala) by convincing some globally renowned leading experts in
the field to spare some more time and make a side trip to Pakistan
for a wireless networking event to be organized in Lahore on 15-16
November 2006.

Regards
-----------------------
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
BytesForAll Network South Asia
Tel: 5030039, 03334661290

FOSS Reality Bites!
FOSS CIO predictions from 2003 now becoming a reality by 2010?

(Business Analysis by Fouad Riaz Bajwa, FOSS Advocate,
bajwa|NOSPAM|fossfp|DAWT|org)

	 Christopher Koch predicted possible scenarios in the CIO Magazine
Dec. 15, 2003 Issue titled "The Future of Software" that by the year 2010,
the world will make a major shift towards Free and Open Source Software
(FOSS) due to the fact that government and enterprise Chief Information
Officers (CIOs) probably would find themselves hostage to a few monopolistic
vendors that keep software expensive and complex. Many of Koch's predictions
are becoming a reality today and this analysis takes into account such
various emerging FOSS trends within both the Public and Private sectors
worldwide.

	 Koch presented the case that Free and Open Source Software will not
be the answer to integration problems and instead will drive down prices in
selected areas of the software infrastructure with the possibility of OSS
turning expensive databases such as Oracle and IBM's DB2 into commodities by
2010. Today the scenario is relatively different since integration is no
more a dream in the FOSS based products and services ecosystem as platform
independence, virtualization and distributed services are at the forefront
of information technology strategies. It has also been seen major enterprise
vendors are introducing new FOSS products and services in today's global
marketplace. A significant move has been made recently by Oracle Corporation
releasing its Unbreakable Enterprise Linux Support programme thus
commoditization of FOSS technologies and platforms by enterprise vendors are
hitting mainstream business activity.

	 It was also predicted that smaller vendors will move toward the FOSS
model keeping in view opportunities for low-cost market entry further
lowering marketing costs building a user base through word of mouth and then
sell services and add-ons thus simply giving it away. This too has been the
trend for the past few years and many Silicon Valley, European and South
Asian technology startups have adopted this FOSS model opportunity. FOSS
provides the opportunity to immediately enter target markets providing
consultancy, training and support services while the core product
development is carried on in parallel. This helps develop an adequate
customer base before actually releasing the core product into the market.

	 At the enterprise level, FOSS will enter into corporate
infrastructure and emerge as a major rival to existing dominant software
models if the integration issues are covered effectively and this too has
proven true with more advancement on the Linux front and major players Red
Hat, Novell, Canonical and even Google moving in towards providing
customization and integration with round the clock technical support and
training for Linux, this is also proving to be very valid. Moreover, for
developing economies or economies in transition, FOSS has appeared as an
alternative tool to combat software piracy encouraging protection of
intellectual property.

	 In terms of business and investment return issues, Koch predicted
that CIO's at Enterprise level will find them stuck in an outdated economic
model for purchasing, installing and maintaining software and fewer dominant
vendors will do business at much higher prices proving fewer choices with
very high migration costs and increasing vendor lock-in. In light of this
concern, vendors will sell applications as specific, configurable components
that upgrade automatically and integrate with any type of system at no
additional costs incorporating minimal effort thus buyers would pay only
when employees use these applications. However Koch also stated that this
model would not prove to be a major revenue generating model for major
vendors and won't buy in interest or stability on the Stock Exchange from
investors but it seems the other way around as the buy-as-you-use model is
now in practice widely and is also termed as the On Demand Services Business
Model widely employed by IBM and major vendors.

	 It was also predicted that CIOs focusing on establishing low-cost
infrastructure that would be easily maintainable and less reliant on a
handful of vendors to function will have the upper hand in price
negotiations with vendors and the ability to adopt innovative new solutions
more quickly and easily than those CIOs locked in to a vendor's software
release schedule. This too has been made possible by companies investing in
the development of their in-house technical support teams employing the FOSS
model since updates are being made available for free and require reduced
vendor support for FOSS Linux distributions including the facility to
customize FOSS while benefiting from optimal IT infrastructure performance.

	 In the second scenario Koch predicted the possible Public sector
market responses towards vendor lock-in and open standards compliance that
by 2010, European and Asian governments will lead the way towards the
adoption of FOSS while American CIOs will be following their footsteps with
the risks identified that reliance upon a handful of vendors for their IT
would prove dangerous. Governments in Europe and Asia would shift their
purchasing and development dollars to FOSS and this has been evident within
the last three years with more joining in on the FOSS alternative. Once
again the most important risk mitigation will be seen towards reducing
vendor lock-in; defeating vendor dominance models, security of information,
compliance to open standards with calls for compliance to vendors should
they be interested to continue doing business with governments. Such a trend
would force vendors to comply towards creating FOSS within Open Standard
specifications.

	 Open Standards compliance has been evolving at a very fast rate
including the prominent case of the Open Document Format and Massachusetts
scenario. A dominant company like Microsoft has now included Open Document
Format support within their office and business productivity tools due to
compliance and further similar activity is predicated from other vendors who
had ignored such issues in the past. The trend is to continue within the
Public sector sharing the surge with the Private sector where governments
continue to mandate FOSS for communication with vendors forced to comply
with the new FOSS market trends. It may also be possible that governments
and enterprise CIOs have had enough of endless complex licensing agreements
and upgrades on enterprise software and instead opt for FOSS alternate
licensing models turning everything they've paid for out to the market for
free. Such a trend has been seen recently on SourceForge.net and
e-government websites worldwide where public and private sector
organizations are continuously making their FOSS technologies and platforms
available for free encouraging inspection of source code and extensive
testing before considerable use by stakeholders.

	 Koch's prediction regarding Europe's largest manufacturing companies
deciding to freeze all spending on enterprise software until vendors agree
on a standard set of truly open, free integration technologies to hook their
packages together also seems to be becoming a reality with the example of
Microsoft's ban in the EU marketplace until it paid huge sums of fines and
made compliance to such standards as set forth by the EU. Adding to it, the
EU has been investing heavily into FOSS research and adoption by both Pubic
and Private sectors within all member countries and each of them making back
considerable contribution to the development of FOSS.

	 Another successful prediction presented a strong case for enterprise
level availability of FOSS technologies and platforms by 2010 emerging from
all corners of the globe with major vendors backing and supporting such
solutions. Key factors would be customer unhappiness combined with FOSS
based commodity threats forcing major vendors to completely revamp their
licensing, pricing, sales, installation and technical support models. Many
vendors have already initiated the process of releasing two models of
software, one freely developed and distributed by FOSS communities and the
other as enhanced derivations from the latter. As an exception in some
cases, some vendors are also making available older versions of their
software free-of-cost while selling paid support.

	 The predicted services model is also present today where smaller
vendors are also making money by selling paid supplementary consultancy,
training, deployment, migration and technical support services around FOSS
technology and platforms developed by larger enterprise vendors thus an Open
and Inclusive open standards based ecosystem is in evolution. This is also
helping CIOs changing their role into architecture experts taking hands-on
roles creating cheap, standards-based IT infrastructures building highly
customized IT-enabled business processes based on FOSS standards as
predicted by Koch. The "Don't pay for the software but pay only for
services" business model is in full play today.

	 Nick Gall, SVP and principal analyst for Meta Group has also
predicted that "Open source and commoditization is a bottom-up process. It
will move slowly up over the next 20 years to the top of the stack. It will
be a slow, painful process for vendors." This may also be true since no one
model for FOSS business fits all and every entity has to explore which
services model suits its product. Some FOSS business models have not made
money with respect to pay for service and instead have relied on Venture
Capital supporting their sustainability. It has also been witnessed that
many online businesses provide all sorts of services free to their members
but make money out of targeted opt marketing strategies.

	 Koch also predicted an emerging market for FOSS based ERP and CRM
solutions opposed to the expensive ERP solutions from major vendors but the
fact remains there are only a few FOSS based ERP solutions in the market.
This prediction is still valid and very beneficial in terms of ERP solutions
being developed under FOSS and open standards complying with international
GAAP, financial, electronic data interchange and transaction procedures. The
market may prove to be really big and fruitful. Various companies that have
attempted to use FOSS based ERP and CRM solutions have invested in custom
development projects to add functionality to these packages freely
incorporating the new code into future releases as a contribution back to
the FOSS development communities.

	 As already mentioned, Koch also referred to the individual software
developer or developer groups that they would be paid for coding as well as
servicing and supporting their work thus if their clients decide to make
such code available for incorporation into a FOSS package for
redistribution, they will be able to sell services to other companies that
adopt that distribution. FOSS will develop into an immediate preference for
startups, small and medium enterprises as well as Venture Capitalists and
Brokers.

	 So what does it take to get out there and cash from the FOSS
ecosystem? According to Jeremy Allison, developer of Samba software, "All
you need is one good set of code out there" to act as a foundation for
building the complex software systems. FOSS avoids the biggest barrier to
entering the software industry: marketing and sales. FOSS needs no sales and
marketing budget, only a good development leader, quality software and word
of mouth for adoption. The FOSS enterprise software is not free, but it is
cheaper, and services vendors that install and run it for customers are
happy to contribute paid developers to the cause.

	 He further adds that innovation will flower because it will be much
easier to get new projects going and to sell add-ons for existing open
source. To separate the promising software from the bad, good CIOs will be
more in demand—and more valued—than ever!

Disclaimer:
	 The above information has been analyzed on a non-commercial basis
for information purposes only from an article written by the author
Christopher Koch published in CIO Magazine online dated Dec. 15, 2003 titled
"The Future of Software, A Land Where Giants Rule" at the website address
http://www.cio.com/archive/121503/softfuture.html thus proper copyright
attributions as informed by CIO Magazine should be made where necessary. The
author takes no responsibility whatsoever of the views and material
presented within the references provided and readers are encouraged to
research the facts on their own where deemed necessary.

Online references for further reading:

Koch, C. "The Future of Software, A Land Where Giants Rule", CIO Magazine.
(Dec. 15, 2003) http://www.cio.com/archive/121503/softfuture.html

Ohloh: Explore Open Source. Mapping the open source world by collecting
objective information on open source projects. http://ohloh.net/

Source Forge Free and Open Source Software Foundry
http://www.sourceforge.net

FOSS in South Asia http://www.bytesforall.net/aggregator/sources/11

European Working Group on Libre Software http://eu.conecta.it/

E.U.-Funded Project to Test Open-Source Viability
http://www.cio.com/blog_view.html?CID=25904

IDABC Website, dedicated to Free/Libre/Open Source Software to encourage the
spread and use of Best Practices in Europe
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/chapter/452

Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Linux
http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/index.html

Canonical and Ubuntu Linux http://www.canonical.com

RedHat Enterprise Linux http://www.redhat.com

Suse Enterprise Linux SLE http://www.novell.com

The Economic Majority against Software Patents
http://www.economic-majority.com/testimony/silicide/index.en.php

Starting with Linux ZDNet
http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/whitepaper.aspx?docid=166160&promo=590&tag=nl.e
590

Microsoft Vista gets criticism before its launching in Europe
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.18/vista

EU threatens Microsoft with Vista ban - vnunet.com
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2152965/eu-threatens-microsoft-vista
Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org

Could the EU ban the Windows desktop from Europe?
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=12684

Adobe and Symantec seek EU ban on Vista bundling - ZDNet UK News
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39283555,00.htm

Open Source Initiative http://www.opensource.org

UNDP-APDIP-IOSN International Open Source Network http://www.iosn.net

International Free and Open Source Software Foundation iFOSSF
http://www.ifossf.org

BytesForAll Network South Asia http://www.byetsforall.net

FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan
http://www.fossfp.org


-----------------------
FOSS Reality Bites! FOSS CIO predictions from 2003 now becoming a reality by
2010?
A Business Analysis by
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
FOSS Advocate
bajwa|NOSPAM|fossfp|DAWT|org
Released under Creative Commons License Attribution -Share Alike 2.5
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.13.25/515 - Release Date: 11/3/2006

The Microsoft Windows and Novell Suse Linux Deal - What's the catch?

(Analysis by Fouad Riaz Bajwa, FOSS Advocate, bajwa|NOSPAM|fossfp|DAWT|org)

In a recent report by CNet News (November 2, 2006) Microsoft and Novell have
joined forces in a partnership mixing the world of Proprietary Windows
Software with Open Source Linux towards working on harmonizing Windows
proprietary software and related products on the Novell Suse Linux platform.
The pact is to promote Microsoft's proprietary Windows work with Novell's
Suse Linux, which is based on open-source code. On the business side, they
will promote each other's products.

Within the pact, the partners have also struck a new deal on patents
designed to give customers peace of mind about using Novell's OSS products.
The companies will create a joint research facility at which they will build
and test new products, and work with customers and the open-source
community. The focus will be on three technical areas: virtualization, web
services for server management, and Microsoft Office-OpenOffice.org
compatibility.

Does this mean that we will see Microsoft promoting Novell Suse Linux on
their marketing collateral and information dissemination networks? Will
Microsoft partners and ISVs promote Linux inline with their Windows
offerings? Does this also mean Microsoft is bending to Open Source and Linux
in particular?

With this deal, it is now evident that Microsoft's earlier self-funded
reports about Linux performance and TCO issues were definitely self
populated false information. This also concludes that Oracle's Unbreakable
Enterprise Linux may have shook up Microsoft on the issue about its
dominance within various partnership deals with other enterprise software
vendors and developers.

If Microsoft had not been bending to Open Source, it would have never gone
with the Linux partnership deal on a Linux platform. Secondly, this deal
also shows that Open Source with Linux in particular has overcome the six
barriers to open source adoption indicated by Dan Farber in March 2004 on
ZDNet. Dan had indicated that open source carried the following critical
deficiencies:

- Informal support
- Velocity of change
- No roadmap
- Functional gaps
- Licensing caveats
- ISV endorsements

These deficiencies seem to have been overcome during the last few years as
we can see leading enterprise vendors including Oracle and Novell making
major investments in open source software. Possibly defying Richard
Stallman's Free Software ideology and taking into account the variable scope
of open source software, this deal is making benefit of the possibilities to
mix proprietary software code with open source software code.

Is this proprietary software mix with Linux code really possible? It may be
possible in light of the interview given by Open Source Initiative founder
Bruce Peren's in Apr 2006 to SearchOpenSource.com where he stated to a
question:

	 SearchOpenSource.com: What are some ways to mix proprietary software
and the Linux kernel?

	 Bruce Perens: Try to view this in the context of a cell phone, where
the cellular provider wants to protect the way they handle the network from
open source. In a phone like mine, there are actually two CPUs, so they can
put everything they want to protect in the embedded CPU and put all of the
open source code into the other CPU. Physically, they're both on the same
chip. The General Public License (GPL) would allow that coexistence and
permit the interface between those two chips. If it's a well-defined
interface then it can be considered a perfectly legal demarcation between
proprietary software and open source. Now, if you look at the license text
that comes with the Linux kernel, there's a special preliminary to it that
re-asserts that user-mode applications are OK. They are not affected by the
GPL license unless they actually incorporate a GPL file. The license of the
kernel does not affect the application. If that's true for the kernel in an
application, it's also true for a kernel on top of another kernel. One
strategy that has been used successfully in the past by IBM is to host the
Linux kernel on top of another proprietary kernel, which, in itself,
contains some proprietary device drivers. Invidia's strategy is interesting
since it's the shakiest one. I'm not sure if it is legal. Invidia [Corp.]
has made a single loadable module for their graphics kernel, which makes the
graphics card work. That loadable module is operating system-independent,
meaning that it runs on Windows and Linux. In addition, they have a GPL
portability layer that makes that loadable module work with Linux. So it
would be more difficult, given that it works on multiple operating systems,
to establish in a court that it was actually a derived work of Linux.
Finally, another way to mix proprietary software and the Linux kernel is to
put whatever you need to be proprietary in a user-mode application, rather
than in the kernel. It is possible to expose the I/O boss to a user-mode
application. You don't necessarily get the real-time services you get in the
kernel, but for many people, that doesn't matter. There are, of course, more
elements than what I've listed.

More questions remove this confusion accordingly that:

	 SearchOpenSource.com: Do you think it would be realistic to worry
about patent issues?

	 Perens: I'm not the only one worried sick. Every small and
medium-sized proprietary software manufacturer who understands the problem
is concerned because they're on the bottom. There are some other people who
can, essentially, dictate terms. If we get additional software patents and
standards, for example, you get a situation where Microsoft or IBM can
implement a standard without a patent tax. Small-sized companies might have
to pay that tax and their potential for profit would be limited. The
problems in patent quality only exacerbate this. It's a bad deal and it is
to the benefit of the largest companies in the world, not anyone else.
Everyone should be worried in the software business. Even users should be
concerned because this is going to close out their options. Will we have the
so-called 'nuclear option,' where, some day we get up in the morning and
read that a thousand patent suits have been filed against open source? It's
still perfectly possible and it's bad news for small and medium-sized
proprietary software manufacturers too. Those companies are 80% of their
sector's economy.

	 SearchOpenSource.com: You don't think the GPL 3.0 will take care of
patent concerns?

	 Perens: It wouldn't address them for the proprietary companies at
all. Not everyone is using the GPL 3.0, and there's always litigation. You
never know how much the judge is going to buy. The GPL 3.0 will help us with
our friends -- but not our enemies. Our enemies aren't putting software
under GPL 3.0.

Will Microsoft and Novell struggle together to get additional software
patents and standards so that the standards as a result of their partnership
can be implemented able without a patent tax? If this is the case, other
companies will have to pay that patent taxes reducing their profits thus
this mix may worsen the patent attack regime. What will be the real impact
of this deal on the FOSS Ecosystem is yet to be witnessed in due course of
time but one can be sure that they will be seeing new patents imposed
employing open source software development models.

Online references and further reading:

Microsoft makes Linux pact with Novell
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-6132119.html?part=rss&tag=6132119&subj=news

Six barriers to open source adoption
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/Six_barriers_to_open_sou
rce_adoption.html

When to mix proprietary code with Linux
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci117
9148,00.html

Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org

Open Source Initiative http://www.opensource.org


	 Disclaimer:
	 The above information has been analyzed on a non-commercial basis
for information purposes only. The author takes no responsibility whatsoever
of the views and material presented within the references provided and
readers are encouraged to research the facts on their own where deemed
necessary.

---------------------

Business Analysis by
Fouad Riaz Bajwa
FOSS Advocate
bajwa|NOSPAM|fossfp|DAWT|org
Released under Creative Commons License Attribution -Share Alike 2.5
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.13.25/515 - Release Date: 11/3/2006



--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.13.25/515 - Release Date: 11/3/2006

Read the press release from Novell:

http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1196

Microsoft and Novell Announce Broad Collaboration on Windows and Linux
Interoperability and Support

Press Release

Companies also announce a patent agreement covering proprietary and open
source products.

WALTHAM, Mass.—02 Nov 2006—Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. today announced a
set of broad business and technical collaboration agreements to build,
market and support a series of new solutions to make Novell and Microsoft®
products work better together. The two companies also announced an agreement
to provide each other’s customers with patent coverage for their respective
products. These agreements will be in place until at least 2012. Under this
new model, customers will realize unprecedented choice and flexibility
through improved interoperability and manageability between Windows® and
Linux.

“They said it couldn’t be done. This is a new model and a true evolution of
our relationship that we think customers will immediately find compelling
because it delivers practical value by bringing two of their most important
platform investments closer together,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.
“We’re excited to work with Novell, whose strengths include its heritage as
a mixed-source company. Resolving our patent issues enables a combined focus
on virtualization and Web services management to create new opportunities
for our companies and our customers.”

Under the agreement, Novell is establishing clear leadership among Linux
platform and open source software providers on interoperability for
mixed-source environments. As a result, Microsoft will officially recommend
SUSE Linux Enterprise for customers who want Windows and Linux solutions.
Additionally, Microsoft will distribute coupons for SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server maintenance and support, so that customers can benefit from the use
of an interoperable version of Linux with patent coverage as well as the
collaborative work between the two companies.

“Too often technology companies ask their customers to adapt to them. Today
we are adapting to our customers,” said Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of
Novell. “Microsoft and Novell are enabling customers to take advantage of
each other’s products where it makes sense in their enterprise
infrastructure. We jointly believe that our business and patent agreements
make it possible to offer the highest level of interoperability with the
assurance that both our companies stand behind these solutions.”

Agreement Has Broad Scope
The two companies will create a joint research facility at which Microsoft
and Novell technical experts will architect and test new software solutions
and work with customers and the community to build and support these
technologies. The agreement between Microsoft and Novell focuses on three
technical areas that provide important value and choice to the market:

Virtualization. Virtualization is one of the most important trends in the
industry. Customers tell Microsoft that virtualization is one way they can
consolidate and more easily manage rapidly growing server workloads and
their large set of server applications. Microsoft and Novell will jointly
develop a compelling virtualization offering for Linux and Windows.

Web services for managing physical and virtual servers. Web services and
service-oriented architectures continue to be one of the defining ways
software companies can deliver greater value to customers. Microsoft and
Novell will undertake work to make it easier for customers to manage mixed
Windows and SUSE Linux Enterprise environments and to make it easier for
customers to federate Microsoft Active Directory® with Novell eDirectory.

Document format compatibility. Microsoft and Novell have been focusing on
ways to improve interoperability between office productivity applications.
The two companies will now work together on ways for OpenOffice and
Microsoft Office system users to best share documents, and both will take
steps to make translators available to improve interoperability between Open
XML and OpenDocument formats.

“As a result of this collaboration, customers will now be able to run
virtualized Linux on Windows or virtualized Windows on Linux,” said Jeff
Jaffe, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Novell.
“Customers continually ask us how they can consolidate servers with multiple
operating systems through virtualization. By working together, Novell and
Microsoft enable customers to choose the operating system that best fits
their application and business needs.”

The patent cooperation agreement enables Microsoft and Novell to give
customers assurance of protection against patent infringement claims. It
gives customers confidence that the technologies they use and deploy in
their environments are compliant with the two companies’ patents.

As part of this agreement, Microsoft will provide a covenant not to assert
its patent rights against customers who have purchased SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server or other covered products from Novell, and Novell will provide an
identical covenant to customers who have a licensed version of Windows or
other covered products from Microsoft.

“Both companies had to think creatively about how to create an intellectual
property bridge between the two worlds of open source and proprietary
software,” said Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel of
Microsoft. “This bridge is built on respect for the innovations of each
company and the open source community, and a passion for what we can deliver
for our customers together.”

Customer and Partner Reaction
Microsoft and Novell announced the new alliance at an event attended by
several customers and partners.

“We applaud Novell and Microsoft in their efforts to provide greater Windows
and Linux interoperability,” said Paul Otellini, president and chief
executive officer of Intel Corporation. “Customers want solutions that meet
their individual needs, and higher levels of software interoperability give
them the ability to more easily make the best choices.”

“Windows and Linux are extremely important to our enterprise customers and
the industry, and AMD strongly supports both,” said Hector Ruiz, chairman
and chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices. “This agreement by
Novell and Microsoft helps customers bridge the gap between these platforms,
giving them greater flexibility in doing what works best for them. This is a
great example of vendors working together to resolve complexity so their
customers don't have to.”

“This technology and business collaboration provides a model that allows
Microsoft and Novell to develop new solutions to enable open source and
proprietary software to work better together in a mixed-source environment,”
said Shane Robison, executive vice president and chief strategy and
technology officer at HP. “We applaud these two companies for doing the hard
work to build a bridge between Windows and Linux”

“IBM encourages more industry endorsement of mixed-source solutions that
promote open standards,” said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group
executive at IBM Software. “Microsoft support for interoperability with the
industry-standard OpenDocument Format is most welcome. Open documents give
customers choice and help unlock broad industry creativity, allowing access
to a new generation of innovative applications. Our view continues to be
that interoperability and choice are key values that customers demand and
deserve.”

“We are pleased to see that Novell and Microsoft have come together to
address customer needs with heterogeneous operating environments,” said
Kevin Kettler, CTO at Dell Inc. “As an industry leader in the IT market, we
are excited to see the technology investments being made around
virtualization and interoperability by both companies with this agreement.”

“SAP has been the first enterprise application vendor to run our apps on
Linux, while we have more Windows-based deployments than any other
platform,” said Shai Agassi, president of Product and Technology at SAP.
“Today’s announcement means that customers can now choose their preferred
operating system for each part of their SAP implementation with the
confidence that the systems will have strong interoperability and be
supported by SAP, Novell and Microsoft — both companies being strong SAP
partners.”

“One of the key challenges in government is IT interoperability,” said
Thomas Jarrett, secretary of the Department of Technology and CIO of the
state of Delaware. “We commend Microsoft and Novell for their collaboration
and their efforts to build bridges in the interoperability area, which will
help government to better serve our customers, our business community and
our citizens.”

Good for the Open Source Community
Novell officials noted that one of their priorities in working toward the
agreement with Microsoft was making sure the agreement made sense for the
open source community. As part of today’s agreement, Novell and Microsoft
are announcing three important commitments. First, Microsoft will work with
Novell and actively contribute to several open source software projects,
including projects focused on Office file formats and Web services
management. Second, Microsoft will not assert its patents against individual
noncommercial open source developers. And third, Microsoft is promising not
to assert its patents against individual contributors to OpenSUSE.org whose
code is included in the SUSE Linux Enterprise platform, including SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.

“Today’s announcement by Microsoft and Novell marks a significant milestone
in the adoption of Linux,” said Stuart Cohen, CEO of Open Source Development
Labs. “By choosing a course of co-opetition, Microsoft acknowledges the
critical role that open source plays today in an enterprise IT
infrastructure. We appreciate the role Novell is playing to help bridge the
gap between Microsoft and the open source community. We are glad to see
these two companies collaborating to further diminish the legal threat posed
to developers and customers by patent assertions. This is good for customer
confidence in Linux, the open source community and the broader IT
ecosystem.”

Additional Announcement Details
Like many commercial transactions, the financial terms of the agreement are
not being disclosed at this time.

Under the technical collaboration agreement, the companies will create a
joint research facility and pursue new software solutions for
virtualization, management and document format compatibility. These are
potentially huge markets — IDC projects the overall market for virtual
machine software revenue to be more than $1.8 billion by 2009, and the
overall market for distributed system management software to be $10.2
billion by 2010 — and the companies believe their investment in
interoperability will make their respective products more attractive to
customers.

Under the patent cooperation agreement, both companies will make upfront
payments in exchange for a release from any potential liability for use of
each other’s patented intellectual property, with a net balancing payment
from Microsoft to Novell reflecting the larger applicable volume of
Microsoft’s product shipments. Novell will also make running royalty
payments based on a percentage of its revenues from open source products.

Under the business collaboration agreement, the companies will pursue a
variety of joint marketing activities to promote the adoption of the
technologies they are collaborating on. In addition, Microsoft will purchase
a quantity of coupons from Novell that entitle the recipient to a one-year
subscription for maintenance and updates to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Microsoft will annually make available approximately 70,000 of these coupons
to customers, with a mix of priority and standard support services. By
providing its customers with these coupons, Microsoft is enabling companies
to benefit from the use of the new software solutions developed through the
collaborative research effort, as well as a version of Linux that is covered
with respect to Microsoft’s intellectual property rights.

The parties are assessing the accounting treatment for the agreements and
will provide information as required in the course of their filings with the
SEC.

For more information on SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell, see
http://www.novell.com/linux.

For more information on Microsoft Windows, see
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers Software for the Open Enterprise™. With
more than 50,000 customers in 43 countries, Novell helps customers manage,
simplify, secure and integrate their technology environments by leveraging
best-of-breed, open standards-based software. With over 20 years of
experience, 4,700 employees, 5,000 partners and support centers around the
world, Novell helps customers gain control over their IT operating
environment while reducing cost. More information about Novell can be found
at http://www.novell.com.


About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize
their full potential.

Microsoft, Windows and Active Directory are either registered trademarks or
trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Novell and SUSE are registered trademarks and Software for the Open
Enterprise is a trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other
countries. *Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. The names of
actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of
their respective owners.

Forwarded from the Novell website, press release may be accessed at:

http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1196


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.13.25/515 - Release Date: 11/3/2006