‘I am ashamed to use proprietary software’

‘I am ashamed to use proprietary software’ Deepa Kurup

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Krishnakant Mane has tried to bring about awareness about the problems faced by people with disabilities using propriety software

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Krishnakant Mane BANGALORE: Krishnakant Mane says that the freedom and flexibility provided by open source software enables him to work with a variety of interfaces and is integral to his work at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

This 27-year-old is visually disabled. He works as a research fellow at TIFR and is adviser to several State Governments. He has been consultant to several companies where he has tried to bring about awareness about the problem faced by people with disabilities using propriety software because it cannot be improvised to suit their needs. “Most people take things for granted and are not aware of our problems,” he says. Like most young men his age, he is an Internet addict, blogs extensively and also helps people on online support groups. Besides working on software solutions for the blind, he is also working on tactile display for the hearing and speech disabled. “I am ashamed to use proprietary software that dictates what I can or should be able to access. A visually disabled person is left at the mercy of the owners and has to wait for them to recode the software to suit his needs,” he says.

“Why should I let the software limit what my magnifier or reader can process?” It is this lack of flexibility that he opposes. Not being employed, a visually impaired person cannot afford to pay huge sums of money, every time something needs to be modified, he argues, speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of the ongoing Open Source India Week programme.

It is with great indignation that he says that the Government has not done enough to provide computer education to the visually impaired. He completed his education in a regular school and was forced to take up arts due to lack of supporting infrastructure.

“I work for education,” he says with a great degree of optimism. He was on a NASSCOM board which has now committed to including open source software education in the postgraduate curriculum. “It is only a promise and I know that NASSCOM has been a strong supporter of Microsoft; but I still have not lost faith in them. The Knowledge Labs in TIFR is doing hardcore work on Free software and education, but I think the key is to make it a mandatory part of all elementary computer education.

He rejects all proprietor software and says that most people misinterpret it to be a war against Microsoft. He can barely hide his irritation when told that this reporter uses proprietor software. “Nothing in this world comes free; which is why the cost of Free or open source software lies in the willingness to share,” he says. It frustrates him that people advocate open source software for all the wrong reasons; they should understand the value of the freedom and flexibility it offers, he explains.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/02/12/stories/2008021261010400.htm

Google announces first open source contest:Contest aimed toward students to participate and write code, documentation, research and quality assurance

Google announces first open source contest

 

Contest aimed toward students to participate and write code, documentation, research and quality assurance

 

Friday, November 30, 2007

 

BANGALORE, INDIA: Who doesn’t love a contest? We certainly do. Google believes strongly in students having opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math, and today at the Open Source Developers’ Conference in Brisbane, Australia, Google has announced the highly open participation contest to secondary school and high school students in open source software development.

For the past three years college students have participated in Google Summer of Code with great results: hundreds of college students have been introduced to open source software, thousands of people across the globe have begun development together, and millions of lines of open code have been produced. As we thought about what we could do to help encourage students before university and build a pipeline of future talent, we developed the Google Highly Open Participation Contest — the first contest from our open source team exclusively for secondary school and high school students.

Students can visit to write code and documentation, prepare training materials, conduct user-experience research, and win prizes — t-shirts, cash, or, for ten grand-prize winners, a chance to visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, Ca.

Google will work with ten open source organizations — Apache Software Foundation, Drupal, GNOME, Joomla!, MoinMoin, Mono, Moodle, Plone, Python Software Foundation, and SilverStripe CMS — for this pilot effort, each of which will provide a list of tasks to be completed by the student participants.

Tasks typically fall into the following categories: code, documentation, research, outreach, quality assurance, training, translation, and user interface, so there should be something for everyone, and parents and educators can help by sharing this opportunity with their children and students.

The contest is open to students age 13 and older who have not yet begun university studies, and contestants will be able to claim tasks until 12:00 a.m. Pacific Time on January 22, 2008.

Source: WebWire

http://www.ciol.com/content/301107101885.aspx

 

 

 

Create virtual servers using open source virtualization

Create virtual servers using open source virtualization

 

Using OpenVZ project’s software users can effectively create virtual servers to improve utilization of the physical server

 

Friday, November 30, 2007

 

 

HERNDON, USA: The OpenVZ project announced that using its open source virtualization software in combination with virtual machine open source Xen software, users can effectively create many virtual servers to improve utilization of the physical server.

The software enables users to divide one physical server into virtual servers using Xen software, and then creating OpenVZ virtual environments inside those virtual machines.

The software download is based on the RHEL5 Xen kernel with builds available for both x86 and x86_64 platforms. The software can run on the Xen hypervisor in both Dom0 and DomU.

“We wanted to show people what is possible with the low overhead of our operating system (OS) virtualization open source OpenVZ software,” said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. “This is a marriage of complementary technologies that blends the flexibility of virtual machine technology, which is capable of running different operating systems, along with the efficiency of OS virtualization, which can run several times more virtual servers as compared with other virtualization technologies.”

“This combination of open source virtualization technologies provides users with flexibility of running one or more guest operating systems, while also realizing high performance through low overhead,” said Tom Schwaller, an expert in Linux, open source and virtualization technologies based in Germany. “We’re seeing virtualization technologies maturing as we really understand what is possible.”

The OpenVZ project freely distributes and offers support to its users, promoting operating system virtualization through a collaborative, community effort. Supported by SWsoft, the OpenVZ project serves the needs of the community developers, testers, documentation experts, and other technology enthusiasts who wish to participate in and accelerate the technology development process. OpenVZ is open source software that is used as the basis for the SWsoft Virtuozzo virtualization software product.

Since going into full production late in 2005, the OpenVZ project has been very active with the user community with more than 20,000 message posts on its support Forum. The OpenVZ website attracts tens of thousands of visitors each month as more businesses and individuals explore and contribute to the leading open source operating system virtualization project.

About OpenVZ

OpenVZ is operating system server virtualization software technology, built on Linux, which creates multiple isolated, secure virtual environments on a single physical server – enabling greater server utilization and superior availability with fewer performance penalties. The virtual servers ensure that applications do not conflict and can be re-booted independently.

With the power of today’s processors, hardware is often under utilized. With virtualization technology, the server can effectively be split into many small ones, each running its tasks so that the whole server is utilized more efficiently.

OpenVZ software can be used to help consolidate servers and increase server utilization rates, or for creating “sandboxes” for test and development, or when sharing resources so that every user can have root access while being kept isolated from each other.

The OpenVZ software comes with user tools that help automate management of virtual servers. With its unique architecture that uses a single operating system instance, the virtual servers perform and execute like independent servers with their own memory, configuration files, users and applications.

Each can be re-booted independently. Using template-based application deployment provides a simple way to get new virtual servers up and running in minutes and OpenVZ can run several times more virtual servers per CPU than other virtualization technologies.

http://www.ciol.com/content/301107101882.aspx

 

Create virtual servers using open source virtualization

Create virtual servers using open source virtualization

 

Using OpenVZ project’s software users can effectively create virtual servers to improve utilization of the physical server

 

Friday, November 30, 2007

 

HERNDON, USA: The OpenVZ project announced that using its open source virtualization software in combination with virtual machine open source Xen software, users can effectively create many virtual servers to improve utilization of the physical server.

The software enables users to divide one physical server into virtual servers using Xen software, and then creating OpenVZ virtual environments inside those virtual machines.

The software download is based on the RHEL5 Xen kernel with builds available for both x86 and x86_64 platforms. The software can run on the Xen hypervisor in both Dom0 and DomU.

“We wanted to show people what is possible with the low overhead of our operating system (OS) virtualization open source OpenVZ software,” said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. “This is a marriage of complementary technologies that blends the flexibility of virtual machine technology, which is capable of running different operating systems, along with the efficiency of OS virtualization, which can run several times more virtual servers as compared with other virtualization technologies.”

“This combination of open source virtualization technologies provides users with flexibility of running one or more guest operating systems, while also realizing high performance through low overhead,” said Tom Schwaller, an expert in Linux, open source and virtualization technologies based in Germany. “We’re seeing virtualization technologies maturing as we really understand what is possible.”

The OpenVZ project freely distributes and offers support to its users, promoting operating system virtualization through a collaborative, community effort. Supported by SWsoft, the OpenVZ project serves the needs of the community developers, testers, documentation experts, and other technology enthusiasts who wish to participate in and accelerate the technology development process. OpenVZ is open source software that is used as the basis for the SWsoft Virtuozzo virtualization software product.

Since going into full production late in 2005, the OpenVZ project has been very active with the user community with more than 20,000 message posts on its support Forum. The OpenVZ website attracts tens of thousands of visitors each month as more businesses and individuals explore and contribute to the leading open source operating system virtualization project.

 

About OpenVZ

OpenVZ is operating system server virtualization software technology, built on Linux, which creates multiple isolated, secure virtual environments on a single physical server – enabling greater server utilization and superior availability with fewer performance penalties. The virtual servers ensure that applications do not conflict and can be re-booted independently.

With the power of today’s processors, hardware is often under utilized. With virtualization technology, the server can effectively be split into many small ones, each running its tasks so that the whole server is utilized more efficiently.

OpenVZ software can be used to help consolidate servers and increase server utilization rates, or for creating “sandboxes” for test and development, or when sharing resources so that every user can have root access while being kept isolated from each other.

The OpenVZ software comes with user tools that help automate management of virtual servers. With its unique architecture that uses a single operating system instance, the virtual servers perform and execute like independent servers with their own memory, configuration files, users and applications.

Each can be re-booted independently. Using template-based application deployment provides a simple way to get new virtual servers up and running in minutes and OpenVZ can run several times more virtual servers per CPU than other virtualization technologies.

  http://www.ciol.com/content/301107101882.aspx

 

Novell ships SUSE Linux enterprise real time 10 Novell’s only open source, real-time operating system available in the market today

Novell ships SUSE Linux enterprise real time 10

Novell’s only open source, real-time operating system available in the market today

Thursday, November 29, 2007

 

WALTHAM, USA: Provider of infrastructure software for the Open Enterprise, Novell has announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10, the latest version of Novell’s enterprise-class, open source real-time operating system for running high-performance, time-sensitive, mission-critical applications.

With SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10, financial organizations can respond more rapidly to changing markets and new information, get greater application reliability and predictability, and identify and eliminate performance bottlenecks. This will allow them to increase revenue opportunities and improve service to their customers, even while reducing computing infrastructure costs.

“In order to win in today’s increasingly competitive global markets, companies need to be able to respond quickly while delivering superior products and services” said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions for Novell.

With Novell’s real-time technology, customers can segment portions of their processors for high-priority mission-critical workloads, as well as ensure that other system processes and tasks do not interrupt them. That means these workloads deliver predictable performance in time-critical environments.

Supported by Novell, SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 is the only open source, enterprise-class real-time operating system available in the market today

Enhancements to SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 include the latest enterprise-hardened open source technologies that reduce system latency or delay and improve predictability, such as CPU shielding, priority inheritance, sleeping spinlocks, interrupt threads, high-resolution timers and the latest OpenFabrics Enterprise Distribution for commodity high-speed interconnects, OFED 1.2.5.

http://www.ciol.com/content/291107101866.aspx

List of Open Source Office Software

Office Software

• OpenOffice.org
  • Multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.
• GNOME Office
  • Empowers you with three “best in class” productivity applications available as GNU Free Software.
• KOffice
  • An integrated office suite for KDE. KOffice features a full set of applications which work together seamlessly to provide the best user experience possible.
• OOExtras
  • Extras for OpenOffice.org
• OOo Label Templates
  • Free blank ODF label templates for Openoffice.org
• AbiWord
  • Free word processing program similar to Microsoft® Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks.
• PDFCreator
  • Free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application.
• qvPDF
  • Free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application.
• pdftk   Command-line tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents.

• pdfsam
  • PDF Split and Merge.
• Xpdf
  • Open source viewer for Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The Xpdf project also includes a PDF text extractor, PDF-to-PostScript converter, and various other utilities.
• PDFTOHTML
  • Utility which converts PDF files into HTML and XML formats.
• LyX
  • A document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents, not their appearance. It is released under a Free Software / Open Source license.

• WinDjView
  • Fast, compact and powerful DjVu viewer for Windows with continuous scrolling and advanced printing options. It uses the free DjVuLibre library to decode DjVu documents. DjVu is a web-centric format and software platform for distributing documents and images.
• ganttproject
  • Tool for creating a project schedule by means of Gantt chart and resource load chart.
• Open Workbench
  • Open source desktop application that provides robust project scheduling and management functionality. Already the scheduling standard for more than 100,000 project managers worldwide, Open Workbench is a free and powerful alternative to Microsoft Project.
• Scribus
  • Open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout.

• gnumeric
  • Spreadsheet part of the GNOME desktop environment: a project to create a free, user friendly desktop environment.
• PowerTalk
  • Free program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows.
• MathCast
  • An equation editor, an application that allows you to input mathematical equations. These equations can be used in written documents, webpages, and even databases.