ILug-Cochin.org

Details of the September Meeting

• Date : 23/09/2007
• Time : 2:30 pm
• Location : Jays Internet Club, Broadway, Kochi, Kerala

The Meeting started late because heavy rains prevented the attendees from reaching early. Before the meeting started the Members talked about the group and the free Software community in general. This was for the purpose of a newspaper reporter who had come to participate in the meeting and do a writeup on the same.

One member expressed his view for the purpose of the reporter that the existing FOSS implementation of the Kerala government should not be seen as a political initiative ( although it may/may not be in reality ) but it is actually important concept that needs to be implemented at the educational level in order to facilitate the spread of knowledge in the IT field.

Introduction and Agenda

The Meeting as usual started of with the customary Self Introduction. During this One of the attendees talked about how he started his FOSS journey by implementing it in a school and how he overcame the difficulties . One of the members commented that the Agenda Needed to have been GNU GPL v3.

The Moderator started the talk on Agenda.by briefing about the actual purpose of the GPL and how it relates with Free Software. How it helps protect the Freedoms of Free Software users, through a legal binding knows as the license. How the GPL v2 was designed for a time when there was no Linux Kernel or a totally Free OS and how things were totally different back then. How a new version of the GPL was necessary now.The main imortant aspect of the GPL v2 was the copyleft. The concept of Copyleft was briefly explained.

• Use of term propagate and convey instead of copy and distribute for the purpose of internationalization.
• Inclusion of two more licenses as compatible with gpl- apache and eclipse license.
• Clauses opposing tivoization of free software. Hence software used with tivo cannot be gpl v3 compatible.

  One member raised a question about nokia and motorola hardware platforms using linux and whether the phenomena can be described as tivoization.

• The patent clause in the gplv3 that reflected the microsoft novell deal. protecting users in such situations.( successor to the liberty and death clause of gplv2.).
• Clauses against treacherous computing.
• Clause stating source code will only be provided on network.
• Clause relating to termination of license.
• Protecting users freedoms from anticircumvention laws like DRM and EUCD.

One of the members, highlighted the fact how certain drmd dvds were not playable with free software multimedia players and how gplv3 tackles software that deals with drm

To conclude the moderator asked the other members two questions relating to the agenda:

Should the linux kernel adopt gplv3?

The members discussed on the topic although no conclusion was reached.

One member commented that the developers are given more responsibility in the gplv3 in order to protect the freedoms of users.

Another member commented that the software should not control the platform on which it works.

Will the gplv3 still help make better quality software?

A few members commented that irrespective of the gpl version the quality standards will remain uncompromised.

One member spoke out on how the gplv3 will become a long term protection for free software developers, especially in terms of patents.

Presentation

After the conclusion of the agenda discussion, a video showing RMS talking at the launch of the gplv3 was screened.

After the tea session there was a class on "basics of python" by Balakrishnan Sir.

The class started of with the History of Python. The class covered the following aspects of the language:

• Builtin Data types
• Numbers
• Strings
• Sequence lists
• Tuples
• Dictionary
• String Manipulation

The concepts were demonstrated using a basic program. Sir also showed us how we could access the python help from the python shell or by running pydoc and using a web browser.

The class was received well by everyone even though most of the attendees were not having a programming background.

Concluding Session

In the concluding session, as usual members were asked for their valuable suggestions and feedback, with regard to the GPL v3 discussion one member suggested we have a brief follow up to the same in the next meeting apart from the Agenda.

Also the members were asked to try out some programs in python, and ask doubts on the ML or in the next meeting.

The members were also asked to volunteer for conducting the demo/presentation in the next week. Reju Rajeev came forward and volunteered to do a demo of a GNU/Solaris installation.

The meeting concluded by 5:45 pm.

Attendees

• Jay Jacob
• M Balakrishna Pillai
• G Venkata Subramanian
• Binny V A
• Reju Rajeev
• Sameer Mohamed Thahir
• Tharun Varghese
• ArunKumar
• Muhammed Sabir
• Vineeth TV
• Sreenadh H
• Sumeran

References

• GPL 3 License
• RMS Speech Transcript
• Difference between GPL 2 and GPL 3

• Python Documentation

Meeting Photos