ILUG-Cochin

The meeting of the “Indian Libre User Group” was held on
April 25 2010 successfully.(4th Sunday of Every Month)

Following is a brief snapshot of the meeting.

• Date: 25-04-2010
• Time: 2:15pm – 5.30pm
• Venue: Internet Club, IInd Floor, AMI Trust Building,
  Broadway Enclave, Broadway, Ernakulam
• Attendance : 19

2.15pm

- Customary Introduction
- People shared their experience with Free Software.

2.20pm

Agenda : The Free Software Movemement in the next decade..

- Discussions started by looking back at the growth of Free Software
in the last decade and the reasons behind it.

- Then the discussion moved on the following topics
– What is Free Software??
– 4 Freedoms
– GNU Movement and its history
– Open Source Software
– GNU/Linux and other GNU based Operating Systems
– Licenses – GNU GPL

- One interesting aspect was the attendees sharing their
bits from history on facts relating to computers and technology.

- What are the new challenges and goals.
– Mixing Free Software with proprietary for convenience
– Blobs in Linux Kernel
– Handheld Devices and Mobile Phones that run proprietary
software.
– Digital Restrictions Mangement

- How does the community need to look forward to the coming years.
– More activities
– Local self sustaining groups
– Involve the younger generation

- Changing role of User Groups.
– Significance as support groups is reduced.
– More to involve in decision making
– Contribution to Free Software

4.00pm
Attendees break for tea

4.15pm
Technical Presentation: Power of Imagemagick.

- Session began by Explaining the power and flexibility of command line.
- Imagemagick is referred at http://en.flossmanuals.net/gnulinux,
when they speak about the advantages of command line.
- The first tool introduced was “convert”.
- The power of that tool was visualised before them.
- The two most powerful tools of Image magick were convert and mogrify.
- Other tools introduced were mogrify, identify, montage, display, animate.
- The tool “convert” was used to convert a Malayalam text file to image
with decorative forms.
- The animate tool also attracted the audience very much.
- “Mogrify” is used for converting and resizing a whole directory with a
simple command

5.15 pm
Conclusion
- Thanking all the people who contributed to the conduct of the Meeting.

- The message was that the meetings need to be place where attendees
come to share, learn and teach, not just to listen.

- One member shared his view on the cost involved in migrating to Free
Software.

- Three attendees volunteered to handle technical presentations in the
May 2010 meeting.

Attendees

Sooraj Kenoth
Sreenadh
Thomas V Vettical
S Sreekanth
Sanalkumar M.R.
Faisal P.P
Arshad P.A.
Rohit Viswam
Swathi
Vineeth T.V.
Melwin C.V.
Thomas M Vazhappilli
Saju George
Jay Jacob
Raju Ramdas
Praseed Pai K.J.
Manu Ram
Shalvin P.D.
Sameer Mohamed Thahir

We thank all the attendees for coming and urge them to put their feedback
on the mailing list so we can improve future meetings.

Next meeting : 24/05/2010

Sameer Meetings