SFD 2009 Procession Inauguration

ILUG Cochin conducted a peaceful procession on 26th September 2009 at Marine Drive, Ernakulam to Celebrate Software Freedom Day 2009. The procession was inaugurated by Manu Zacharia, Consultant to the Cyber Cell of Kochi City Police, at 4.45pm. There were 14 people in the procession. The procession started from Ernakulam Broadway and proceeded towards Ernakulam Boat Jetty. From there the procession moved on to Menaka. We put body posters.  The procession stood there for half an hour.Some people came to us and asked us what was happening. We gave them Free Software handouts and gave awareness about Free Software. Next we walked to the Marine Drive Walkway. There we met lot of people. We stood at “China Net” Bridge for some time. Lot of people came to us and talked to us. A few of us went to the Southern end of the walkway and after some time they came back. After that we moved to “Rainbow Bridge”. It was time to wind up. After taking a few more photos we wound up at 7pm.

We had a great interaction with the public. We can say that the procession was successful. We hope, next year the procession would be much bigger and better with lot of people.

Participants:

Harikrishnan
Manu
Sameer
Kevin
Venkat
Abhilash
Althaf
Azad
Sreekanth
Zaheer
Sanal Kumar
Antony
Sreenadh
Faizal

Photos:

ILUG Cochin has been invited to put a stall in the Cyber Safe 2009, an annual event conducted by the Kochi City Police as part of the Information Security Day. Its a 3 day program starting from 6th August. The exhibition is on 8th Saturday, August 2009.

The theme of the stall will be “Security with Freedom”. There will be an install Fest and installation on demand.  There will be demonstration of Free Software desktop applications as well as demonstration of server implementations like content filtering. Above all an awareness about FOSS will be given to the visitors.

More details about the event are given in the following website.

http://www.informationsecurityday.com/cybersafe/index.html

Your can read a report on ILUG Cochin’s participation in the last year event.

http://www.ilug-cochin.org/activities/exhibition_on_information_security_2008_by_kochi_city_police_details

The Meeting for the month of December 2008 was conducted successfully.

There were 20 people who attended the meeting. The meeting agenda was aimed at Teachers, but the turnout was  less with just 5 teachers attending the meeting. But the mixed audience comprising of Volunteers and Students created a wonderful brainstorming session.

A detailed report on the meeting.

Date: 28-12-2008

Time: 2:30pm – 6.00pm

Venue: Internet Club, IInd Floor, AMI Trust Building,

Broadway Enclave, Broadway, Ernakulam

Attendance : 20

The first session as usual was an Introduction to Free Software, GNU Movement, Open Source Software, Licenses and GNU/Linux.

This session extended a little more than the stipulated time because of a couple of questions and discussion on certain topics, Indeed it was very encouraging to see people getting involved in this preliminary session which usually becomes one sided. One person stressed the point on why licenses exist for software.

Agenda : Free Software in Education

The Agenda was aimed at discussing about the present state of Free Software Education in Schools highlighting the shortcomings and ways to improve the situation. The main topics for the agenda were :

- Free Software Ideals and concept not included in school curriculum.

- Teachers interaction with others in the Free Software community is very

less.

- Free Software not really taught as a platform to bring out the creativity among students.

One Person pointed out the fact although the text books contain an introduction to Free Software the concept is in no way taught explicitly at schools and the syllabus does not lay any importance on it. One important point raised at the discussion was that the mere presence of teaching material is useless and teachers themselves must subscribe to the ideas first and then pass it on to the students. The teachers should themselves take up the task of learning the core concept of Free Software by referring the Web and discussing with others in the Free Software community.

One teacher pointed out that lack of time was an important aspect. The teacher also pointed out that awareness should be created among the teachers regarding the concept of Free Software and requested the others in Free Software Community to extend the awareness program mes to teachers and others involved in the IT Project in Schools.

The important aspect raised was that children should thoroughly understand the concept in order for them to learn Free Software effectively. The Misunderstanding that the term Free in “Free Software ” was “Free of cost” was still large among the teachers because of lack of proper training by government.

There was also the question that whether the teachers are genuinely interested in the concept of free software because many of them consider it as a forced implementation by the government which they have to subside to.

Be it the technology or the core ideals, unless teachers received extensive and core training it would become near to impossible to do justice to the students, because the amount of knowledge that trickles down to the students is very very small.

How can teachers be effectively introduced to this concept.

1. Make teachers feel they are part of the community (many do not know of the community).

2. Community should guide the teachers with necessary  books and material on the Internet.

3. Teachers should change their mindset, that Free Software is not practical. Again the other community members must help them.

4. Teachers are not introduced to Command Line tools. This makes it very difficult for them to understand the core working and also makes them crippled to handle situations

where the problem requires more than a “few clicks”.

Teachers should be given training on troubleshooting common problems in a native manner, thereby giving them a picture of the underlying concept rather than application specific knowledge.

5. Reference material for the curriculum is needed. This can be prepared as open content(Malayalam) by the community, licensed under the GNU FDL.

6. The technology is taught first and then it is explained in the light of the GNU movement. This approach works the best for children and the teaching methodology must be shaped in this manner.

Teachers and the Free Software Community.

As the discussion was moving talking about the Free Software Community and teachers in a different context, one person pointed out that the teachers need to be made felt that they too are part of the community and hence the community would refer to including teachers. Some relevant points from the discussion that followed.

- Teachers should be more involved in community because through them the community can reach schools.

-Teachers should be educated on how to effectively work with other Free Software community members.

- Teachers should take initiative to bring the community to their school.

by creating free software groups in school. It would definitely be a really big challenge to bring together and actively engage the group, but it would bring about a great change in the way Free Software is taught in Schools.

- Children friendly books needed. Cartoons are one effective method of explaining the concept of Freedom to students.

- Syllabus should be updated with effective educational methodology.

- Teachers already have a big burden especially in Kerala, hence teaching itself should not be restricted to professional teachers. Every community member should himself/herself take up roles of teachers thereby creating an environment where teachers themselves can depend on the community for advice and help.

- User Groups which need to be formed in different schools should also include students and teachers,

Creativity in students with Free Software

One Teacher stressed the point that creativity is a relative term and cannot be tagged with a specific activity. Many people proposed that creativity could mean that students need to understand how any application works, thinking out of the books rather than simply using the application for their needs. This led the discussion with teachers proposing that students need to learn programming. Some also proposed that, students still had to go a long way in using several applications that would bring out their creativity like Blender and Gimp.

One person pointed out that Information Technology and Computer Science were two different streams, and two different areas and it was Computer science that needs focus on the curriculum and not Information Science. The group agreed on the fact that the present project implemented had done a great job, such that Free Software has very much helped students to think out the box and help them understand the underlying hardware.

A strong point that was students and teachers should not become consumers such that they lose their ability to think. But of course it was a different question and topic in its sense and the discussion did not move into it specifically.

The conclusion finally was arrived with the point that we need to learn how educational systems in other countries especially for IT is designed and try to use the best of both worlds and create an effective curriculum.

Agenda Conclusion

What Teachers expect from others in the community.

1. Technical training

2. Opportunities in free software

3. Interaction with various Free Software groups, like this meeting.

Action items,

- A Teacher coordinating IT@School programmes proposed to bring the community members into the meeting and provide them space to talk about the Free Software Community concept thereby given some light to teachers. A program me confirmed before January 20 was in the pipeline.

- Teachers would earnestly take up the idea of starting User Groups in Schools. The teachers decided to work out a strategy and implement it before the next meeting.

Tea Break.

The attendees moved on to have Tea and Plum Cake.

Technical Presentation : Content Management Systems for Schools Sreenadh and Binny

The session started with an introduction to Content Management Systems and how it could be useful for schools. eg: How it can be sued to publish content created by students. The session discussed at length the popular CMS WordPress. After explaining the prerequisites for installing WordPress the speaker gave step by step instructions on how to install and configure WordPress on Debian GNU/Linux. After the installation steps the speaker went on to explain how to create posts in WordPress. He also explained how to create static pages. A few points on Configuring and Customizing WordPress was also explained. The session was closed with a few troubleshooting tips for WordPress. The audience grasped the session pretty well, waiting to try it out at their respective schools and offices. It would be great to hear back from them in the next meeting on the various ways they have configured CMS for their respective requirements.

An Introduction to Blogging

A 15 minute micro session was handled by Binny on the prospects of Blogging, for a few among the audience.

Conclusion

The discussion on the Agenda, was concluded with the point that the Free Software Education in Kerala, had created wonders, but it was yet lacking several basic qualities and this needed to be rectified. A few members voted on an “Open Message to Teachers in the Free Software Community” , whereby the teachers will be

- Enlightened about the purpose of Free Software in Schools and

- Reminded of the fact that they are also part of the Free Software Community

- Given ideas on how to to create an environment by teaching Free Software where the students have freedoms for their ideas and thoughts.

Since ILUG Cochin website was planning to move the WordPress the audience were requested to involve themselves to contributing their time to the website.

Few members expressed their interest at seeing a Malayalam version of the website and to this one of the attendees immediately responded with his willingness to take up the task.

The meeting concluded at 6.00pm.

We thank the following teachers who spend their valuable time in sharing their experience with us :

- Geetha Bali

- Cilda Lawrence

- V.K.Nizar

- Bruce Mathew

- Sanal Kumar

Special Thanks to Sanal Kumar Sir for the initiative for conducting such a meeting.

Thanks to Sreenadh for the Technical presentation

Binny for the blogging session.

Shibin and Venkat for this meeting report

Prinson for the Photos

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

And hope the next meeting is bigger and better.

Photos and Details of the meeting will be available on the web site soon.

Attendees:

Cilda Lawrence
M Geetha Bali
Sanal Kumar M.R.
Devaraj K.P.
V.K.Nizar
Sunil Kumar A U
Bruce Mathew
Saxon
Paul Francis
Vimal Joseph
G. Venkata Subrahmanian
Prinson
Shibin K Reeny
Sreenadh
Sameer Mohammed Thahir
Dasil
Binny
Alexandar
Kevin sha
Muhammed Sabir

Files

Technical Presentation: Content Management System Download

Some brief snapshots from the meeting.

Date: 23-11-2008
Time: 2:30pm – 5:30pm
Venue: Internet Club, IInd Floor, AMI Trust Building,
Broadway Enclave, Broadway, Ernakulam
Attendance: 14

The meeting started at 2.30pm. As one of our member Shihaz has passed away, we had a silent prayer before the meeting.

As usual the meeting started with the discussion of Free Software, GNU project, GNU/Linux and Free Software Licenses.

Agenda Discussion

The proposed agenda for the day was “Why ILUG should be Indian Libre User Group?”. The meeting was warm because all of the attendees were expressing their views in this regard. Libre is a Spanish word which means “Freedom”. Some of the attendees told that it would create a confusion of the word “Libre” among new comers.
Some members agreed on the aspect that as the ILUG is aiming is not only on Software freedom but also in non technological area the word “Libre” will be the most apt word. Also the advantage that ILUG’s domain name change could be avoided was also pointed out.

There were suggestions to change ILUG to GNU Linux Users Group, Free Software User Group etc. But since in the Free Software community the group was known as ILUG Cochin,a complete name change would make it difficult to maintain identity.

There was a small tea break after the agenda discussion.

After tea and biscuit everyone moved on to attend the session “Learning PHP”.

Technical presentation: Learning PHP

PHP is one of the most popular server side scripting language. PHP is a recursive acronym which means “PHP Hypertext Preprocessor”.The speaker stressed the importance of learning HTML, CSS etc. before learning PHP. It is necessary to know how to run PHP scripts. For that the developer should have knowledge about Web Server (eg: Apache) and Database Server (eg: MySQL) and how to configure it for running PHP. He started with a simple PHP script which displays “Hello world”.

file.php:

<?php
print “Hello world”;
?>

He ran the script in both command line and in web server.

Command Line:

ilug@localhost:~$ php file.php

Web server:
firefox http://localhost/file.php

He explained how to use variables, arrays, conditional statements, loops etc with examples. Then he talked about functions. Next he gave a brief idea about Object Oriented PHP. He showed how to write a program in object oriented method. A list of built in PHP functions were also explained. Storing data into a MySQL database and fetching it from database was also explained with examples. Some of the PHP frameworks like Zend, Symphony were also explained. He gave a list of popular applications (Mambo, Joomla, etc) developed using PHP. Finally he gave the links of sites for PHP documentation and tutorials.

Concluding session:

The meeting concluded at 5.30. All the attendees were favoring the move of ILUG to Indian Libre User Group. The name change could only be brought only after a conclusion on the mailing list , the attendees suggested a poll as an effective method. And the technical session, “Learning PHP” encouraged some of the attendees to start learning PHP, and to clear some myths about programming scripting languages for many non programmers.

Attendees:

Venkat
Mahesh
Sanal Kumar
Kevin Sha
Lenin
Binny
Sreenadh
Sameer
Plato William
Prinson
Shibin
Ajith
Kurian
Alexander

Thanks to Binny for the presentation. We thank all the attendees for coming and making the meeting a success. We hope next meeting is bigger and better.

The meeting details and photos will be available on the website within a few days.

Of Course it is debatable question as to the presence of stalls
from fertilizers to fisheries at the exhibition, but of
course it was a very great opportunity to explain to them the
core values of this social movement.

Also considering the fact that there were lot of proprietary software
being exhibited in several stalls. We raised our voice against these
stalls, providing our help to replace it with Free Software. Some agreed
while others were reluctant.

The stall was put up from 13th after bringing in the machines the
previous day night. But it wasnt until 14th afternoon that the
stall reached full fledged functioning. Although we had been
given a small space at the conference, we made best use of it, by
displaying very good and relevant information about Free Software
and the GNU movement thereby keeping our stall always filled with people.

We had 4 machines setup to display various applications. One of
them was used to give a demo of the Installation process of the
Debian and Gnewsense DVDs and CDs we were distributing.

Ours was a stall, were anyone could just walkin and try
their hands at any of the applications, this helped people to
get a feel of what Free Software was. Again this is considering
the fact that 90% of all the visitors were either new to Free
Software or had just started using it.

In order to meet the expenses for the stall we had distributed Debian
GNU/Linux DVDs and Gnewsense CDs for a price. While we never forced anyone
to pay the original price, we explicitly told them to pay whatever they
like the minimum being the cost of the DVDs. While for CDs several were
given free of cost to the people who visited, especially students and
those who could not afford.

The first day saw very few people visiting the stall. The second
day turned out to be more crowded with people turning out in
moderate numbers. There were students, parents, freelance developers
and teachers turning up at our stall to understand what exactly
free software meant. The most important achievement was we being
able to clear up several of the misconceptions.

The hard copies of RMS Essays we had put up for a price were also
purchased by a few.

The first day of the conference had a big rush at the exhibition
venue with the delegates pouring in as well.

A couple of us had attended a session by Nagarjuna (gnowledge.org),
FSF India Chairman. After the speech we caught up with him and guided him
to a second venue to devliver his next speech. Nagarjuna came to the
exhibition late and visited our stall.

Although there have been discussions offline about our plans to change
the group Name, nothing has been discussed on the list yet. We made use of
the occasion when Nagarjuna visited us and requested him to correct our
name for us on our banner. He accepted our request and as per our initial
plans he corrected our name on the banner to “Indian Libre User Group”.

He also spend some time with ILUG Cochin Members, SNGIST College students
and MES College students. He also discussed a few points about the
“Business model of Free Software” with Mr Unais Mohammed” from KSEB.

We also had the FSUG Bangalore coming to put up their stall at the
venue. It was also a stall of the Ambedkar Community Computer Center, were
a handicapped boy Mani was selling pictures made by him using Free
Software(GIMP).

We had a great time with the students and faculty of SNGIST College,
Manjaly and MES College of Engg, Kuttipuram sharing their knowledge with
us.

Sunday was a day of action in every way. There were two sessions by
ILUG on the day. “Significance of Free Software on Mobile Platforms”
was handled by Sameer and an Open Forum Discussion on “Significance of
Free Software Groups in Society”.

The first talk focussed on the growing importance of Operating Systems
on Mobile Phones and how Free Software was the apt choice for Mobile
platforms as well. “OpenMoko” was used as a reference.

The Open Forum discussion was focussed more on helping 3 groups to help
form User Groups in their colleges. SNGIST Manjaly, Paravur. KKTM
Kodungaloor, and CUSAT. The dicussion saw several of the participants
pouring out ideas to start groups in these colleges. CUSAT already having
a Free Software group, just needed to get it up an running again.

A group of people belonging to the Free Software Community including
students had also done a protest against the main sponsor Novell, ILUG
Cochin also pledged their support by putting up posters of “BoyCott
Novell” in the stall.Some friends of the members of ILUG Cochin had come
in and handed over posters and volunteered to stick them in the stall. At
the same moment the organizers were rushing towards our stall to remove
the posters as Novell had objected to it. The rough behaviour from the
organizers were a matter of concern, especially the seizure of the cameras
carrying the pictures of the brawl.

The series of events that happened was bad in terms of the organizers
taking an unnecessary tough stand on the matter and not lending an ear to
the actual facts.

We were happy to raise our voice and protest with the
Free Software community opposing the likes of forces like Novell. Indeed
it was good to see a resistance in a programme of such magnitude like the
National Conference. Although there is no doubt to the fact that the
conference did its job, bringing people from all walks of life and ILUG
Cochin did the job telling people the principles behind it, the opposition
against Novell has also increased the significance and importance of the
event thereby bringing about a lot of questions into the community which
would not have been raised otherwise.

The stall was dismantled by 5.00pm at the end of the exhibition and
everyone left for home after an eventful day and 4 days of hard work.

Thanks to Binny and Sreenadh for spending all 4 days in the stall from
day to night.

Thanks to Shibin, Kevin Sha, Anil, IB Manoj for helping with the
functioning of the stall.

Thanks to the students and faculty of SNGIST Manjaly for helping us out
with the stall and taking care of it in our absence.

Thanks to

Nagarjuna G for spending a great time with us.

All the people who visited the stall.

And of course the organizers of the National Conference for having
provided us an opportunity to put up the stall

Unfortunately senior members like Jay Jacob and Balakrishan Sir
were unable to make it to the conference.

The page is not a perfect framework for this activity, but a way to get started. Ideally what we need is a wiki. But once we have people starting to contribute it will be a wiki for sure.

The Resources page is for you to put any bit of information into the page as mentioned below.

• Write an article or howto on any topic which you find there aren’t any resources or if you can make a better one
• Send a mail to the section maintainer
• Once it is approved it is posted
• Documents could be attached to the resource that you are posting. This attachment must be any one of the
  following formats – PDF, TXT, ODT, ODP, PS, HTML, PNG, OGG

Another important intention of the section is to provide Documentation/Howtos in Malayalam, which is one very important aspect.
The prime intention of the site is to provide people with information to
get started with free software, because no Swathanthra software site is complete without a resources corner.

So, why wait? Start emailing your HowTos and Articles to kurianmthayil[at]gmail[dot]com.

It has been a cumulative effort of the millions of supporters and developers throughout the world, India, Kerala and Kochi that has helped boost this concept and help spread the message along with ILUG’s success. ILUG has been able to help thousands of people regain their freedom and choose the right path and this has helped create a chain reaction propagating our message to the nook and corner of Kerala.

ILUG Cochin has been involved in a host of activities from the day it was formed. Some of the major activities which have formed the backbone of its success are described below…

Seminars, Presentations, Demonstrations And Stalls

These are the foundation of ILUGs objective of spreading Free Software Awareness. ILUG has been conducting various seminars, classes and doing demonstrations all throughout Kerala. ILUG has been part of several popular IT events and has been able to effectively make a mark in all the programmes it has participated. More importance has been given to conducting these activities in educational institutions as these are the cradle of information in society. And therefore ILUG has been able to make its mark among the students and academicians as a community information and resource centre.

ILUG has taken great pain to instill the concept of a community into the field of software and education.We believe that we have been able to create some impact in this regard.
Stalls and exhibitions are a new addition to ILUG’s activities. In events that focus on the software industry, ILUG puts forward its ideas and objectives making an impact in the form of a candle in the dark. And indeed it has borne its fruits because of the various massive responses we have got for such events. ILUG hopes to get more chances in the future to spread its message in the form of such related events which can help provide a big stage.

Training

Although awareness forms the building block, providing information is the next most important thing. Surprisingly ILUG has not been behind in imparting quality education to the people of Kerala. ILUG firmly believes that money should don’t hinder the path to gaining quality education. And hence we have conceived a community based training model that provides the students freedom and creates a wonderful learning environment that brings out the best in them. This concept of ours has enabled us to help hundreds of people gain knowledge and help them attain their goals in their careers.

We firmly believe that the people whom we have trained will be a boon to the free software community and the society as a whole, like children learning from their parents these people have learned from us and have moved forward to spread our message.

Solutions and Support

As the final step in the implementation stage ILUG also provides services to people,organizations and institutions for converting to free software and implementing it effectively. While providing the solution we make sure that satisfaction is guaranteed, thereby providing support. Unlike a commercial initiative we make sure that along with the transparent solution we also provide the much needed training to these people. As mentioned above money does not form a criteria when it comes to providing service for those people who are willing to show the world that the concept of freedom has do marvels. Again these people help us in turn by being real examples of our success.