A quasi-formal meeting of the FSF Working Group was held on Tuesday, 29th January at Trivandrum. The following participated: G. Nagarjuna, E. Krishnan, M. Arun and KG Kumar.
The meeting began at 6.15 pm and the following points were discussed: 1. The WG and the FSF Board need to seriously consider the issue of expanding themselves in terms of inducting new "members" so as to spread the Free Software movement into other parts of the country and work out ways by which existing users of Free Software and GNU/Linux (including the plethora of LUGs around the country) can come into the fold. 2. Efforts are on to register the "Free Software Foundation of India" as a non-profit organisation in Kochi and Chennai, for which a Kochi-based lawyer has been engaged. While preliminary work has been done, some official objections to the name of the organisation is now being dealt with. The registration process is expected to be over in a month or so. 3. The FSF website needs to be revamped, made more dynamic and continuously updated. Currently, www.fsf.org.in is the single most important medium of communication for FSF India and represents the official "face" of the organisation. It thus requires constant and continual monitoring. It was also felt that the site could do with a new design that, while incorporating elements of www.gnu.org , could reflect an Indian identity. This would include designing a new and, again, distinctly Indian, logo for FSF India, as well as flyers, brochures and mailers. Ideally, some of this should be done in time for RMS' proposed visit to Pune in March. In terms of content, the site needs to have well-written articles and an exhaustive FAQ pertaining to Indian situations, problems and solutions using Free Software. Specifically, an article on the FS business model, citing Indian examples of successes and failures, should be prepared to go up on the site as well as in Freedom Matters, the proposed FSF India newsletter. KG Kumar was assigned the task of following up on this. The FSF India website also needs to announce live ongoing projects by FSF India members and the FS community in general, and provide a forum for discussion of these. A directory of available FS software should go up on the site, with links to ftp sites. FSF India should identify experts in various academic and professional domains (engineering, medicine, mathematics, social sciences, etc.) and determine the predominant proprietary software being used in their area of expertise (e.g. SPSS, AutoCAD, etc), and then list the FS alternative/equivalent. This listing can also be put up on the site as a table for quick reference. By default, Arun has been the webmaster for www.fsf.org.in and he will co-ordinate to ensure these improvements are effected. 4. The FSF India mailing list needs to be rejuvenated as it now seems to lack the vigour and vitality of its early days. 5. FSF India should make an effort to hook up with the network of Peoples Science Movements around the country and show how FS has a role in development and planning. Specifically, a workshop for IT-savvy activists and organisers from NGOs like the KSSP could be organised by FSF India to expose them to the strengths and benefits of FS. 6. A core team comprising Arun, Karunakaran and Vikram (of IIT Bombay) will deal with the Indianisation project. As a start, Nagarjuna will convene a meeting with Karunakaran, Vikram and Prakash Advani in Bombay in the first week of February, after which Arun will co-ordinate to take the project forward. 7. FSF India should think of preparing customised GNU/Linux distributions on CDs for specific users, say, students, engineers, scientists, statisticians, etc. 8. FSF India should put up a proposal for the preparation of a Live Debian CD that can be used for demos that can be run off a machine loaded with proprietary software, using the machine's existing RAM, without having to install anything on the hard drive. 9. FSF India should launch a project to come up with a FS equivalent to Macromedia Flash. Arun informed the meeting that the technical specs are already available, and a project using the Ming library has come up with a solution to render .swf files using GPLd software. Arun will post details to the list. The meeting ended at 8 pm.
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