Dear FOSSCOMMers, Wish you all a very happy Deepawali. I am sending across the minutes of the FOSSCOMM Meeting on 11th October, 2009 at HBCSE. If anything is missing, those who attended the meeting are requested to add the same. Can someone put this up on the Wiki?
Venky ===== The agenda for the Mumbai meeting was as follows: 1.Common Minimum Program 2.SIGs 3.Structure of teacher training programs and other specific ongoing programs 4.Membership criteria 5.Secretariat Dr. G Nagarjuna, Chairman of Free Software Foundation, India and professor at HBCSE (which graciously hosted the meeting) gave an overview of the reason for the creation of FOSSCOMM as an advocacy group to counter the industry associations push for proprietary standards. The community's achievements in repealing software patents, OOXML, Apple FairPlay DRM and promoting FOSS in Kerala schools was highlighted. He said that it was time to create resource pool for campaigns around FOSS. For example, we can create advocacy materials that can be rolled out across various state governments. Anivar updated the group on the Bangalore meeting. Venky gave an update on the open standards policy of the Department of IT and expressed concern that the approval of this policy is inordinately delayed, and that the pressure from proprietary software vendors may be a factor for this. He said that FOSSCOMM must push DIT for early approval of the policy in its current form, since it is an excellent policy. He also added that Knowledge Commons has filed opposition to a software patent and is working on two more oppositions. Agenda 1: Common Minimum Program At the outset, it was decided that the term “Common Minimum Program” should be dropped since it signifies an agenda created to create a working agenda among parties that may not have much in common. In contrast, FOSSCOMM is comprised of organizations and individuals who have strong common interest in the growth of FOSS in India. Therefore, it was proposed that the term, “Common Minimum Program” would be replaced with the term, “Charter.” It was further proposed that anyone who agrees with the proposed charter can be a member of FOSSCOMM. The Draft Charter for FOSSCOMM is as follows: 1.Developing and supporting the use of FOSS for learning, creating and sharing of knowledge 2.Exchanging and storing digital media and documents in unencumbered open standards. (to be defined, copy editing required) 3.Promoting inclusion through accessibility of applications, media and documents. (localization, translation, assistive technologies) 4.Availability of public funded project results under share and share alike licenses. This includes knowledge, documentation, source code, software, dictionaries, that are created through public funding. (no consensus on whether this should be just software or extended to other forms of knowledge). 5.Ensuring a legislative framework for software freedom and resisting legislations that affect software freedom. 6.Promotion of efforts to build distributed, publicly available archives of free and open source software & knowledge. 7.FOSS drivers and protocols for all marketed hardware, and work towards free/open hardware (like Simputer, OpenMoko) 8.Promoting the creation of distributed information infrastructure (as against centralised information infrastructures). -- Glossory and FOSSCOMM definitions of terms used: Free: The term refers to freedom. Specifically to the four freedoms applicable to all FLOSS software http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. Open Standards: The term refers to standards that meet the following critirea http://selfproject.eu/OSD subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties; without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open Standard themselves; free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by any party or in any business model; managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties; available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties. Agenda 2: Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for promoting FOSS It was suggested that the following SIGs be created to promote FOSS in India. 1.Accessibility 2.Localization 3.Software Patents 4.Open Standards 5.Public Institutions 6.e-Governance 7.Hardware 8.Networks 9.Education 10.Distributed Information Infrastructure 11.Community based FOSS usage Agenda 3: Structure of teacher training programs and other specific ongoing programs Chandita Mukherjee of Comet Media and Nagarjuna gave an overview of the teacher training proposal for Maharashtra Government. Membership criteria Currently, anyone on the FOSSCOMM mailing list is considered a member of FOSSCOMM. Since FOSSCOMM is not a formal entity, if membership is considered necessary, one of the organizations within the network can be authorised to manage the same. Those agreeing with the charter can become members of FOSSCOMM. Secretariat Secretariat can be rotated among organizations within FOSSCOMM on a yearly or a two-yearly basis. Organizations within FOSSCOMM can pool in money to pay salaries, if necessary or one of the org's can volunteer their staff for this. Rotating secretariats can be hosted within NGOs due to tax issues. After the first two years, we can take a call on whether FOSSCOMM needs to set up an organization. This will involve a tremendous amount of paperwork. Meanwhile, full transparency and accountability on part of those handling the responsibilities should be maintained. Attendees 1.Vinod Raghavan 2.Krishna Kant Mane 3.Anusha Kadambala 4.Pavitra Raman 5.Jagjit 6.Mitul 7.Narendra Sisodaya 8.Praveen 9.Anivar Aravind 10.Ramesh Shukla 11.Chandita Mukherjee 12.Vikram Crishna 13.J.T. DeSouza 14.Bhavsar 15.Venkatesh Hariharan 16.K. Subramaniam 17.Prasad 18.Rishikesh 19.Alpesh Gajbe 20.Amol Hatwar 21.Divya 22.Nagarjuna G. _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
