FN had posted about a regulation that makes MSFT OS mandatory for cybercafes, there is a blog post about the same from Venkatesh Hariharan. The details about the license in question can be found here or in short “Microsoft Open License is a Volume Licensing program for small to mid-sized organizations that have fewer than 250 desktop PCs. The program provides a simple, flexible, and cost-effective way to buy the latest Microsoft technology to meet your organization’s needs and procurement procedures.” (italics are mine).

What would be good-to-have at this stage is an alternative form of the regulation that has been proposed with the words chosen carefully enough to be pragmatic and capable of standing the test of law. The underlying principle is that the cybercafes require to have Operating Systems that are legal – getting the message across that the Operating Systems under GPL do meet the requirement is an important task. Thus one requires a page that can provide an alternative version of this page.
The associated task would be to setup at some in house software laboratory the UseCases for a cybercafe and attempt to match the same with available FOSS tools. Kushal has some pointers on that.

On Friday I decided to change the subscription address to a lot (read around 70) of my mailing lists and realised that sadly for me Thunderbird doesn’t rock. As on date it does not allow the migration of filters/Message Rules across accounts that are configured in Thunderbird. The option in my case has been to hand create the filters for all those lists again. A major pain. There’s a bugreport though thankfully. Additionally, it might be a good idea for mail clients to have a MoveFolderTo option available on right-clicking a selected folder. The current way to do that in Thunderbird is a drag-n-drop which merely copies the desired folder to the target location. That’s bad too.

It happened. Read up all about it. And I kind of like the new look of the site.

During the last meeting of the Membership Committee, we had Ben Adida talking about using cryptographic methods for the elections. Mind you, the current method of holding the elections sure needs an overhaul and as proposed in the minutes, Ben has written out his proposal to the Foundation List. He’s also put up a wiki. So make sure that you put in your feedback. The next stage of course is the implementation of the theory.

আনন্দবাজার পত্রিকা uses its own fonts with custom look up tables and even with Padma this is what one ends up with. Sad.

Here’s the post subsequent to the long discussions on #linux-india. That someone referred in the post is actually the same person who wrote this post. Now, to move forward on this thread I thought it was a good idea to clear up some misunderstandings (the caveat in my earlier post was part of the same reason). A rockstar is someone who fits the following bill: “The girls want to be with him, the guys want to be like him” – the definition was provided by t3rmin4t0r when we began discussing the theory.

There is a good reason why I am opposed to the “We need rockstars” line of argument. The usage of the word as a metaphor tends to load too much unnecessary context into it. The preloading thus morphs the true form of the word into something that’s undesirable unwarranted. However, as the discussion progressed, I realised that the “rockstar” was more of an allegory than a metaphor and thus was a rhetorical flourish. A metaphorical usage of the word normally tends to propagate the urban legend of “the last rockstar standing” who delivers, commands and leads a band of followers to the chosen paradise. The trouble I have with that notion is that the concept of “community” that replaces the band of followers is not something that is all prevalent in the country right now. In current times what also goes missing is the concept of “commons” or the space for “protest”. Protest in the truest sense of the word does not mean a stance against current, but it leads to a position of an alternative theory. The current social mesh does not bear witness to too much of alternative theories.

Does it have something to do with the system of education ? I tend to believe so. The system puts higher stress on individual excellence and this translates into reduced sharing or collaboration. The “harvesting” of knowledge is not for common good but for individual gain. Given that consumption and creation of FOSS (code and non-code FOSS) is yet to see more rural penetration it does provide an insight into what an icon like rockstar might do. Icons, figurines, deities or titular heads are good to hold on to as yardsticks. The idea that a rockstar might encourage enough enthusiasm to attract a merry band is the precise nightmare. A rockstar is an icon and save a breaking down of the icon, what will emerge is monoculture or more or the same – an emulation. Emulations are a constricting feature – the emulatee (if there is such a word) tends to constantly question the peer group perception and thus curb creativity.

What would be of more use is figuring out what needs to be done to get more FOSS (code and non-code) to a larger base of people. The greater the number of users consumers, the fairer would be the chance of getting more contributors. Do we need evangelists right now ? No, but we need mentors and they would only come out of the folks contributing. Some would make good mentors, some not so good, but we need them all the same. We don’t need rockstars – they tend to complicate things.