india May 2013

india@lists.fedoraproject.org

9 participants
14 discussions

[X]Poster Competition Draft etc
by A. Mani 30 May '13

30 May '13

This is part of the extended Cultural Freedom Day event announced earlier Other parts will follow soon. _________________________________ We need 1. Two more judges on panel (was not discussed at IRC meet) (with good command over some related tools) 2. a gallery module for website (wfs-india.org ) 3. I believe I should be able to set up the form myself Also please add/discuss most the draft announces below (do not cross post... I will manage all that) ________________________________ Poster Competition on Women's and LGBT Issues WFS India in collaboration with Glug-Cal, Fedora and Mozilla announces a poster competition on women's, LGBT and gender-related issues in India using free software tools as part of the extended Cultural Freedom Day clebrations. Background India is a backward country in which majority of the people are illiterate and most of those who are literate have no sex education. Most of the people are brain-washed by the decadent patriarchy that has merged itself with cultural, religious and business practices at the cost of basic human values. Even the country's laws are sub-human in nature. It is no wonder that the human rights abuses based on gender and sex is the norm. This poster competition is for highlightng various facets of the problem and educate people on possible egalitarian solutions. Obviously, we are also aiming at boosting free software adoption through the process. Who Can Participate? Anybody can participate*. * We will not be able to send prizes to regions falling outside the country, but anyway do participate. What Are We Expecting? We expect great posters that has one or more of the following attributes: 1. Convey a positive message. 2. Highlight social evils. 3. Demand reforms in a powerful way. 4. Rectify common misconceptions about gender and sex. 5. Convey deeper aspects of the development of social evils. 6. Says something on the participation of women in the free software movement. Important Dates: Submission Begins: 3rd June'2013 Last Date of Submission: 14th June'2013 Announcement of Results: 15th June'2013 Gallery Update: By 24th June'2013 How To Participate? 1. Register for event at wfs-india.org 2. Submit your entry as per the rules below at wfs-india.org 3. Check your confirmation mail Checklist: Competition Rules: 1. A registered participant can submit any number of entries. 2. All entries must be done using free software tools like GIMP, TeXLive, ImageMagick, TuX Paint, Inkscape, ScanTailor, Scribus, Synfig Studio, Asymptote and Open Office Draw. 3. All entries must include an outline of the main steps involved and some proof of the use of tools. A description (in less than 200 words) of the intended message of the art work should also be included. 4. Entries will be licensed under CCSA-3.0. 5. Photos and other art works used in the poster should be suitably acknowledged. 6. Entries should be no smaller than A4 size and no larger than A2 size. 7. No plagiarism. Submitted posters should not be copies of other people's work and should involve substantial creativity of the artists. 8. Only entries that pass minimal sanity check will be displayed in our e-gallery. 9. Decision of the judges will be final and binding. Panel of Judges: A. Mani Two others Competition Coordination: A. Mani Prizes: Flash drives with Fedora for top three entries. 2 consolation prizes. Certificates of Merit How to Participate with no previous exposure to digital art/posters in any form? The easiest way would be to start with Tux-Paint. _______________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS http://www.logicamani.in

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Re: [fedora-india] [Ambassadors] Fedora-Women Plans
by A. Mani 27 May '13

27 May '13

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 1:03 AM, María Leandro <tatica(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote: > > To be honest, I don't have a huge believe into "woman groups" since that > starts setting the line in the first place. It's true that a safe > environment would be the best, however; is sounds a bit odd to say "hey, I > want equality for everyone... but you must treat me well because I'ma girl". It will definitely sound odd to strongly motivated and independent women from urban cosmopolitan milieus and that includes me. We need to look at the larger picture ... not ourselves. > > My experience might be a bit particular and even if we all know that there > are fewer girls into IT, is not only because the environment, is because > there are few, period. Just to place the example. > > If you go to an IT class at any college/university; you might see that > classroom is about 70% male and 30% female (depending on the specialty the > number might vary); so, why do we want more female participation if it's > obvious that numbers have never been equal? > Why did it become like that in the first place? If you are interested in developing human resources, then you need to look at sociological models ... not the ones big corporates use. We are also not targeting only IT people. People from any kind of background have the potential to do well in free s/w. > We can consider that the part that nobody likes to accept. Now; it's also > true that environment (not everywhere but mostly) is not female-friendly > just because that, from this small percent; some girls only come to feel > desired and like goddess. The even smaller part that DO want to bring some > change finds themselves hiding behind neutral nicknames, fighting the ocean > of comments or just gets tired and helps other ways. Truth is that, if we > want equality, we must fight to get it and even if the woman groups are an > awesome place to share experiences and motivate participation, but that's > it. > > I guess a lot of people expect that support groups do something for them and > forget that change is in our bare hands. What we can do with a women group > at Fedora, I srsly don't know; but if each group that feels despised (aka; > religion, ethnics, etc etc) starts creating a support group, then there will > be 100 small groups not focusing into the large group that can actually make > the change. Affected people know nothing about support groups, their potential or possible solutions. They lead half-dead lives in darkness. It is due to systematic brainwashing. Even relatively more educated women do not manage to escape in India. For example you will find women with post graduate qualifications wasting enormous amounts of their time in hell holes as house-wives. We follow a community-based developmental model and for us the more number of contributors and developers we have the merrier it will be. If you do not know how people of a particular part of a community are going to contribute, then how can you expect those people to contribute? The world is not so rosy. It also makes sense to work together with other kinds of support groups. Groups with focus are better suited for development. The quality of a distro will improve immensely because of that. It is a fact that Fedora lacks many packages because of lack of focus for various communities (Even I need to compile a large number of packages from source). Corporate developmental models will end up making Fedora a nursery for corporate robot development and so we should care. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS http://www.logicamani.in

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Re: [fedora-india] [Ambassadors] Fedora-Women Plans
by A. Mani 27 May '13

27 May '13

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 9:51 PM, Neville A. Cross <neville(a)taygon.com> wrote: > I have been pursuing this issue for a about 4 or 5 years now with little > success. I have learned a couple of things. First, it is hard to reach > critical mass. The skills of some women does not match the needs of > other. The second is that some how what the community need is a safe > environment free of trolls. Rude people impact hard on beginners, as > some males come back for a second round, we turn blind to the fact that > we are dismissing a lot of beginners. They may have some technical > skills, but are facing the challenge of some unspoken group rules that > come from old dynamics, that are fading but not eradicated. Trolling > include some male flirtation, from invading personal space to harassment > (hope not). > We started by having a code of conduct that in its first point address > our aim for this safe environment gender/new-comers aware. We have tried > to the maximum to foster that in our local fedora group but sadly, it is > hard to keep trolls out. Some issues raised in our local mailing list by > our own fedora enthusiast been rude. Some times it is from people part > of the free software general community attending our events. It is > difficult but most fedora official members (as in FAS account holders) > are committed to this. > > Nevertheless, in Nicaragua, we have failed before. We are trying the > idea of promoting a monthly women gathering about free software. > Initially with males only for invitation, hope that later more open > door, but always with power of banning people. I am sponsoring the place > and stepping aside from participating. I have contacted some TIC groups > with female focus. I hope that if this work, we can later get > sponsorship from some NGO that we are using now to spread the word about > this group. > > This is a difficult task for Fedora Community, as this is a issue that > have to be dealt locally, and some times local fedora groups are not big > and resourceful enough to do some sort of what we are planning in > Nicaragua. I want my comments give hope and ideas to built a better > fedora community. I am really needing more insight, so please any advise > is more that welcome. Yes, the local aspect is very important. In India, we have had many college/university level events with women participation, but very few of the participants actually go up to the level of contributing or into advocacy. The issues in India are very different from that of Nicaragua. Here we have huge economic inequality and deprivation. Sex education is not part of the education system and only a small percentage of the people are literate. Our target group in India can only include the lower middle class and above. The patriarchy in conjunction with evil religions and caste does not permit most women to think or act freely. Since it is a systematic brainwashing process, even progressive forces cannot or do not work against it for various reasons. Discrimination is the norm. Apart from the Left, none of the political parties have progressive views and the Left does have electoral compulsions. We have organizations that work towards "free software for poorer classes" and taking free s/w to villages like FSMWB, FSMK and FSMI. In the state of Kerala, they have ~100% literacy and free s/w adoption has happened to some extent (the present state Govt is not so friendly towards free s/w ) due to low level work of free s/w communities, but they still have a very patriarchal scheme of social order. Basically it is necessary to combine feminism(s) with Fedora. This is difficult because of Fedora policies/goals. It is necessary to select better active forms of feminism and work with related groups. Otherwise pushing ahead with "community participation" and "participation of women" without any real thrust on the the basic issues preventing participation will not work. Ubuntu on the other hand might venture into evil things like religion: ubuntu-christian edition etc. They do not have a feminism(s) or woman edition. So I am specifying it in depth. A few preliminary posts on that are here: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups#!topic/wfs-india/CDQjeYvC… Many of the so-called Indian feminist groups are themselves backward, stuck in patriarchal scheme of things, hetero-normative perspectives and other anti-progressive views. So one needs to be cautious about the type of people to work with. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS http://www.logicamani.in

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Hi India, Get Free Mobile Recharge!
by UNICEF 23 May '13

23 May '13

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Fedora's participation in Open Weekends, Chennai
by Jai Pradeesh 22 May '13

22 May '13

Hello all I'm glad to inform that a slot is alloted for Fedora at Open Weekends [1] happening 25th May 2013. It is a huge event planned by OSS communities at Chennai and will target members from the local Linux Community and recruiting contributors into Fedora. I had started with the slides for the session and also planning for a Fedora Installation Booth over there. It would be great if any of you send me some slides on Fedora 19. Your ideas and suggestion are also welcome. Metrics: #1 Spreading awareness on Fedora and its benefits. #2 Recruiting contributors into Fedora according to their specific area of interest. [1] https://www.facebook.com/events/152064334973643/ -- Regards, Jai http://fossconnect.wordpress.com

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Fedora-Women Plans
by A. Mani 20 May '13

20 May '13

On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 8:58 AM, nitesh narayan lal <niteshnarayan(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote: > But do you have any specific plans such as conducting events etc for > making Fedora-women active (its a good idea). > Then you can certainly share it here, We will try to help you as much > as possible . I will see what can be done. 0. I am seeing a lack of direction (apart from inactivity) at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Women 1. The goal of improving collaboration within Fedora is definitely sensible, but we need to look beyond. 2. Initiatives within Fedora : A FAS group will be useful. 3. If we need to reach out/ expand free s/w network then apart from s/w related aspects we need to look at other avenues. 4. Different regions and cultures of oppression exist. We need to address them differently. 5. A Fedora distribution (or any spin) is not customized for any group of people: by way of themes, information (that go beyond documentation). Can we have spins that address a. rights including things like the s/w in http://www.huridocs.org/research-development/ and related customization. b. lack of basic knowledge among people that lead to social evils. c. Other kinds of basic knowledge that can empower people. This is going beyond the education spins. and free software that provide the same (instead of dumping entire Wikipedia / links on people). (that is some work) 6. There are innumerable rights to be fought for and rights are a way of reaching out to people. Events will keep happening ... but there should be different kinds of events. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS http://www.logicamani.in

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Localization Hackathon: WFS
by A. Mani 19 May '13

19 May '13

Late News: We have postponed Most of the Cultural Freedom Day Sessions of the Indian team to 15th June. But anyway we have a localization hackathon scheduled for today (20th May) on IRC at #wfs-india on freenode from 20:00-21:00 hrs IST. Please do join. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS http://www.logicamani.in

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Hosting of WFS-India
by A. Mani 16 May '13

16 May '13

A new free software group : Women in Free Software and Culture has recently been formed. Our current page is at wfs-india.dreamwidth.org We have a new domain: wfs-india.in Will it be possible for Fedora to host the new site of wfs-india? I also notice that Fedora-women is pretty inactive. Some arrangement may be helpful for both. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS http://www.logicamani.in

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Fwd: Fedora Talk on 10 June at IITM
by Arun SAG 10 May '13

10 May '13

Free software foundation - TN requesting for a talk on Fedora project! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Arun Prakash <arun(a)fsftn.org> Date: Fri, May 10, 2013 at 12:25 PM Subject: Fedora Talk on 10 June at IITM To: Arun S A G <sagarun(a)gmail.com>, sagarun(a)fedoraproject.org Hello, We (FSFTN) is conducting a five day workshop on Free Software Technologies at IIT Madras. It is scheduled on 10 June to 14 June 13. We have scheduled a session on the first day (10 June 13) for GNU/Linux introduction. And it would be better if Fedora India can take that session. If you could not take this session kindly direct it to another ambassador who take session in that particular time and location. More about FSFTN is here : http://fsftn.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation,_Tamil_Nadu_%28FSFTN%… -- Regards, Arun Prakash Executive Committee Member Free Software Foundation, Tamil Nadu Personal Note: I as a strong sympathiser to Fedora is very eager to talk fedora on this session and the important thing is Fedora Community in chennai is not much strong. We are planning to recommend Fedora on all the FSFTN events instead of Ubuntu. -- Arun S A G http://zer0c00l.in/

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Tentative Programme: Cultural Freedom Day in India
by A. Mani 08 May '13

08 May '13

http://wiki.culturefreedomday.org/2013/India/Kolkata/GLUG-Kolkata ______________________________ Indian Team's Web Event on Cultural Freedom Day Page will be improved soon Cultural Freedom Day will be celebrated by the Indian team through the active collaboration of the following Free Software groups: 1. Women in Free Software and Culture 2. GLUG Kolkata 3. Fedora India 4. Mozilla India 5. Many Others The focus will be on improving/increasing the participation of women in free software and improving related cultural aspects. This will be of much relevance in a backward country like India. On the day we intend to organize two hackathons, a tutorial and a pair of competitions. All of these will be conducted through the Web. Tentative Schedule 1. Competition-1 will be on digital art using exclusively Free Software tools. The proposed theme is "Women and Gender Related Issues". Participants will be judged on their knowledge, expression, clarity and quality of work. Semantic part of this competition will be managed by A. Mani. One additional expert will judge the artistic quality. 2. Media-wiki Hackathon conducted by Sucheta Ghoshal. This hackathon will include an introduction and more advanced parts. These are outlined here. 3. Hackathon + Tutorial on Localization by Chandan Kumar. 4. GIMP/Inkscape Tutorial by Ashfaq Farooqui. 5. Competition-2 will be a quiz on Free Software, Fedora Linux, GNU/Linux, Philosophy and Policy Conducted by a substantial part of organizers. 6. Educational Tutorials on Free software and Culture will also be part of the gallery. Both competitions will involve interesting prizes. We intend to publicize the event through various channels to ensure good participation. Certificates will be awarded to all participants, while prizes will need to be fought for. This page was registered for the Kolkata team, but due to lack of more participation from India, we decided to pool our efforts. ________________________________ _______________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS http://www.logicamani.in

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india May 2013