Free Software Movement
The FOSS or 'Free and Open Source Software' movement has achieved a lot since its inception in the eighties of the last century.
In contrast to the 'Open Source Movement', we believe in the universal applicability of the following four freedoms:
- • Axiom 0: Software is a form of knowledge and knowledge ought to be free.
- • Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
- • Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- • Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
- • Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
However I would want stronger protection of these freedoms in the context of derivative works than is afforded by the GNU GPL.
Dual licensing is another problem that is best avoided.
FOSS Groups
I have been involved in Linux and FOSS related activities for over a decade. Some of these include:
- • Coordination of the Kolkata Chapter of the Indian GNU/Linux Users Group,GLUG-Cal. Our new mailing list for discussions on GNU/Linux and FOSS related issues is here.
- • My Launchpad Page,
- • Leader of Ubuntu Women and part of various other "Women in Free Software" groups.
- • Activities at Linux Questions.Org. It is a great forum for discussions and problem solving. My user-name at LQ is amani
- • My Fedora Page. At Fedora, I have been involved in testing, documentation and specifications.
- • Founded the Indian GNU/R group.
- • Active participation in various FOSS development and advisory lists.
- • Active participation in various FOSS related conferences and events.
- • Active at Geek Feminism ,
Development
I do most of my programming in GNU/R, Lisp/Scheme, Prolog and markup languages. Most of the packages that I develop are too specialized. Some of these relate to rough computing.
Events
Some of my recent involvement in FOSS events:
- •Organised and delivered talks at a Workshop on Document Freedom at ISI Kolkata in March'2012.
- •Organised and delivered talks at a 2-day Workshop on GNU/R at FOSS Centre, Jadavpur University in Jan'2012.
- •Organised and delivered talks at the workshop on FOSS tools for computing at ISI Kolkata on Software Freedom Day'2011.
- •I reviewed about one fourth of the accepted papers at CDAC conference supported by IEEE NCOSS 2009. Yes, there were a few more.
- •Delivered a talk on "Scientific and Statistical Computing with R" at BarCamp Kolkata' 2009 at the IIT Kharagpur centre on the 3rd of Jan'2009. The presentation may be found here or at Arxiv.
- •Delivered a talk on txt2tags at the Document Freedom Day celebrations in March'2009.
