[Mailinglist] April Meeting Details

[Sameer Thahir]

Warm Greetings To The FOSS Community,

The Meeting for the month of April (27/04/2008) was conducted successfully. 
The were 20 people who attended the meeting, which gave way for great 
interactive sessions. This was one meeting were we had female attendees as well.

Date: 27-04-2008
Time: 2pm - 5.30pm
Venue: Internet Club, IInd Floor, AMI Trust Building, Broadway Enclave, Broadway, Ernakulam

The meeting started of at 2:15pm with an introduction to Free Software, Open Source Software
, GNU Movement, GNU GPL License etc. After that the attendees introduced themselves.
With a few questions from the attendees the discussion was wound up.

The session shifted to the main agenda. The concept of "Free Software Compatible Hardware"
was discussed, the need for Free Software Compatible Hardware was explained. The attendees
agreed on the point that the new users were constantly concerned with compatibility issues for
hardware while using Free Software.  

There was a small discussion on concepts like device drivers and firmware. 
There was a discussion on communication between the hardware and device drivers taking
the example of a keyboard by which the attendees got a clear idea to the purpose of device
drivers.

The moderator put forward several issues that was faced while using proprietary drivers.
The moderator also provided some information on the aspects of how a hardware evolves 
from an idea to a final finished product. The discussion mainly concentrated on the aspect 
of the Freedom required while using hardware without any vendor lockin problems. The 
aspects of reverse engineering was also mentioned.

Several examples were put forward by the attendees citing issues faced while using the proprietary
drivers and how free software drivers sometimes provided better quality. 

The speaker talked about how anyone with a basic knowledge of programming and a logical
understanding of hardware details can develop device drivers. This encouraged several of the
attendees to try their hands at device driver programming.

The discussion moved on the aspect of how to configure a new hardware in free operating
systems. Another valid point discussed was of how to go about purchasing new hardware and laptops
that are free software compatible.

The moderator presented a flowchart that explained the entire process of how a new
user will purchase hardware and try to deal with it.

The discussion also focussed on the importance of documentation and how to compromise
on HIFI features for free software compatibility.

Finally the meeting concluded with important action items for the community to encourage
Free Software compatible hardware. The main points were 
- Using Free software and spreading awareness about it
- Create a database of Free Software Compatible Hardware available in local market
- Awareness activities to promote Free Software Compatible Hardware
- Learn Device Driver programming and hardware concepts and start writing drivers.
- Maintain documentation.
- Help developers by testing new drivers on specific hardware models.


After the discussion the members moved on to have Tea.

After the tea break it was time for the technical session "Multimedia on GNU/Linux" by Sreenadh

The objective of the session was to introduce the attendees to the multimedia capabilities of the
GNU/Linux OS. The speaker started of with talking about the various multimedia applications
starting with "Mplayer" and "Audacity". He also showed the audio and video playback
capabilities of mplayer,xine and vlc. The technical presentation was cut short due to the ill
health of the speaker.. 

Another person who continued the presentation, talked about other
multimedia alternative applications in GNU/Linux also answering few queries from the attendees.
The trailer of the Open Movie "Big Buck Bunny" was screened along the Open Movie 
"Elephants Dream". There was a brief explanation of the concept of an Open Movie.

Concluding session

The concluding session discussed the OOXML issue in the context of the Candle Vigil conducted
at Bangalore. Several attendees were of the opinion that a similar event needed to be conducted
at Kochi. The discussion evoked several responses, concluding on the note that there needs to
an awareness campaign initially before an aggressive one. 

Also as usual there were discussions on how each one could volunteer for ILUG activities.

The members explained one by one what they planned to do after the meeting. Several people
talked about trying new distributions. Most importantly many of them talked about trying their hand at
device driver programming, which was indeed  encouraging. The meeting concluded at 5:40 with
a vote of thanks.

Further details of the meeting and photos will be available on the website in a few days.

We thank all the attendees for coming and request all the attendees to put in their feedback
for the meeting on the Mailing List so we can improve future meetings.

And hope the next meeting is bigger and better.

Attendees

 R.Geetha  
 Shilpa  P  Maskara  
 Anoop  Viswanath  
 Arun  Kumar  K.C.   
 Sudeep S  
 Shibin  K  Reeny   
 R. Satheesh   
 Kurian Mathew Thayyil  
 Vineeth T.V.  
 Fr.Thomas  V.V.   
 Raneez  
 Sanjai  
 Sreenadh  
 Devaraj  K..P.  
 Binny  V.A.   
 Bilal  M.K.  
 Sabir  
 Jay Jacob  
 G.Venkata Subramahmanian  
 Sameer M Thahir  

Thank You

Regards
Sameer Mohamed Thahir
Co-ordinator (Indian Linux Users Group - Cochin / Kochi Chapter(ILUG-Cochin))
sameerthahir at yahoo.com

Website : www.ilug-cochin.org
IRC  : #ilugkochi on irc.freenode.net
ML   : mailinglist at ilug-cochin.org




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