A Short account of SMC meet at Trivandrum on 9th Jan 2008

The meeting was scheduled to start at 10:00. I arrived at SPACE by around 9:45. Vimal and George were there to greet me . A few minutes later Gnoop came in , followed by Maxin . Maxin went around the city looking for the SPACE building it seems. Anyways , we decided to get on with our program at 10 O clock even though only four were there. SPACE has another building some 50 m away , which offers computers and internet for visually impaired.

We were about to get started on the KDE translations when we were interrupted by the arrival of Chandrettan and Uncle. We greeted them and was about to explain our agenda when Sebin and Sivakumar sir came in.So we started a round of introduction . Aadarsh arrived half way through. Shamsudeen sir and Joju (Zyxware) arrived after the intro's were finished.

After the round of intro's Vimal started introducing Free Software . He talked about the four criteria that a software has to satisfy in order to qualify as a Free Software . Maxin explained the different economic models that can be used make money off free software - Redhat and Asterisk were pointed out as examples. Vimal went on to give an introduction to what Malayalam computing actually is. After that , Anoop introduced SMC and its current work. He explained about GNOME Malayalam and its current state . Maxin elaborated on the need to bring Malayalam to KDE also.

By then everyone wanted to know why free software is important in education Isn't enforcing Free Software in schools a discrimination against other companies and not providing a level playing ground for everyone ? Vimal countered it with the sharing aspect of Free Software . Also the freedom to modify it to our needs was pointed out - the Pango patch that Suresh wrote is an example of how we can modify Free Software for our own needs.

Sebin pointed out that not everyone becomes a programmer. People grow up to become writers , journalists, accountants etc. The lack of professional packages like Pagemaker/Quark Express and Photoshop was emphasized . And children not learning to use Windows in schools implies that they will have difficulty in professional packages that are available only on Windows . But Anoop and Vimal made it clear that children are being taught to use a "Word processor" or an "Image Editor" and not specific programs. They are getting accustomed to the "Desktop" paradigm and not a particular GUI. When they grow up they will be able to figure out things on their own , be it on Windows or a GNU/Linux desktop. I also mentioned the wine project when Sebin wished for availability of Photoshop and the like on a GNU/Linux desktop.

Sebin , Uncle and Aadarsh made a case for simpler words when it comes to translating the UI's . Everyone wanted simpler words. Uncle and Sebin pointed out that Malayalam has its roots in Tamil and that referring Tamil equivalents while translating the UI is a very good idea. Maxin also said that while translating , if he is unable to find a Malayalam word, he often consults Tamil translations.

Aadarsh wants SMC to go to colleges - well not just SMC , the whole Free software movement . He wants something equivalent to IT@School in colleges. We pointed out to him that students are generally not willing to take up Open source projects , and that generally the students create a standalone program that does some particular function and is complete in itself . eg: an accounting package or a Library Management System. They are unwilling to take up fixing a bug in projects like KDE/GNOME etc because those are mostly not accepted by their project guides as an academic project. Vimal told us about initial efforts by SPACE to initiate something like this and how the whole thing didn't work out . Aadarsh suggested educating the teachers about GNU and the excellent programming platform GNU/Linux is. He offered his support and efforts in this direction.

After this and some more discussion ( Anoop please fill in the details for me, I know that something is missing but I can't bring myself to remember it ) we went on to translations. We opened a PO file in GEdit and showed the rest how we translate a file. Uncle was impressed and he said that it was easier than he thought. He had to leave by then , so we all stood in for a photograph. When i pulled out my S3IS , Sebin casually opened his bag took out a Canon EOS ( I am guessing that its a Rebel XT ) . He went on to take photographs.

After that we transferred the photos to one of the SPACE computers and those who had thumb drives took a copy with them. Chandrettan was interested in using GIMP and Maxin explained a bit about it.

Aadarsh was wonderstruck when he showed him a webpage in firefox . It seems he had underestimated the capabilities of a GNU/Linux system when it comes to malayalam.

Anyways people started leaving and only Maxin , Gnoop , Vimal and me were left. We went and had lunch and then to SPACE and got GPLv3 shirts and FSF India kurthas ;) . After that we started translating a really big file (KDElibs4.po) . We managed to do some work and before we knew it it was 5 O Clock ( Vimal had left after 4:30 ) and Maxin had to leave. So Gnoop gave me company till 5:45 , and then i also had to leave. So we locked the building , gave the key back to SPACE and left.


The meeting gave me a boost and a sense of urgency - we have to work hard if we have to put Malayalam into KDE also. I am happy that i met all these people from different wakes of life - all empowered by GNU/Linux. When I started using GNU/Linux in 2000 , I never dreamed that i would sit here and be able to contribute something back to it.


[ On a side note , Uncle lives about a 5 minute walk away from my home. >:) I am going to liberate his computer ASAP :D ] .

Photos : http://picasaweb.google.com/AashikS/SMCMeetFeb92008