Tech n Fun

First of all, I wish you all a very Happy Republic Day, for which seen no enthusiasm from most of the people. After 60 yrs of being a republic country, Friendship and Valentines day is celebrated with more zeal than country's Republic Day. Well, there is no point blaming us, the 60 years of independence has changed several mindsets. Today, most....most are planning to spend the day with shopping, yeah every shop is awaiting you with huge discounts, or extending weekend may be for partying or another outing. There is something good, in all these but do we missing the real republic ?? Where are we today, after 60 years.....Is India today a tall 60 yrs young country or a 60 yrs old seeking an old age home.??

The dictionary says Republic "A state in which the Supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them." Yes, we are citizens of Republic of India as we choose our representatives for the progress of our country. But pragmatically, no one have faith in any of our representatives, our leaders. We are not sure of our growth, our policies, our security, our internal matters, external affairs, our system.

After 60 years, India Inc. is booming, no doubt we are on the path of becoming Super Power of World. But thats only a side of coin, the shinning side. With always in top charts in corruption, the rural India or the most of our population is below- below BPL. There is a line, along which its hard to make meals for living. Then what would be happening to those who are below below that poverty line. I remind, once at a busy Delhi Red light i asked a boy, may be 6-7yrs old selling Indian Flag (around 15th Aug), "What do we celebrate on 15th Aug.", he smiled and said "we got independence", and.....? he said "we make good money by selling flags these days" !!! Everyone has different view and motive of an event, this was his.

But overall of this, there are jawans who are standing still n strong at difficult conditions for us, they know what Republic day is....the kids who are participating in the Rday Parade, for them there is nothing good than this as they are representing their country. Till we have this outlook about our country and bearing the pride of being Indian, we'll be no short of celebrations.

Wishing all my Indian fellows, a very colorful n charming Republic Day !!

Celebration of being a proud Indian. Jai Hind !!!

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The concept of Open source Software and GNU started back in 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. He wanted to continue the sharing of software as was in earlier days of computing and in 1970s. But by the 1980s almost all software was proprietary , which means that it had owners who forbid and prevent cooperation by users. This made the foundation of GNU Project in 1984.

GNU Project is basically only the name of the project for the movement of free software and its usage and Mr. Stallman chose this name due to three reasons :

• It was a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix", and
• It was a real world, and
• It was fun to say/sing GNU (actually he likes to sing the song/poem Gnoo and then derived Gnu).

The idea or motivation behind the GNU project was to provide the people freedom of computing, let people use computer. The term "free" here does not mean with price, it pertains to "freedom". Freedom to

1. Copy the program and give it away to your friends and co-workers.
2. Change the program as you wish by having the full access to source code.
3. Distribute an improved version and thus help build the community.

This Freedom led the GNU project to Open Source Software. The Open Source Software (OSS), sometimes loosely speaking as Open Source (the methodology behind OSS) refers to software in which the source code is freely available to all.

Officially or strictly OSS is defined by two bodies, one by the GNU Project and free software foundation and the other one by the Open Source Initiative.The main points of the OSS definition by the OSI are:

• The software and the source code must be freely distributable.
• All must be able to modify the source code and create derived works.
• To maintain the integrity of the original author's work, the license may require that changes to the code be provided in patch form and must include the earlier authors name.
• The license must be nondiscriminatory with respect to persons, groups, or fields of endeavor; it must be free of restrictions that can limit the license.

[The full Open Source Definition by the OSI can be viewed here.]

The definition of OSS or rather "free software" (term used by the GNU Project) is a four point theory which emphasizes on the "freedom", to understand the concept you should think of "free" as in "free speech". Moreover the freedom of these:

• The software must be freely executable for any purpose.
• The source code must be available so that others can study how it works.
• The software must be freely redistributable.
• All are free to modify the software.

[The official doc can be viewed here.]

The free software foundation, a group created to fund the GNU Project, started with a free Operating System because the base of a computer is an Operating system. The Operating System was targeted to be Unix based (compatible), being the advantage of portability.

By the 1990, all major components was either found or written except one- the Kernel. Then Linux, a Unix like kernel, was developed by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and made free software in 1992. Combining Linux with almost completed GNU system gave birth to(resulted in) a complete operating system: the GNU/Linux system. Apart from the core, the Kernel the system's basic components include the GNU Compiler Collection(GCC), the GNU binary Utilities (binutils), the bash shell, the GNU C Library (glibc), and GNU Core Utilities (coreutils).

As of now, there is a huge market of GNU/Linux and used not only by professionals but also by home or normal users as during the progress of OSS and GNU/Linux a wide range of free applications are available and continuing to be develop including the Graphical Desktop (GNOME). You can check yourself the huge Free Software Directory (or here). And yes, you will be no more pirate using these free software.

The world is Open !!!

[P.S : Leaving a comment or a simple thanks will always motivate one to work on Free/freedom, freedom of knowledge.]

 

[Source of this post can be found here and here.]

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