Conference on Freedom in Computing, Development and Culture Kerala Thiruvananthapuram 2008-09-12 2008-11-12 3 0.1 09:00 00:15 10:00 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall Policy lecture en Eben Moglen 11:00 01:00 Policy/Culture Hall p2p Peer-to-Peer and the Rise of Green Capitalism Policy lecture en Just as the three quarters of oil engineers now agree that Peak Oil is in sight within the next decade (after that, oil production can only decline), can we also posit that we may have reached a moment of Peak Hierarchy, a moment in history in which it is no longer large centralized organizations that are most efficient or productive, but rather those that are organized as distributed networks and can draw on peer producting communities? This is the thesis explored by the P2P Foundation, a global network of researchers investigating the emergence of peer production, governance and property, showing how this new 'hyperproductive' mode of producing value is out-competing and out-collaborating traditional organizations. Such a change will have huge implications for society, business, and education. The election victory of Barack Obama, and his program of green capitalism, opens up, because it cannot succeed without huge strides in participation, the possibility of a 'high road' transition towards a peer to peer society, based on the voluntary aggregation of productive communities united around the creation of common value. How would our society function, if Linux and Wikipedia were not just emergent, but the model of a new type of institutions residing in the core of our economy and politics? Michel Bauwens 12:00 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall nisgtrack Policy meeting Venkatesh Hariharan G Nagarjuna 13:30 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall Carlos, Aslam, Rishab Policy Aslam Raffee. Rishabh Ghosh Rahul De 14:15 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall The Indian Experience Policy meeting Sharing Experience from India Govt Agency Representatives 15:15 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall DevelopmentAsFreedom Just Change, Alakal, Insight Policy Traditional wisdom and Technological Commons - Fight for the commons The Adivasi´s of the Gudalur valley are among the few indigenous communities left in southern India. Like other indigenous people, they share cultural practices that prioritise, develop and manage common property. The gradual destruction and privatisation of common property especially forests left the Adivasi communities on the brink of survival. The encroachment of forests by prospectors for gold, tea estates and finally through their legal exclusion of common property by legislation like the Wildlife Act and the Forest Act. Given the experience of the Adivasi, we find it crucial to defend, develop and support the free software movement and the technological commons. From an initial hesitant first experiment in free software, the Gudalur organisations have now made a committment to use free software at the earliest possible date. We also find it important to encourage others to shift to free software as it facilitates job creation at local levels, and greater control over economies by local communities. Jacob John (Dilip) 17:00 01:55 Policy/Culture Hall Policy lightning en Richard Matthew Stallman 11:00 00:45 Technology Hall Technology lecture en More than 91% of all PCs run Java Platform. Java has evolved into a pervasive and ubiquitous technology that could be used to develop wide area of software applications. The NetBeans platform is a foundation that will help you to build professional and modular applications. This talk will focus on the latest innovations around Java platform, including NetBeans, Java FX, Java FX Mobile and opportunities for Java developers. We will give a preview of some major features proposed for the latest versions of Java SE, Java EE, Java ME, Java FX. At the end, we will demonstrate the Performance Tuning, Profiling, Debugging, GUI development with Matisse, and web application development techniques using NetBeans IDE. Jacob Royal Frank Jennings 11:45 00:45 Technology Hall SailFin Technology lecture en Open source SailFin project, built on top of popular GlassFish application server, blends new breed communication technologies like SIP with Java EE. This talk explains how easy it is to develop your own internet application that support audio/video communication. We will then look at the various challenges (security, availability) in hosting such an application. Binod P.G 13:30 00:45 Technology Hall Python and Scientific data visualisation Technology Dr. Prabhu Ramachandran 14:15 00:45 Technology Hall Technology lecture en OpenESB is a platform for business integration, Enterprise Application Integration, and SOA. OpenESB is 100% Open Source. OpenESB is built on an extensible core in which you can plug in components. OpenESB is purely based on open standards. Components from any vendor that adhere to the JBI (Java Business Integration) and/or JCA (Java Connector Architecture) specification, can be plugged into the OpenESB core. Part of OpenESB is an IDE based on the Open Source Netbeans IDE that makes it very easy to create integration solutions or composite applications. Senthil Prabhu 15:15 00:45 Technology Hall Learn more about Postgres Technology lecture en pg architecture and trends in high-performance database systems based on pg Surendran 09:30 00:30 Policy/Culture Hall Technology lecture en Neville Roy Singham 10:00 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall Recent Developments in India in the Global Context Policy meeting en Mishi Chowdary Eben Moglen Venkatesh Hariharan Marco Ciurcina 11:00 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall gender and ict Policy meeting en FOSS and gender – Women in development of FOSS and decision-making around it The hacker culture's heroes are R. Stalman and similar relatively macho figures, while women are hard to find among them. This fact may have important consequences for women developers' perception of and involvement in the development of FOSS, which is alarming given that FOSS development often tends to be inspired by local community needs. Research conducted so far on the hacker culture vs. women has been focusing mainly on European & US groups and has been conducted by researches from those regions. Raji P. R Cheekay Cinco 11:45 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall Yes We Can! Yes We Will! Policy lecture en In many respects Free Software is an interesting phenomenon. If we want to know what Free Software may mean for society we need to look at Free Software as implementing a distinctive, new mode of production. The talk describes the mode of production of Free Software and why it is desirable as a fundament of society. The talk then explains how change comes about generally and where Free Software stands today. It closes with an outlook into an Utopian future where the principles of the production of Free Software have taken over. Stefan Merten Project Oekonux 13:30 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall foss_research Policy meeting en The role of software in developing economies". Panel discussion on free software as key to access to knowledge and participation in knowledge creation in africa, asia, latin america. Marco Ciurcina Juan Carlos Gentile Rishabh Ghosh 14:15 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall www.ethicaleconomy.com Policy lecture en Adam Arvidsson will be talking about his new book The ethical economy This book suggests that we are facing an epochal economic and social shift, perhaps of an importance unsurpassed since the bourgeois revolution that gave birth to the capitalist economy that we have today. The next economy will be an ethical economy where value is no longer based on labour as in the capitalist economy (nor on land as in the feudal economy that preceded it), but on the ability to construct ethically significant social relations. This is no utopia: the ethical economy is already here, in brand management, in advanced forms of knowledge work, on financial markets, and in the expanding range of autonomous forms of social production- ranging from P2P software, via fan communities to alternative forms of agriculture and food distribution- that have evolved around new information and communication technologies. And its impact is set to grow with the further diffusion and evolution of those technologies. This book offers a first coherent theory of the ethical economy, examining its origins, its present dynamics and its future potential. It draws out the implications of this epochal shift for business, politics and society Adam Arvidsson 15:15 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall Turn your home into Hollywood Culture How can Free Software help the Entertainment Industry of Kerala ? Free Software like Blender and Cinelerra, are going to play important role media industry. Know more about these tools. Anil Nair 16:00 00:30 Policy/Culture Hall Panel Discussion Policy meeting en Subbiah Arunachalam Dr. V Sasi Kumar G Nagarjuna 16:30 00:30 Policy/Culture Hall Commonalities and Distinctions Policy Free/Open Software (notably the first Free Software for creating OAI-compliant Open Access Institutional Repositories, EPrints, created in 2000 and now used worldwide) has been central to the growth of the Open Access Movement. However, there are also crucial distinctions that need to be made and understood, among the movements for (1) Free/Open source software, (2) Open Access (to peer-reviewed research), (3) Open Data, and (4) Creative Commons licensing. Stevan Harnad 10:00 00:45 Technology Hall Technology lecture en GlusterFS is a cluster file-system capable of scaling to several peta-bytes. It aggregates various storage bricks over Infiniband RDMA or TCP/IP interconnect into one large parallel network file system. GlusterFS is based on a stackable user space design without compromising performance. Anand Babu Periasamy 11:00 00:45 Technology Hall Technology en NIIBE Yukta 11:45 00:45 Technology Hall Technology lecture en Project WebSynergy is the next-generation aggregation, socialization, collaboration and presentation platform.This powerful yet simple Web 2.0 aggregation and presentation platform. enables the creation and management of internet and intranet web sites for the Enterprise. The talk will include presenting and demo-ing WebSynergy various features viz. , Single Sign On, Heterogenous Language Integration, Collaboration features, Content Management System, Workflow, WSRP, Organizations etc., Developer Tools, which can help boost productivity in an enterprise. Vihang Pathak 13:30 00:45 Technology Hall ror Technology lecture en Can programming languages be artful? Can application frameworks be optimized for programmer happiness? Ultimately can they help us write beautiful code? In the relatively short history of web based applications we have seen a plethora of tools and frameworks emerge that claim to make developing and deploying web applications easier. But most of these frameworks have been plagued with excessive verbiage that has done nothing but risen the barriers of entry to web programming. Can programming languages be artful? Can application frameworks be optimized for programmer happiness? Ultimately can they help us write beautiful code? It's fans call Ruby an artful yet practical language. The language has been growing consistently in mindshare and acceptance by enterprises since 2005. Part of the success can also be attributed to Rails, an open source framework optimized for programmer productivity. What principles go into creating a framework that helps you write beautiful code? Can frameworks truly help reduce the barrier of entry to programming? While doing this can they be performant and help scale? Srihari Srinivasan 14:15 00:45 Technology Hall Miniature shell. Technology lecture The basic code is taken from the fosh shell by Radovan Garabik http://www.fmph.uniba.sk/~garabik/. The fosh shell is in turn derived from the sash shell originally written by David I. Bell (dbell@canb.auug.org.au), The intention of this piece of software is to familiarize novice programmers on how a shell functions and how it is built. However, maSH implements only a small subset of builtin functions and lacks many of the advanced features of standard Linux/Unix shells like redirection, pipelining, job control etc. Raj Mohan 15:15 00:45 Technology Hall Technology Java’s answer to the Flex. Rich Internet Application is fast becoming the de facto standard for web applications. Java FX is Java’s answer to the popular Flex technology from Adobe. This presentation will introduce the basic concepts and features of Java FX. Kishore Kumar 16:00 00:45 Technology Hall Technology lecture en MySQL is the world's most popular open source database in the industry, recognized for its speed and reliability. With more than five million active installations and 60,000 downloads a day, MySQL has become the core for many high-volume, business-critical applications. The presentation will highlight the overall architecture of MySQL and then discuss certain unique aspects of it in detail, including various storage engines. Through this talk, We will also discuss a brief history of MySQL, major features in the latest versions and typical deployment architectures that are highly scalable. Mayuresh Nirhali 09:30 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall Policy lecture en Jimmy Wales 10:15 00:30 Policy/Culture Hall malayalam-wikipedia Panel discussion Policy meeting Sidharthan, Challiyan, Praveen, Shiju Jimmy Wales 11:00 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall Policy How can technology help our farmer and fisher men ? Some experience from Kerala on using technologies for agriculture and fisheries sector. Geographical information systems like GRASS are going to play important role in bringing developments in villages. Peethambaran C K Vivekanandan V Jaisen Nedumpala Radhakrishnan T 11:45 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall Growing global information commons - Panel discussion Culture Sunil Abraham 13:30 01:30 Policy/Culture Hall Policy lecture en Joost Smiers Carolina Botero Roberto Verzola Fatima Lasay Alan Story 15:15 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall Service based commercial reaction for Global Software Industry Explosion Policy WikiOcean a P2P Business model WikiOcean is a participatory, non-proprietary organization where professionals join on revenue-sharing model as explained in the wecosystem. WikiOcean started from May 2007. The model for WikiOcean of Revenue-sharing is largely influenced from the Free Software Movement in the software industry, introduced by Mr. Paritosh Pungaliya, Catalyst (M.D). Then Dr. Nagarjuna (another Catalyst) further helped in refining the concept. What are the oppertunities and Challenges ? Mr Paritosh will be sharing his experience. Paritosh Pungaliya 16:00 00:45 Policy/Culture Hall A critique of efficiency as the main criterion for economic decision-making Policy lecture en When we have abundance, preventing the failure of the source of abundance is more important than being efficient. Efficiency is a measure of how well transformation of matter or energy occurs. To be efficient means to get the most from the least. The higher the efficiency, the better the transformation is occurring. Efficiency is usually computed from the ratio of useful output to input. To be accurate, the computation must take into account all inputs to a process; otherwise, the computed efficiency may exceed 100%. This will imply that the transformation process itself is creating new matter or energy, which contradicts fundamental laws of physics. Since energy transformation always produces waste heat, the energy efficiency of any process is always less than 100%. If some of the material outputs are not usable (e.g., wastes), then the sum of the useful material outputs will be less than the sum of the material inputs too, and the material efficiency of the process will likewise be less than 100%. Economists often express the inputs and outputs of a process in monetary terms, because their interest is in processes where the monetary outputs exceed the monetary inputs. Furthermore, economists often compute the difference instead of ratio between outputs and inputs, because their interest is in absolute monetary amounts instead of ratios. In such cases where the focus is on absolute amounts, this paper uses the term “gain” instead of “efficiency.” An example of gain is the producer’s profit, which is revenues minus costs. Another example is the total utility to the consumer of a set of goods minus the total price of these goods. Because both are measures of output relative to input, gain is closely related to efficiency and is used whenever absolute magnitudes are more important than relative magnitudes. Among business firms, gain is really of more interest than efficiency, the best firms being those who manage to squeeze the last marginal bit of gain (i.e., profit) from their business operations. Among natural persons, the output of interest is not necessarily matter, energy, or money but a vaguer concept like welfare, utility, or happiness, which makes measuring efficiency or maximizing it harder. Like firms, economies today also tend to maximize gain (i.e., efficiency and inputs), not only efficiency. To maximize gain, one can increase the inputs to a process, or the efficiency by which the inputs are transformed into outputs, or both. Expanding one’s global reach is one way of increasing inputs. The economies-of-scale argument (higher efficiency through larger scale of operations) also supports a global strategy. Thus, gain-maximization strategies directly lead to globalization. Because economies include all firms and natural persons, macro-efficiency is very difficult in practice to maximize or even simply to measure. To cope with this problem, economists have settled on a curious rule for improving the efficiency of economies step by step: improve somebody’s welfare without reducing anybody else’s, and keep doing this until nobody’s welfare can be further improved without reducing somebody else’s. This is the economist’s Pareto efficiency, which is obviously lower than full theoretical efficiency, but is itself a theoretical construct that is hardly ever seen – not even approximated – in reality. Roberto Verzola 10:15 00:30 Technology Hall Technology lecture Introduction to JBoss RedHat Representative 11:00 00:45 Technology Hall Technology lecture en Grails is one of the many web frameworks for the Java platform. However it shines through by its ability to use the best ideas from the Ruby on Rails world while at the same time continuing to leverage the tried, tested and trusted Java platform as well as established frameworks like Spring and Hibernate. With Grails' tight integration with Java, Groovy based features, growing popularity and improved support from IDEs, Grails looks poised to become the RAD framework of choice for the Java platform. This session takes you through the features of Grails, it's working and how Grails utilization of meta programming and coding over convention can get you major productivity boosts as compared to traditional Java web applications Harshad Oak 11:45 00:45 Technology Hall Technology lecture en Satish Babu 13:30 00:45 Technology Hall Technology lecture en Mayuresh Nirhali 14:15 00:45 Technology Hall Technology lecture Openbravo is the leading fully functional integrated web-based open source ERP (enterprise management system) that offers a unique value proposition - a higher value at a lower cost. Why the Open source ERP is getting popular. The value addition to corporate and govt. segment for Open source products Sunando Banerjee