2004.03_Debian in Spain, Chinese Awards, Russian Open Source.pdf

World

NEWS

World News

Russia to follow EU’s

Linux path

Although Russia is not likely to become a

member of the European Union soon,

the country is trying to adopt the EU rec-

ommendation for the use of Open Source

software. Hence it did not actually come

as a surprise when the Russian Federa-

tion’s Ministry for Telecommunication

and IT Deployment reached an agree-

ment with IBM last year to found a Linux

Competence Center at Moscow’s techni-

cal university. The center is due to start

operations in 2004 and will support

profit and non-profit organisations in the

use of Linux-based system solutions. It is

expected to be implemental in pushing

Linux products onto the Russian market,

and will also localize Open Source soft-

ware.

A few days after this announcement,

the Ministry announced its own migra-

tion plans. According to the program a

third of its offices will be moving from

Microsoft to Linux.

Meanwhile, private initiatives have

been equally busy. While K-Form recent-

ly opened a new portal to support

Linux-based business-solutions, even

“Radio Svoboda”, the Russian section of

“Radio Liberty”, made a contribution

towards popularizing Open Source soft-

ware. The transcript of the live discuss-

ion between the leader of the Russian

Mozilla project, Valentina Vaneyevna,

ALTLinux Vice Director Aleksey Novod-

vorsky, and the leader of the Russian

OpenOffice team, Anatoliy Yakushin, can

be found online.

Official signals from the neighboring

Ukraine are less encouraging. Although

schools, scientific centers and universi-

ties have insufficient funds to pay their

tutors’ salaries or invest in modern

equipment, the Minister of Education

and Science, Vasyl Kremen, expects them

to use Microsoft products. His memoran-

dum was met by barrage of criticism:

Almost all Microsoft software at the

country’s educational institutions is unli-

censed.

http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/ida/jsps/

index.jsp?fuseAction=showDocument&

parent=news&documentID=1647

http://www.k-form.ru/

http://www.svoboda.org/programs/sc/

2003/sc.112503.asp

■

Debian’s Spanish Stronghold

Do you know how many Spaniards are

active in Debian development? We didn’t

count but there must be a lot. When the

Government of Extremadura invited

Spanish Debian GNU/Linux developers

to attend the first national Debian Con-

ference in Casar de Cáceres, December

12-14, around 60 developers followed

the call.

The name Extremadura may ring a

bell. It is famous for its own regional,

Debian-based Linux distribution called

LinEx (see issue 31, p.13) which is cur-

rently used by no less than 80,000

people as surveys show. Unsur-

prisingly, the two computer fa-

cilities at the conference location

Creofonte, a modern center

equipped with library, conference

rooms, wireless and ethernet

access, were fitted with prein-

stalled LinEx-PCs. These so called

NCCs (“news centers of knowl-

edge”) give citizens free access to

the internet and offer both computer

courses and official LinEx certification.

Prodded this way, the developers

worked on solving Debian bugs, upload-

ing patches and contributing to other

tasks related to the Debian project. In

addition, they founded Debian España , a

new association to promote Debian and

free software. Its main objectives are to

bring together developers and users, and

to do research in the field.

http://www.hispalinux.es/~amaya/

debconf-es/

Chinese Awards Aplenty

2003 is history – time to celebrate last

year’s outstanding contributions to the

Open Source world. In Taiwan, the Soft-

ware Liberty Association of Taiwan

(SLAT) did this by giving 18 awards to

individuals and organisations from the

local free software community.

The 2003 Taiwan Free Software Com-

munity Awards for Outstanding Contrib-

utors went to Jia-Min Deng, for revamp-

ing the Chinese character sets for Linux;

to the initiator of the Chinese Knoppix

distribution, Fa-Ann Hsieh; and to De-

Ming Tsei, a devoted writer of Linux

textbooks. In the category Outstanding

Software , Open WebMail, CHEWING (a

Chinese phonetic input method for Unix

systems), and the School Free Soft project

(SFS) received awards, while the Chinese

OpenOffice maker, Ke-Huan Lin (the ini-

tiator of the Chinese GnuPG, WinPT,

BkGnuPG, Kwiki, and pVoice distribu-

tions) and Hong-De Lin (initiator of the

Chinese Mozilla distribution) won the

category Outstanding Translated Distrib-

utions .

Appreciating the value of Outstanding

Documentation , SLAT handed out prizes

to the GNU Chinese Translators Team

GNU/CTT, to Ke-Huan Lin for his contri-

butions to GnuPG, Perl and FreeBSD,

and to Jun-Hsing Shen for writing the

FreeBSD Chinese HOWTO. The Chinese

Linux Extension (CLE) team, the Tainan

Linux User Group (TnLUG) and the team

behind the Elixus.org wiki were voted

Outstanding Societies . The prizes for

Outstanding Websites that Help Develop

the Linux Community went to the Linux-

Fab.com portal, to http://free.tnc.edu.

tw/ , and to Study-Area.org, a self-teach-

ing center for Linux and FreeBSD.

All award winners share the prize

money worth NT$ 270,000 (approx.

US$ 9,000).

http://www.slat.org/index_html.en

www.linux-magazine.com

March 2004

■

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