Thanks for the report and status of indic languages Regards Arjuna rao chavala Telugu localizer On Nov 6, 2011 12:13 AM, "Christian PERRIER" <bubu...@debian.org> wrote:
> > This mail will try to summarize what I learned, discovered, shared, > etc. during my stay at the Mangalore edition of India mini DebConfs > 2011 [1]. > > This miniDebConf is the third one scheduled this year in India. The > first one in Kuttipuram, Kerala, back in April 2011 had about 25 > attendees, while the second one, in Pune, in August 2011 had up to 150 > registered attendees. That followed another miniDebConf organized in > 2010, in Pune [2]. > > This edition was organized at the NMAMIT (Nitte MahaLinga Adyanthaya > Memorial Institute of Technology) [3], about 50 kilometers north of > the coastal city of Mangalore, in the state of Karnataka, in > south-west India ([4] and [5]). > > Organisation was lead by Vasudev Kamath and a very > efficient and active team of Computer Science students from the > college. This college, overall, has about 4000 students. Organization > got full support from the college staff, including the college > principal, Dr. S. Y. Kulakarni, who presided the conference inaugural > session. > > My own travel to India was funded by the Debian project assets, with > approval of our respected DPL, Stefano Zacchiroli. Hosting and > accomodation for invited guests were taken care of by the organizers in > the college guest house (that covered about 15 guests as far as I have > witnessed). > > I gave the opening talk, after the formal inauguration ceremony (where > I had the great honor of being presented as "chief guest", which then > included addressing the 150-people audience during the opening > ceremony [6]), with a 3-part topic : > - introduction to Debian, > - contributing to Debiand > - Debian internationalization and localization. > > The first part was largely borrowed from Stefano's slides from talks > he gave this year, as I have been impressed by the very clear way he > can give a good picture of our project, even for newcomers. > > Newcomers were here, indeed the target, at least from start, as this > talk (and all talks of the first day) was attended by a very high > number of students. I tried thus to do my best to give a good picture > of the project, without going far into technical details, but by > insisting on aspects that make Debian special (in our opinion) among > other FLOSS projects: > - culture of technical excellence, > - promotion of the culture of free software, > - independence, > - decision making systems (do-ocracy, democracy...). > > A short parenthesis was made about derivatives and Debian relevance > (making reference to Ubuntu, which is clearly the most widely used > Linux-based system on our attendees' own machines). > > The second part about Debian contribution was an adaptation of a talk > I already gave a few times, trying to demythify the difficulty of > becoming a DD or even "only" a Debian contributor. I insisted on that > part as my feeling over the years I worked with the Debian community > in India is that people often hesitate to invest themselves in the > project, by some fear of not being "able enough". > > Finally, as localization can be a very good entry point for newcomers > (several of our regular contributors in the region started indeed by > working on localization). I made an overview of the various aspects of > Debian l10n/i18n. I also focused more specifically on localization for > languages in the country as we currently support several of them in > Debian Installer, and made a comparison between languages of India. > > My slides for this talk are available on my talks page at [7] > (warning, 90's web style ahead!). > > Later on, Jonas Smedegaard (as part of his "Debian Pure Blends trip to > Asia"[8]) lead a talk about Debian Pure Blends, > focusing on how "derivatives" can work inside Debian instead of > outside of it. This (and later discussions) lead to interesting > exchanges with representatives of CDAC (Center for Development of > Advanced Computing), a government agency that, among many, develops > and maintains BOSSLinux, a Debian-based distribution deployed very > widely over India on thousands, if not millions, of machines. Jonas > will probably develop this aspect on his own, but I found it very > positive to see such exchanges, particularly when one knows that > exchanges between CDAC/BOSSLinux and the local FLOSS community in > India, have sometimes been quite difficult. Such live meetings (as > well as those Jonas had in Hyderabad and others he will have in > Bangalore) will certainly improve the connection and exchanges between > BOSSLinux developers and their upstream, namely Debian. > > Later on, we planned sessions about internationalization and > packaging. Unfortunately, local Internet access conditions, after > severe storms that affected the neighbourhood, prevented the planned > "live" work session on DDTP Kannada translations to happen (Kannada is > the official language of the state of Karnataka). Instead, I could > improvise a general session about localization. > > During the second day of the conference, attention was focused on > contribution to Debian, introduced by a talk by Kartik Mistry about > "how to become a Debian developer"and followed by sessions about > packaging. We also handled a session about GPG key handling followed > by a mini keysigning session. > > Here again, the packaging session was somehow difficult to organize > because of Internet connection problems (once again, not because of > the college itself but more an infortunate consequence of weather > hazards). > > It has to be noted that the event made its way into one of the major > newspapers in India, namely "The Hindu", in its Karnataka edition, > where a 4-column, 1/3 height article with a photo about "College near > Mangalore hosts three-day Debian meet" was published on Sunday October > 30th, in page 6, widely published in a 70-million inhabitants state > [9]. > > As a conclusion, I would like to enhance the big success of this > miniDebConf, thanks to the support it received from the NMAMIT college > as well as the precise and detailed organization of the team lead by > Vasudev Kamath. > > These miniDebConf in India are vital to keep the community linked. > Indian contributors can often hardly participate to general events > such as DebConf, because visa delivery is often very complicated for > them, and travel costs are very high. We should do our best to always > have some of them sponsored to attend DebConf, but also do our best to > encourage local miniDebConf there. > > My own participation was, I think, a success, along with that of Jonas > Smedegaard. Having the participation of "international" contributors > in these events is something that brings more attention on them and is > really highly appreciated by the local community. The care taken by > the local team to organize all aspects of our stay in Nitte clearly > shows that. > > Links: > [1] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianIndia/MiniDebConf2011/MangaloreEdition > [2] http://wiki.debian.org/DebianIndia > [3] http://www.nitte.ac.in/nmamit/ > [4] http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=12.815&lon=74.91&zoom=10&layers=M > [5] > http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=13.18297&lon=74.93477&zoom=17&layers=M > [6] > http://www.perrier.eu.org/debian/talks/mangalore-minidebconf-2011/address.txt > [7] http://www.perrier.eu.org/debian/talks > [8] http://wiki.jones.dk/DebianAsia2011 > [9] > http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article2581633.ece > > > > -- > > >
