rohitj's domain

So, yesterday I got a mail from bluehost saying that there are some copyrighted material on my site. I bought an account with bluehost in June/July 2007. I share it with some of my friends. One of them is bheekling who hates US copyright laws and the way they use it to exploit people. If you talk in favor of RIAA, he will probably kill you. . And he also prefers to play with these laws. … so anyways, when we bought the hosting space, we decided that we will not put any pirated material on the site. It so seems that initially we were in doubt that japanese animes are not copyrighted. But it so seems they are. Its not copyrighted in US though. So, US law can not make me remove them from my site. Anyways Bluehost guys said that I have the following thing on site, which I must remove. (they use the word “copy written material”. I have no idea what that means )

Now, “Movie” is surely copyrighted. bheekling uploaded that temporarily by mistake. He has removed.
This is my response to bluehost. Let us see what happens. :

Recently I started using IRC a lot. As I was doing some django, PyQT and KDE/C++ development. Yes, its lot of development. And then whenever I want to ask some question on IRC, I have to use pastebin/dpaste. ( dpaste is developed upon django framework. ). Now, to dpaste any code, I have to switch to Firefox, I have to use mouse as well. I have to copy paste the link to xchat. This was tedious task for me. So, I started making a plugin for xchat so that I could easily paste my code. Fortunately XChat has python plugin interface.

This plugin runs with the command:

/dpaste language

If you keep <language> empty, it will assume it to be “Plain”. You can use any language supported by dpaste.com. The command will open a gtk window, in which you can paste your code. And then “dpaste” button will copy paste the link (containing your code) on your xchat input box. . As of now I am sure, it works fine in IITK proxy system. I am pretty much sure it will work fine if you are behind no proxy.

Before using the proxy, you will need to change few parameters in the script, namely “proxy_username”, “proxy_password”, “proxy_server”, “proxy_port”. If you are not behind proxy, just keep “proxy_server” empty.

Also, you should install python module “ClientForm”, “pygtk”, and “urllib2″.

aptitude install python-clientform python python-gtk2

To load the script, a simple way is /load <path to plugin file> . Or you can copy the script in ~/.xchat2 folder. That way the script will be loaded whenever you open xchat.

You can download the code from here. As of now I haven’t made docs, but its an easy plugin, and some commenting as well.

Updates : Download the plugin version 0.6, and you don’t need to change anything in it. The plugin uses xchat proxy settings by itself.   As of now, http proxy and no proxy is supported.
http://rohitj.net/myscripts/xchat_plugin_dpaste

For last few days, I have been talking to people (mainly IITK students) about different events we have in FOSSKriti. I found people pretty enthusiastic about different events. I am pointing out those events here:

0: RoR : Y4 batch, being highly affected by Prof. TVP’s, is highly interested in attending RoR workshop. Some people want to learn RoR, some people want to discuss RoR. And I assume that some people will come because they know Saurabh Nanda.

1: Linux Kernel : Those who eff around there linux distro, especially Gentoo users, and those who have slightest interest in systems, were found interested in this.

2: Lisp : I personally am going to attend this event as a participant, not as organizing team. . And I am sure I will bring 10 more people. Actually no, some people were found interested in this workshop, specially those who are doing compilers course, or those who have done compilers course.

3: Linux Chix :

(female.isIITian())&&(female.isGeek())&&(female.hasTalkedTorohitj()) = 0

So, I am not sure how many females will turn up, but I am sure people will be there. This is the second event I want to attend. I want to see what they are upto.

4: KDE4 : Those who do not know, recently there was a big shift in IITK linux community. People broke their long loyalty for Gnome, and shifted to KDE. Alas!! KDE4 is still not in official repos, but they are still on KDE. They think its worth waiting for KDE4. Of course, this talk will attract these people.

Left are beagle hackfest and Clutter talk. Beagle is a must-attend hackfest. (afterall it substitutes stupid google desktop ). And clutter? I have no idea about it.

So, Navya @ IITK is finally doing something. In my four year stay here in IITK, its probably the first time when I am seeing navya doing something. Navya is basically a group of people who talk about open source. Most of them are pretty biased about open source. (I guess thats normal) They usually claim to help campus residents with some facilities, though people enjoying these facilities have been limited to 20-30.

So, anyways, this year navya is running a series of lectures to teach people about different Open source softwares. We are also going to have FOSS DAY in Techkriti 08. So, right now I am sitting in CS101, listening to this talk by sainath on “Making images great using GIMP”. Sainath is a great photographer as you might see in his livejournal. He uses GIMP to do some final touching in his photographs. He is talking about basics of GIMP. We have got 25-30 here. Most of them are probably new to photo editing softwares. So, basics are more facinating. I will share the slide very soon.

Updated : the slide is shared here.GIMP Workshop Slide

So, I was going through some links talking about IPR situations in India. In India people usually do not know what “copyright” is. Copyright is not even enforced to normal people. I guess its limited to large scale industries. The main reasons for this are mainly 2. 1: that people are not at all aware of it. 2: that India is a developing country, and enforcing copyright here will mean enforcing them to choose alternatives. I remember talking to an employee of this big firm (name/company-name compressed) who said that “we” know about piracy. Rather people sell pirated CDs in ground floor our office. “We” do not stop that, “we” encourage it.

I recently got to know about some talks titled “How to exploit IPR”. Apart from that while doing a study on newly made “Competition Act of India”, I got to know how India is bound to preserve IPR from abroad after signing TRIPS. India being one of the highly developing countries will soon start shifting towards bad business strategies. Though some efforts are being taken like CC India and Tempostand, (and soon free culture club at IITK ), we need to move fast. Its good to be ahead.

While doing some search I came by these 2 links which explain copyright/patent laws in India. Copyright period (in general) in India is “life+60″. And patent (in general) period is 20 years. And yeah, copyleft is copyrighted.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Patents-in-India:-Law-and-Procedure&id=69217

http://ezinearticles.com/?Copyright-in-India:-Law-and-Procedure&id=73309

2007 was overall good. I got to learn lots of things, and got to do lots of things. Got to talk to lot of cool people. Though I wouldn’t forget that it also brought 7th semester which was like the most difficult semester I ever had. This semester probably took my anxiety level to top. Some of the highlights of 2007 are below:

1. Got a job at Microsoft, India. I am excited about it.
2. Got involved into Free Culture activities.
3. Shifted 99% to open source softwares. (flash )
4. Shifted 100% to free songs. (though, this is true.)
5. Shifted to wonderful KDE. I will write an entry for it.
6. No more Gentoo, it takes time. Ubuntu on other hand is wonderful. (Apologies to all those who are on Gentoo or are thinking of shifting to Gentoo because I asked them to do so. )
7. Hiking
8. Another hobby now is Photography …. need money to buy DSLR.
9. Bought a new web space to play with different things. Its been wonderful till now.
10. Zeropage removed restrictions from their songs.
11. Kelly Allyn sent me her autograph, need to go home to get it.
12. Met some wonderful people during internship at Virginia Tech.
13. <compressed because its personal>

Hopes from 2008 :

1. Grad School or a good job (or a startup?)
2. DSLR
3. Free Culture Club at IITK
4. Passing IITK
5. openmoko / android
6. make IITK music club release an album under CC ( www.tempostand.com should help us)
7. Finish talk with Vox Populi guys

I have been thinking about business models for open source softwares. Though I couldn’t come up with proper answer. Lets see, let me try to start with different software people make and use.

Office : No doubt it needs very big amount of work. And if someone puts this much effort to make an Office package, why will he give it away for free? Of course not, it doesn’t make sense. Probably thats the reason why we do not have any open-source Office software. And surely Microsoft Office is way too good. OOo is dumped for long time now.

Matlab, Visual Studio etc : Again it requires big amount of investment and hard work. No reason one should give it away for free. Though yeah Eclipse is there. And I must say that it is very good. But isn’t it a way in which IBM is earning publicity? And isn’t it same with netbeans as well.

Computer Games : Again too much work and proficiency.

Operating System : Again, do you think open source can help make an Operating System any better? Oh yeah, bug fixing.. probably yes, but without incentive why will someone do quality work? Every second day one thing or another is broken. But yeah surely, like Redhat is doing, good things are possible with it, specially for server side technologies.

Other Desktop Applications :  Amarok, they are fighting to get funds… Is there any good voice chat client? Ekiga? does support proxy. Skype? no more an open source project. Gaim? not yet. Now don’t say that they are fighting in reverse engineering and other bullshit. Firefox? don’t you know that people start with Firefox but do not stick to it for long time. Thats a popular observation, isn’t it. Evolution? I wish they come up with something good. Though I guess they are also having problems (because of open source nature? I guess yes.)

I am not saying that open source is right or wrong. But at the end of the day, what a user wants is good software, softwares in which he need not be a geek to solve the problem. And surely as of now, I do not see open source work to give any good  reply to this need. You may say that Gutsy is a solution, or fedora 8 is awesome, and these distros solves most of the problems. But don’t you think you have been giving these arguments for last 20 years? When fedora 5 came, everyone said the same. When fedora 6 came same. And same goes with Ubuntu.

1 : Zeropage initially released its tracks under CC by-nd-nc. Their tracks are really cool. I specially liked Ambient India. So, I talked to them, and asked them if they could remove the nd-nc clauses, and indeed they did. It’s under CC by-sa now. )

2 : I asked pornophonique. to release their videos in OGG format. Kai stunted me saying “this wmv-stuff is quite a pain in the ass, i know!”. But they didn’t know how to convert the videos, so I suggested then ffmpeg2theora. But it seems they didn’t have time for it, so Kai has asked to me convert the videos and share it for them . I will do that as soon as possible.

3 : Antaragni is a cultural festival organized by IIT Kanpur (of course only students organize everything). Students from all over India comes and participate in this event. This time, antaragni has flash page. The flash used the song “Right Here Right Now by Fat Boy Slim”. Of course I knew that they don’t have license to use this song. Even in IITK, people don’t know that there is something called “copyright” and there is something called “license” and “piracy” is illegal. So, anyways in IITK.MISC newsgroup I raised this issue, and they had to remove the song. . Since the flash is not sounding cool without music, so I suggested them to one of the songs Jamendo offers. I mainly suggested them “Steep”, “Bradsucks”, “pornophonique” (yes, pornophonique’s songs are under ND clause, but they said, they will give permission very easily), “terremoto”, “Josh Woodward” and now I have told them about “Zeropage” as well. I am hoping that they will take my advise.

So, with the inclusion of nd and nc in the different licenses that CC offers, we can actually define Creative Commons License as a license which (at least) allows others to use the work for personal purpose, to distribute the work, to get the work free of cost. “No derivative allowed” basically didn’t (doesn’t?) make sense to me because I usually prefer Free Culture in the sense that I think people should be allowed to use others product in their own product so that the creativity will work upon the existing work rather than to build already existing work. So, with the same thoughts I contacted pornophonique, (Kai basically) and asked him if they could release their songs without nd clause. Well, he was aware of the issues ( I was impressed by that) and gave a good reason for that, quote from his mail

The songs are under nd because we want to know the idea or the script of the video/the remix before someone is using our songs e. g. for some rassist or sexist content. We wouldn’t like to be involved in stuff like that. Also the licence says that everyone should feel free to ask for our permission. And be assured that we got only a few principles that prevent us from giving anyone our authorization.

The reason is pretty genuine. So, I do not know to what extent cc-nd is logical.

In my post about google products, I had shown my wish to have a desktop application for calendar which should sync it’s data with an online server so that I will not have to open browser to see calendar, and I will be able to see calendar even if I do not have my laptop with me.

Now, in software engineering course, we are asked to make a software using different software engineering techniques. And I could persuade my project partners to work on this dream calendar. Mainly the calendar will have following properties :

1. API for making desktop application and web application. First release will have API for perl only. (will serve both desktop and web application )
2. All normal calendar things
3. The software will be under GPL.
4. Others will be able to change your calendar, if you have given them permission.
5. others will be able to send you a request to add an entry in your schedule, like your friend may want you to attend a meeting, (s)he can put an entry for that in your calendar, but you have to accept that request so it finally appear in your schedule.
6. We are trying to understand how iCal works, once we understand that, we will try to include iCal as well, so that you could use current softwares which supports iCal. (iCal is RFC standard for calendars, that means I can freely use it. right?)
7. As of now, if iCal doesn’t make sense, we will have our own thing, for now we are calling it oCal.
8. I will run this server on my web server, so if you others wouldn’t have a server to sync their data, they should be able to do that.
9. We are thinking of including some plugin system as well, so users could modify the calendar functionalities, though we are looking at how different plugin systems works
10. Current status of the project can be seen at http://rohitj.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=software_engineering_project

If you think you want a particular feature in the calendar, let me know. We want to know what users want.