[fossnews] Tamil computing and open source
- From: Shrinivasan T <tshrinivasan@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "fossnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <fossnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, fossnews <fossnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:24:24 +0530
few weeks ago, i attended a two days workshop on Tamil computing and open
source at Anna university.
here are some of my views on the event.
it is a good move to have such events regularly. thanks for Anna university
and infitt group for this.
we need more computer professionals to learn linguistic skills. Tamil needs
lot of tools like corpus, spell checkers, grammar checker, morphological,
lexican analyzer etc.
we have to create these tools and release them as free open source software.
i thought this event Will be fully hands on and it Will teach of to create
these software. but the event has more theory and very little hands on that
too in a in house, non free open source software.
there were lot English talks. though all the participants know Tamil, the
speakers loved to talk only in English. very few talked in Tamil.
they teach using theory slides. very less demos.
they compare with English which has many free open source tools on
linguistic. they asked to create more software for Tamil.
the sad part is many of them showed their own products like spell checkers
and corpus etc. but they only sell the binaries. they wont give source. but
they are waiting for someone to do open source projects for Tamil.
even in Anna university, there is a Tamil computing lab, named tacola. they
created a Tamil word analyzer, Tamil dictionary, search engine. but they
are not open source. though these products are funded by government, they
cant release the source for public.
Tamil virtual university also funds for many Tamil software. but they also
non free open source.
they are ready to talk a lot about Tamil and their own software. but they
are not ready to give the code.
frustrated to know these things.
decided to work on more free open source Tamil computing software.
we only have to give freedom to Tamil computing from these business people.
Will plan and call for volunteers to workshops, hackathon etc. let us join
together to do more.
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