We conducted software freedom day in MIT in order
motivate students to get involved in open source
projects and as an free software awareness program on
sep 16th, 2006 at AU-KBC research center, MIT.
The function began by an introduction to open source
software by Mr.M.Satheesh Kumar. His speech is as
follows,
"Open source, roughly means the Linux, firebox,
contributed by nearly 5000 developers across 116
countries. What is open source? OSS is the software in
which the source code can be modified on the
requirement of users and developers. Government is
looking to cut costs associated with proprietary
packages to embrace open source. India's Communist
state Kerala has already logged out windows to avoid
monopoly in operating system and to promote Linux.
Application soft wares will never be free unless
otherwise there is free operating system. Though there
are a lot of Linux distributors Red hat, Suse etc.,
the desktop users still feel hard to use it. The most
famous Linux distributor "Ubuntu" (with the tag line
'Linux for human beings') solves this problem and
offers rich support to the users.
* As we have a lot of developers involved how the
standard of the software is maintained? Most of the
operating systems like GNOME have its own set of
guidelines to be followed when we modify its source
code.
* What motivates developers contribute to open source?
(1) Developers see software as science knowledge to be
shared
(2) Somebody have the hobby of doing something that's
different
(3) Most of the operating systems have a log file
listing the contributors to code. Some developers find
it desirable to participate in operating systems to
signal their ability.
How open source is used in various domains. We
discussed most common open source soft wares in
networking, electronics and aeronautical.
(1)ELECTRONICS (by Mr.T.Sivabalan, ECE)
-gEDA is used in electronic design automation
-Robotics Darwin2k, is a simulation software
-TKGate
-XCircuit circuit designing
(2)MECHANICAL (by Mr.Kandasamy, Aero)
-VariCAD is similar to CAD, but we can edit at any
stage of drawing)
-flightTR is a flight simulation
(3)NETWORKING (by Mr.Savio Paul, ECE)
Most networking tools and Internet are using open
source, the various application of open source in this
context include,
-ENS, is a network simulation
-NFS (network file system), is used in the networking
of 2 UNIX computers
-tcp dump used for debugging network application and
setup, also for interception
-Wireshark
-Ethereal is similar to network monitor, for capturing
packets, sniffing unencrypted passwords, analyzing
protocols
-dsniff is a collection of tools for analyzing network
-Arpwatch
-snort, which is used for detecting network intrusion
-open SSH, which is open source version of secure
shell
-Samba, helps in the networking of Linux and windows
computers
Mr.Srinavasn, Project Scientist gave a short speech
about open source. He correlated a software with an
electronic circuit without knowing the internals of
the circuit we feel hard to use it or modify it
(imagine that we are given a simple black box saying
it be an amplifier). The free in free software doesn't
mean 'free' in price, it is the 'free' in freedom. The
open source projects are classified as code
development which involves developing the software,
testing in which most of the testing techniques are
used to test the soft wares and documentation for
documenting the operating systems. He wanted the
students to get involved in practicing scilab and
calculix for their experiments.
The function was concluded by a brief speech on
opportunities in open source. Hope this would be a
great motivation to the students to drive them into
open source.
Venue : AU-KBC research centre, MIT.
Date : Sep 16th, 2006
--
Satheesh Kumar M,
Computer Society, MIT.
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