lawgon

Meet Mr Justice Yatinder Singh, sitting judge in the Allahabad high court and a linux geek. He has converted his fellow judges and his court to linux. And like everyone who moves to linux in the government domain, hit a hurdle with the remington keyboard. The remington keyboard is the old typewriter keyboard in the various indian languages and lakhs of government employees have been using it - and they expect to continue using it even when they shift to computers. But no linux distro has it. We faced the problem in tamil and were able to use scim to create the layout which is now working fine. And thanks to Gora and Karunakar, linux in Hindi also has it - and Justice Singh has kindly agreed to test it free of cost. Its however annoying to note that neither Redhat nor Novell who are the major suppliers of linux to the government have bothered to implement the remington keyboard. Doze has had it for years!

At Delhi recently i had a chance to have a small conversation with Michael Tieman of redhat and a long conversation with Eben Moglen of FSF. Both Americans active in FOSS, but very very different. Michael is sort of tentative and is making a huge effort to understand India. He quotes Amartya Sen and Tagore. And says he tries to understand every country where he operates - and enjoys it. He gave a talk, and, unlike a lot of others who roll out the same talk everywhere they go, he tried to relate to what was happening in the conference around him. It was a tentative type of talk - he put some ideas down. Food for thought.

And a long chat with Eben Moglen. Totally opposite of Michael, he orates - he has vast experience and has his whole field at his fingertips. Never hums and haws, the sentences come rolling out, each one perfectly formed. Inspiring (but tiring). Got a a lot of information from him - and a glimpse of the battles being fought out there. Something about the strategy and tactics too.

So which style is more effective?