I've researched the development and use of Free and Open Source Software for several years now. I am also a frequent user of software and content available under Free and Open Source licenses and Creative Commons licenses. Typical popular software titles are Ubuntu, Android, Apache, MySQL and perhaps the most well-known Creative Commons content is Wikipedia.

To that end, I have created a campus-wide initiative for students, staff and faculty to help foster education and collaboration around such ideas. From the site's "About" page:

I am pleased to write that San Francisco State University and One Laptop per Child Association have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on existing effort and future work.

From the MoU:

"OLPC and SFSU will use their best efforts to establish a long-term cooperation and collaboration in the field of 1:1 computing in certain primary schools in California and around the world. OLPC is interested in pursuing opportunities in the areas of Education, Technology and Outreach.

The Parties agree to work together to support the San Francisco Bay Area volunteer community through its monthly meetings, lending library and annual summit. Further, the parties agree to support faculty research, community service, student projects and internships in the OLPC context. These may include, but are not limited to pedagogical approaches, content generation, software development, hardware testing, network analysis, community outreach and other related topics that go towards ensuring the sustainability of OLPC in different parts of the world."

First, a quick flashback.

I have worked at SF State for close to 12 years. As part of SF State's strategic plan, Goal 1 states:

The Matador Network has a list of 50 non-profits that make a difference. Of course, One Laptop per Child is on the list, but so is our local favorite, Green WiFi! Both efforts are powered by the goodness of Free and Open Source Software. (Note: The irony of Intel being a partner in this effort isn't lost on me )

SF State University's involvement with OLPC is fairly evident, but the Green WiFi connection is interesting as well. I first met Bruce Baikie (Green WiFi founder) a few years ago before knowing him through OLPC efforts in Haiti, Senegal, etc. He was testing his solar-powered gear in the neighborhood right across from the main campus. I really wanted to see his solar setup, so I dropped him a note and showed up at his place to see what he had rigged together. Next, we crossed paths when Green WiFi wanted to work on a Solar Kiosk - dubbed EcoOsk - with SF State students. That effort has since evolved and continues, with a time line set for some time in Spring 2012.

Software Freedom Day is upon us. We will be celebrating on September 15, 2011. We host the event on Thursday instead of Saturday because we have very little foot traffic on weekends. The wiki page is up at http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2011/USA/CA/SanFrancisco/SanFranciscoStateUniversity

We'll be there with a table of info and CDs and green laptops from 10AM to 2PM. Its an open event, so all are invited to drop by.

OLPC SF Community summit 2011 is upon us. This year's event will be on October 21, 22 and 23.The summit will be at San Francisco State University's Downtown Center. Many kudos to the College of Business for providing us the space!

• October 21, 2011: 5pm Registration and Reception.
• October 22, 2011: 9AM to 5PM Sessions
• October 23: 9AM to 5PM Sessions
• October 23: Evening BBQ gathering

Keep an eye on http://olpcsf.org/summit More details will be posted soon as the sessions solidify. The registration link should be up soon as well.

Update: There was a typo in the commands below. Fixed, thanks to Chris Leonard (cjl). 

Skype is a lousy piece of proprietary software that sucks big time, but the masses are hooked. So what's new? OK, now that its out of my system, let's move on

My mother's Ubuntu-powered Asus EeePC wasn't working (power supply died), so one day she asked me (more like pestered me) "You have so many laptops, so why can't I talk to my sister on Skype?". She was talking about my OLPC XO laptops. Both my daughters have one I have a XO-1 and XO-1.5 . OLPC had recently released their latest build 874 for both OLPC XO-1 and OLPCXO-1.5. So, I got onto the Skype website and looked for their installer for Linux. To my pleasant surprise, they had Skype 2.2 Beta for Fedora 13+. The OLPC build is based on Fedora 14. I downloaded the RPM using the GNOME side of things on the XO and installed it.

Amazigh. ⵉⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⴻⵏ

Many Berbers call themselves some variant of the word Imazighen (singular: Amazigh), possibly meaning "free people" or "free and noble men"^{[from Wikipedia]}

The first time I came across that word was way back in 2005 when I started a Wikipedia page for my good friend Cheb-i-Sabbah. Fast forward to 2011. I have a student - Tilila El Moujahid - who is from Morocco, and is quite familiar with the Amazigh culture and language.She went to school here and works with a community not far from it.

I've been looking into OpenVPN for some time now. Its a SSL-based VPN system but does not run in your browser. It relies on the openSSL package for all its crypto, and uses either certificates or pre-shared secrets to run crypto tunnels across two or more machines. In the p2p mode it simply sets up a tunnel between the two machines. You can however also use it in a server mode to run a hub-like server and hang a bunch of tunnels off of it, all ending in different clients. The Linux binary for OpenVPN is the same for both client and server. What varies is the configuration. apt-get install openvpn or yum install openvpn usually does it. On Fedora, you'll have to set it up for autostart at boot time though. You can also set up a GNOME Network Manager plugin for OpenVPN, but I haven't looked into it.

I love Lego. I really do. I even use it in my work.What do I do with it? I cannot reveal that as yet

Lego has some very neat robotics kits under the name of Mindstorms. A lesser-known fact is that the kit is named after a book titled "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas" written by Prof. Seymour Papert. Lego recently came out with a smaller kit called Lego WeDo. This kit costs US $129.95 and comes with a motor, a motion sensor, a distance sensor and a USB-based hub. The robots built using this kit can be controlled by a variety of software platforms, including Scratch - a free and open source programming environment designed for children. Its actually quite powerful.

For a long time now, I've struggled with the idea of access to information in the middle-of-nowhere places like Bhagmalpur. Well, I shouldn't call it middle-of-nowhere. Given India's population density (943/sq. mile), there is no such thing as middle-of-nowhere :-) It is however very remote as far as IP landscape is concerned. Mobile phone services are available, but not the smartphone kind. I'm sure we'll get there some day.