COMMUNITY Brave GNU World

The monthly GNU Column Brave GNU World

n this monthly column we bring Welcome to another issue of Georg’s Brave you the news from within the GNU Iproject. In this issue we will look at GNU World.This time with a variety of topics localisation within KDE and email with Java. We also cover software patents and from different areas. speech compression. BY GEORG . F. GREVE KDE en_GB John Knight pointed the “KDE en_GB” Therefore John believes that as one of was lost because his email address does project out to me, of which he is the the major results of his project, KDE will not seem to work. If Will Stephenson initiator and coordinator. Goal of the experience an advantage in schools and reads this: John asks you to get in touch project is to provide a British English universities of Great Britain, Australia with him. (en_GB) localization for the well-known and other former English speaking Also John would like to encourage the K Desktop Environment (KDE). members of the British Empire. large distributions to support the project, Many people value “their” English John himself happens to be Australian since some of them require installing the and, as in this case, do not feel comfort- and started the project about one and a package by hand. able with the far-spread American half years ago because – according to his Within the project, a list of all English English. This project allows them to own sentiment – he used to be overly speaking countries has been created, choose their familiar brand of English. pedantic and wanted to put the skill to which lists the preferred form of English It also offers advantages for the good use. within a country. Even if this list is not educational field, because in some Together with Malcolm Hunter (Eng- complete, it could be interesting for the countries, British English is the land), Dwayne Bailey (South Africa), distributors to have the optimal number authoritative form and pupils only Aston Clulow (Australia) and Ken of automatic defaults. seeing American English on their Knight, his twin brother, John is trying And finally the work of Dwayne computers might develop problems with to keep the translation as up-to-date should be mentioned. He is being their own language. as possible, because the ongoing deve- financed by the South African lopment provides government to create modules for all 11 for a permanently languages spoken in South Africa – changing basis. when John spoke to him last, he was This is one of the busy with both the Xhosa and Zulu main difficulties modules for KDE. the project is The freedom of doing such projects is always facing. truly invaluable and cannot be put into Other problems monetary terms; it is clearly a major arise from argument for . Also it shows that Free Software not only writing mixtures encourages cultural diversity between of British and countries, it also strengthens cultural American English; diversity within a country. also sometimes As usual within the KDE project, the Americanisms are work of the translation teams is also overlooked by the published under the terms of the GNU translators. And General Public License and if you are so, additional interested in more information about pairs of eyes are translations of KDE, you should take a always welcome. look at the KDE home page for By the way: It translators and documentation writers appears that where they will welcome you. [1] contact with Will This is also where new translators can Stephenson, find information and new translation Figure 1: Minimise the use of “minimize” with en_GB local support another volunteer, projects can be started.

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At the moment JMail supports English and French; help by translators for other languages, as well as help by proof- readers for the English version would be very welcome. Even more important than translators are more users giving feedback and bug reports to help Yvan reaching version 1.0, which he would like to release towards the end of this year. Speex One of the areas most encumbered by the existance of software patents is the digital compression of voice audio files, which provides the basis for internet telephony (“Voice over IP” VoIP), audio books, internet radio, voice mail and other future applications. Since Free Software is not compatible with a monopolizing system, a Free Figure 2: JMail main window with Motif look and feel Software implementation of patented algorithms can only be done under very JMail of course notably encumbered as Free special circumstances, which are not met JMail [2] is an email program written in Software, since it requires a proprietary in this area. Users of Free Software are Java by Yvan Norsa and published under Java environment, making the user therefore left with few choices the GNU General Public License (GPL). dependant on them. This well-known nowadays, which either means low Originally started as a homework Java problem has still not been quality and/or low compression rate or project for school, JMail has turned out completely solved. encodings that were optimized for to be a complete email client with LDAP For further development, Yvan plans music, like Ogg-Vorbis. [3] support that can be used on all platforms on reimplementing some parts of code With Speex, [4] a recent addition to supporting Java. This makes it that he feels are unsatisfactory, as well the GNU Project, Jean-Marc Valin is particularly interesting for anyone as introducing local folders and thread working on a Free Software solution having to work on different platforms. support. Also the profile files will be unencumbered by software patents. He Despite the GPL license, the project is changed from plain text to XML. is being supported in this task by David

Figure 3: Linphone making use of the Speex protocols Figure 3: Phone home using Speex on LinPhone

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Rowe and Steve Underwood, as well as he is now working on his Ph.D. in the in Europe the patent approving instance, several people helping investigate group for mobile robotics, which gives the European Patent Office, is neither patents to ensure that Speex does not him freedom when working on speech democratically controlled nor is it violate them. coding. responsible for approved patents. This Started in February 2002, the project is It is a rather sad statement for the makes software patents the golden goose beeing written entirely in ANSI C to keep future of science that such a disclaimer for patent lawyers and the patent office. it as portable as possible and is pub- is necessary nowadays. Software patents can be created in lished under the GNU Lesser General almost any number, do not require a Public License (LGPL) to maintain Software patents connection to reality and their only interoperability with any other As the previous feature shows, software purpose is to start legal struggles. proprietary software. patents have a very immediate effect Software patents do not only provide As the project is still in a relatively on some projects and we have to an efficient obstacle to innovation, they young development phase, the file and fear that this will spread further. By also force companies to spend large stream format often changing from now, many people have heard about sums on patent lawyers and fees and version to version – stabilizing this is the software patent problem – also make it necessary to maintain much one of the most important tasks at hand. thanks to the untiring work of larger “war chests” for legal struggles. Despite this difficulty, there are people like Hartmut Pilch and Jean-Paul Therefore software patents weaken already first applications of Speex – for Smets. innovation and the economic situation example Linphone [5] by Simon Morlat, It seems there are still a lot of wrong by introducing a kind of artificial friction an internet telephony program for ideas and confusion around this topic – loss which subsidizes part of the legal GNU/Linux, which is also building upon especially with decision makers and system itself. the GNU oSIP introduced in politicians, because otherwise some This is supported by practical Linux Magazine issue #22. [6] statements become incomprehensible. experience as well as theoretical studies, The most severe problem for Speex It is time for Brave GNU World to point because as yet there is no proof that development are software patents, out the problem from a macro- software patents are beneficial for though. They require permanent economical perspective. society, but there are many facts attention to check whether patents are As examples in the United States showing their harmful effects. being violated and how they can be show, [7] the actual effect of software It should be allowed to raise the circumvented. This provides a significant patents is introducing a mechanism question whether the group of patent roadblock to innovation and help for this which allows larger companies to raise offices and patent lawyers needs such a is very much welcome. or lower their thumb, deciding about life subsidy financed by the overall Depending on the perspective, some or death of innovative ideas and economic situation. could consider the unsatisfactoy music- companies. They provide a carte blanche For those who would like to get deeper encoding-capabilities of Speex a to force anyone into legal struggles that into the topic, the material collected by disadvantage; but for this purpose there are usually survived only by the larger, the FFII [8] is recommended. Also I ask is Ogg-Vorbis, to which Speex seeks to wealthy company. everybody to support the petition for a provide as supplemental, and not as a The creation of software patents and software patent free Europe [9] and write replacement or competitor. the legal struggles about software letters to the editor to the mainstream Besides the patent problems, there are patents both require patent lawyers. And press, asking them to address this topic. also other issues you can support Speex development with. Developers with a INFO background in digital signal processing [1] KDE internationalization home page:http://www.i18n.kde.org (DSP) are sought for quality [2] JMail home page:http://www.ultim8team.com/~nono/html_en/index.htm improvement and help would also be [3] Ogg-Vorbis home page:http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/ useful for the API and the encoder/decoder. [4] Speex home page:http://speex.sourceforge.net Similar to many young projects, Speex [5] Linphone home page:http://www.linphone.org also is lacking in documentation, as the [6] Linux Magazine issue #22,Brave GNU World,p97 developers readily admit. So there are [7] Gary L. Reback,“Patently Absurd”,Forbes Magazine: http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/ many possibilities to participate. 044.html As a side note, Jean-Marc would like [8] FFII home page:http://www.ffii.org to see it pointed out that being member [9] Petition for a Software Patent Free Europe:http://www.noepatents.org of the University of Sherbrooke does not [10]polyXmass home page:http://www.polyxmass.org put him into a conflict of interests [11] DotGNU Forum project page:http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/dotgnu-forum/ although the university is notorious for [12] DotGNU home page:http://www.dotgnu.org holding onto software patents on speech coding and compression. Although he [13] Home page of Georg’s Brave GNU World:http://brave-gnu-world.org Send ideas,comments and questions to [email protected] made his masters degree in that group,

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polyXmass allow working with all polymers, which documentation browser, download Filippo Rusconi of the “Centre National would be defined by the user. PolyXmass server, message boards and an integrated de la Recherche Scientifique” (CNRS) is this reimplementation. chat system. has published polyXmass, [10] a Development on the program is not DotGNU Forum was written in C# and program for mass spectrometry “closed.” When a colleague recently it is possible to write extensions in other simulation, as Free Software under the sketched some complicated formulas on languages supported by DotGNU. GNU General Public License (GPL) with a piece of paper, which required Filippo According to Peter Minten, author of support of his university. to compute masses in a rather tricky DotGNU Forum, one of the major The project aims at providing a way, he wrote a sophisticated molecular advantages of his project is its client- modular framework which allows the calculator for polyXmass and called it server based design philosophy, which user to define new polymer chemistries, polyXcalc. So it is a very lively project tries to keep the server as small and build them into sequences and perform that is already very useful to many users stable as possible. Also the extensibility sophisticated computations on them that as the feedback shows. is one reason why he believes people simulate chemical reactions in order to For the future it is planned to make the should consider using DotGNU Forum. create a simulated mass spectrogram program more modular, possibly through The idea for the project evolved out of reflecting all the previous steps. CORBA/Orbit code, but these plans have some first thoughts about virtual The program was written in C with the not yet solidified. If you would like to universities and class rooms, which has Gtk+ toolkit and its target audience contribute, you’re surely welcome. been generalized to virtual places. In would be users of mass spectrometers, reference to the ancient romans, where especially chemists, biochemists and DotGNU Forum the forum was a center of students. And far as the author knows, The DotGNU Forum project [11] is part communication and activity, the project there are no comparable projects. of the DotGNU project, [12] which aims was then dubbed DotGNU Forum. In the eyes of Filippo Rusconi, at creating an “ for the Right now the server still requires polyXmass has many strengths. It is very internet” and a Free alternative to some work before the first applications versatile when defining polymers, Microsofts .NET initiative, since the can be written and help is very welcome incredibly flexible in displaying latter threatens the freedom of users. for writing code and documentation. sequences, allowing users to draw the The goal of DotGNU Forum is For the not-so-close future, Peter “letters” of the “alphabet” themselves, establishing a platform which allows envisions 3D-forums in which people along with being very quick in the multiple users to simultaneously work can see each other virtually and talk to chemical computations. on data together through communication each other through Voice over IP (VoIP). Since XML is used to save polymer channels such as Internet Relay Chat It will certainly be a while before this definitions and sequences, all data exists (IRC), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), becomes possible. as ASCII and can be edited by hand or Instant Messaging (IM), Bulletin Board The next step planned is to support imported into own programs. Systems (BBS), USENET or HTTP. EMACS and other editors as input The project was born out of the wish The DotGNU Forum server also interfaces for the forum. to move to GNU/Linux, because provides “plazas,” virtual meeting points Oh, and as a part of the GNU Project, originally Filippo had written a program which may contain data or applications DotGNU Forum is naturally released called massXpert under Windows, which relevant for certain topics. Users can under the GNU General Public License. allowed calculation of proteins only. meet and work together on a project. Instead of simply porting that program, For this the DotGNU Forum provides Until next month he reimplemented it in a way that would several means of communication, like That should be enough for this month. As usual please feel free to provide questions, ideas, feedback, comments and news about interesting projects by mailing them to the usual address. [13]■

Georg C. F. Greve Dipl.-Phys. has been using free software for many years. He was an earlier adopter of HOR

T GNU/Linux. After becoming active in the GNU project he formed the Free Foundation Europe, of which he is the

THE AU current president. More information can be found at http://www. gnuhh.org. Figure 4: PolyXmass – the user can make very finely customized polymer sequence cleavages

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