XYWrite reincarnation

["R. E. Stannard Jr." restannardjr@xxxxxxxx]

This morning the items appended below turned up on another listserve. It
struck me that if XYWrite is nearly or actually dead as a commercial
product, it might be ripe for reincarnation in India as a free spirit
serving the noncommercial masses worldwide.

India has become such a programmer hotspot that Silicon Valley recruits
there. The motivation and capacity may be there to take a first-rate open
flexible word-processor, breathe new life into it, and release it soaring
into the wild.

Surely if TTG is bankrupt, its XY rights should be available for the kind
of pittance a foundation could afford or find support for from such deep
pockets as the Soros Foundation? It is also my impression that XYWrite is
exceptionally adaptable to other languages, yes? And India is an apt
development mileu because it has both a strong English language tradition
and myriad indigenous languages, coupled with extraordinary growth of
programming talent.

I'm only a semi-cyberliterate user and afficionado. But do any of the
gurus and mentors on this listserve have views on the vistas opened by the
items below? Are those with the savvy and lingo interested in drawing the
attention of Richard Stallman or whoever to the potential here? If he is
unaware of XYWrite and its present condition, the WSJ article and other
references could background him quickly and the experts on this listserve
could detail the strengths and versatility.

Is all this too far out? Or does XYWrite have a glimmer of hope for
eternal life?

       Ted Stannard, just retired for third time
       UPI correspondent  59-69 US/Asia/UN
       journalism education 69-01 US/Asia/MiddleEast

FORWARDED MATERIAL=======================
ORIGINS:

  Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 10:38:42 -0400
  From: "George(s) Lessard" 
  Subject: B Y T E S F O R A L L :
  Oct 2001 issue ------- Forwarded message follows -------

  Date sent: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 09:02:01 +0530 (IST)
  From:   Frederick Noronha 
  To:    bytesforall@xxxxxxxx
  Subject:  BYTESFORALL: Oct 2001 issue
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_/ B y t e s  F o r  A l l --- http://www.bytesforall.org
_/ Making Computing Relevant to the People of South Asia
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OPEN SOURCE -- TECHNOLOGY FOR SUSTAINABLE LEARNING: The debates about
harnessing the benefits of information technology (IT) in the public
interest have centred on issues such as Internet connectivity and
computing hardware.

To date minimal attention has been paid to the central role of
software. Open source software is being seen as a way of providing
tailor-made software to help civil society organizations achieve their
goals and to contribute to meeting the needs of developing countries (From
Alliance / Allavida). For further information about open source software:
http://www.opensource.org
http://www.communitytechnology.org/asp-oss/
http://www.oneworld.net/thinktank/iktools/   http://www.techsoup.org

**********************************************************

MULTILINGUALISM: UNESCO prepares recommendation on multilingualism and
universal access to cyberspace. areas touched on include facilitating
access to telematics services, promoting multilingualism; faciliating
access through development of public domain content; access through
application of exemptions to copyright.
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mul_recom/

******************************************************

UNESCO AND FREE SOFTWARE: Free software faces difficult challenges and
dangers In an article for UNESCO Free Software Portal, Richard Stallman,
founder of the Free Software Foundation and the author of the GNU General
Public License (GPL), and the developer of software like gcc and Emacs,
outlines the development in this area since 1984.

"I'm grateful to UNESCO for recognizing that, in the domain of software,
free software disseminates human knowledge in a way that non-free software
cannot do" says Stallman.

http://
www.unesco.org/webworld/portal_freesoft/stallman_011001.shtml

*******************************************************

FREE SOFTWARE... IN INDIA:

Some weeks back, India joined the Free Software movement. A group of
government officials and Free Software practitioners and enthusiasts in
India persuaded Richard Stallman to establish an Indian Chapter of the
Free Software Foundation.

On July 20, 2001, the Free Software Foundation inaugurated Free Software
Foundation-India, [http://www.fsf.org.in], an affiliate organization
headquartered in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, at the "Freedom First!"
ceremonies. FSF India will be the national agency for the promotion of the
use of Free Software in India.

Free Software helps countries foster an indigenous software industry,
because it encourages solidarity, collaboration and voluntary community
work among programmers and computer users to create viable alternatives to
proprietary software products, since it permits access to the software by
all developers, not just a privileged few.    http://www.fsf.org.in

***********************************************

LOW-COST COMPUTERS FROM BRAZIL (The Digital Beat):

The Brazilian government recently announced a project that will make
stripped-down desktop computers, known as "Popular PCs," available for
about $300. Developers were able to save on licensing fees by using free,
open-source Linux as the operating system
instead of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows.
Related Web Sites
Brazilian Committee for Internet Administration http://www.cg.org.br/
Simputer
http://www.simputer.org/

****************************************************

INDLINUX PLANS: Venkatesh (Venky) Hariharan  writes,

"IndLinux is a voluntary, not-for-profit effort to deliver the benefits of
Information Technology to the Indian masses. The project is motivated by
the realization that imminent technological advances offer a huge
opportunity for developing countries to harness IT for the common man.

"We foresee an exponential drop in the price of computing and
communications technologies in the next few years. In our opinion, these
changes will make IT affordable to tens of millions of people within a
three-five year time frame. A huge amount of work need
to be done to take advantage of the imminent revolution in low cost
hardware and communications technologies....

"The lack of Indian language software is therefore one of the fundamental
obstacles to bridging the digital divide in India. [Our] proposal deals
with IndLinux's approach to bridging the
digital divide in India and why we feel that this approach can pay
enormous dividends from a social venture capital standpoint."

********************************************************

CURRENT LANGUAGE SITUATION IN INDIA: Hariharan describes the current
situation thus,

"Commercial software vendors, in their wisdom, have ignored the Indian
language market under the argument that the purchasing power of the
non-English speaking market is limited. Microsoft has limited itself to
enabling Windows at the operating system level for Indian languages but
has not yet taken the initiative to create Indian language user
interfaces.

"The current set of players in the Indian language market are small
players who are focussed on selling fonts, word-processing applications
and web localization tools. None of them are focussed on building the
underlying infrastructure for enabling Indian
language computing since there is no commercial incentive for them to do
so."

IndLinux, he says, proposes to use a collaborative approach to create
Indian language user interfaces to the Linux operating system, and
distribute these free of cost.

*****************************************************

INDIANISATION OF LINUX: Venky also argues that "the Indianisation of Linux
is probably one of the most practical ways of making information
technology available to millions and millions of Indians. It is now upto
linguistic and technical groups to collaborate and make things happen."

******************************************************

LINUX DOCUMENTATION FOR INDIA:

Mahendra M from Bangalore  tells us about a new Linux
Localisation Initiative. Says he:

"Our main aim is to translate all Linux Documentation, available from the
Linux Documentation Project (www.linuxdoc.org), into Indian languages. We
have just started the work, and are in the process of translating
documents now." Volunteers needed
from across India (and beyond!)

http://lli.linux-bangalore.org



=====
___________________________________________________________________
R.E.Stannard Jr. em: stannard@xxxxxxxx or restannardjr@xxxxxxxx
Femmy T. Stannard em: femmystannard@xxxxxxxx
r: 712 Highland Dr, Bellingham, WA98225-6412, USA. ph:(360)392-0712
[prof. emeritus WESTERN WASHINGTON U, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY IN CAIRO]
===================================================================

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