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ସଫ୍ଟଓଏର ସ୍ୱାଧୀନତା ଦିବସ: ଆମ ହାତେ ଆମ କୋଡ଼ ଲେଖିବା
Software Freedom Day (SFD), which celebrates the use of free and open software, was celebrated in many cities today. The piece sheds light on the philosophy of software freedom, and how free and open source software is making a significant social change. I have also shared how anyone can contribute to the FOSS movement in different ways and celebrate SFD.
It's September, and That Means It's Time for Software Freedom Day
Software Freedom Day (SFD), which celebrates the use of free and open software, is just around the corner on September 17. When the day first started in 2004, only 12 teams from different places joined, but it has since grown to include hundreds registered events around the world, depending on the year.
Submitted Comments on the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016
Last month, the Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department of the Government of Telangana released the first public draft of the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016, and sought comments from various stakeholders in the state and outside. The draft policy not only aims to facilitate and provide a framework for proactive disclosure of data created by the state government agencies, but also identify the need for integrating such a mandate within the information systems operated by these agencies as well. CIS is grateful to be invited to submit its detailed comments on the same. The submission was drafted by Anubha Sinha and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.
A workshop to improve Telugu Wikipedia articles on Nobel laureates
Many articles about Nobel laureates are missing in the Telugu Wikipedia. Recently undergraduate students from four different disciplines of the Andhra Loyola College (ALC), Vijayawada gathered to create and improve articles related to Nobel laureates.
Campaign for relicensing copyrighted books under Creative Commons licenses
A campaign has been started to relicense Telugu-language books of several noted authors from "all rights reserved" to Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) license.
Training-the-trainer programme and Mediawiki training at Pune
A two-day long train-the-trainer and Mediawiki training programme was organised during May 28-29 in Pune to better capacity of Wikimedians both technically, and outreach and community building.
Tools orientation for Telugu Wikimedians of Hyderabad
To help Wikimedians learn about essential tools that are used across Wikimedia projects, a tools orientation session was organised during the monthly meetup on July 10 at Hyderabad.
Submitted Comments on the 'Government Open Data Use License - India'
The public consultation process of the draft open data license to be used by Government of India has ended yesterday. Here we share the text of the submission by CIS. It was drafted by Anubha Sinha, Pranesh Prakash, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.
Edit-a-thon at DSERT Bengaluru to improve Science-related articles in Kannada Wikipedia
We have been working with the Department of State Educational Research and Training of Karnataka (DSERT), a Government of Karnataka-run research and training institution headquartered in Bengaluru. With the hope of expanding the reach of Science-related content in Kannada Wikipedia, we organised an edit-a-thon spanning over three days from the 11th January through the 13th.
Online edit-a-thon on incidents in Telugu
A week-long online edit-a-thon was organised by the Telugu Wikipedia community to cover popular social, political and other events on the Telugu Wikipedia.
Public Consultation for the First Draft of 'Government Open Data Use License - India' Announced
The first public draft of the open data license to be used by Government of India was released by the Department of Legal Affairs earlier this week. Comments are invited from general public and stakeholders. These are to be submitted via the MyGov portal by July 25, 2016. CIS was a member of the committee constituted to develop the license concerned, and we contributed substantially to the drafting process.
Developing Open Educational Resources in Indian Languages
The Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), in collaboration with the Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), has been involved in organising workshops on developing open educational resources (OER) in Indian languages with undergraduate and postgraduate students across various partner institutions. The objective of these workshops is to introduce students to: a) tools of collaborative knowledge production on the Internet, and b) methods for generating new online content in Indian languages.
Comments on the National Geospatial Policy (Draft, V.1.0), 2016
The Department of Science and Technology published the first public draft of the National Geospatial Policy (v.1.0) on May 05, 2016, and invited comments from the public. CIS submitted the following comments in response. The comments were authored by Adya Garg, Anubha Sinha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.
Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map
The politics of making and using maps in India has taken a sudden and complex turn with the publication of the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. Contrary to the expectations arising out of several government schemes that are promoting the development of the new digital economy in India – from start-ups to the ongoing expansion of connectivity network – the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and other opportunities involving maps. This article by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg was published by The Wire on May 16, 2016.
Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon organised at Sagara, Karnataka
A two-day-long Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised at Sagara, Karnataka during January 26-27. A photowalk was also organised on the 25th to cover places of encyclopedic importance.
Legal Challenges to Mapping in India #1 - Laws, Policies, and Cases
Responding to the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill and the draft National Geospatial Policy made public recently, this post provides an overview of the present configuration of laws, policies, and guidelines that provides the legal framework in India for governance of creation and sharing of geospatial data in India. The post also studies these policies in action by describing the key legal cases around the creation and use of geospatial data. The next post of this series will document the reflections and opinions of the key geospatial industry actors in India, as well as the free and open source mapping community.
Stats for March 2016
CIS-A2K team closely works with 5 Indian languages, we call as focus language areas. Here are the stats for the month of March 2016.
Images and links matter quality
Wikipedia articles are considered of a higher quality when they have illustrations. An article without images is considered dull. Wikipedia is all about references. Any information on Wikipedia is encouraged to have verifiable citations. Hence images and external links form a criterion for quality of articles on Wikipedias. This blog post tries to analyse the current scenario of CIS-A2K's Focus language areas with respect to images and links.
Edit-a-thon organised to grow content on medicinal plants in Kannada Wikipedia
Two two-day long edit-a-thons were organised in St. Aloysius College and St. Agnes College, both in Mangalore, during March 10-11 and March 12-13 respectively. The edit-a-thons were aimed at creating and enhancing Wikipedia articles related to medicinal plants.
Introducing Odia Wikipedia to students of Utkal University, Bhubaneswar
A four-hour-long workshop was organised at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha on February 25, 2016 for the students of Master of Computer Applications (MCA) and Master in Arts, Department of Odia-language.
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