Today marks the 365th day of my partnership with him. He is cool, very faithful and always there for me. It all started an year back when I entered a store in Begumpet to have a look at one of his friends whom I always wanted to try. Fortunately I developed a dislike towards his friend and that made me partner with him. b.t.w don't keep guessing about who it is, its my dear bike - Bajaj Pulsar 150 cc KS.

It accompanied me for 18600 KM in the last 365 days which comes to more than 50 KMs per day! The average mileage was 58KMPL, and that means more than 320 litres of petrol in one year. Fell down twice from it and bumped into a bicycle once. Maximum speed was 110KMPH near Jubilee Hills Checkpost.

more miles to go :)

The software industry is unique when it comes to warranties - all other industries give a warranty of their product being problem free while the software industry gives a disclaimer. Every software engineer agrees to the fact that no software is bug free but the software can definitely be close to being bug free.

The mozilla foundation on the 2nd day of August 2004 announced the 'Security Bug Bounty Program' according to which every security related bug would entitle the discoverer to get a $500 cash reward. Good effort to make the software close to being bug free. On the 14th of September 2004 the winners and the bugs reported by them were announced. Updates were released thus making the software free of the discovered bugs even before the crackers would take advantage of them!

Thats precisely why the open and free software are more secure and bugfree compared to the proprietary software. Did you know that even with close sourcecode the proprietary software have a higher probability of having bugs compared to the open/free software where even the crackers would have access to the source code?

More details on website of the mozilla foundation - http://www.mozilla.org/security/

For me linux operating system is a myth, its a story thats just been accepted! A year back when i approached Richard Stallman for an autograph, he said "If you want my autograph, you will have to make a promise, you should never refer to GNU/Linux Operating System by the name Linux".  May be he was right, but it then appeared strange to me.

An year after that i realize that he was correct. Linux is still a kernel - an important part of the operating system written by Linus Torvalds. It was not Linus who thought of the innovative GPL, nor did he write the many other packages that are required to complete the Operating System. It was GNU and the contributions that came from volunteers towards GNU that did most of the other part. GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”; it is pronounced “guh-noo”. Richard Stallman and many other volunteers using the name GNU contributed majority of the operating system that is now 'believed' to be linux.

Still not convinced? May be you are not aware that the GCC, EMacs, BASH and many other core utilities were written partially by Stallman himself. Contributions by other volunteers and contributors are listed on the gnu project directory. Linux definitely fills a big hole in the GNU project, but that definitely does not mean that Linux has taken over GNU.

Come to the reality, linux is a kernel and its the GNU/Linux that forms the entire operating system. So next time you come across someone talking about the 'linux operating system' correct them, it should either be 'linux kernel' or 'GNU/Linux Operating System' and do this before the name GNU is forgotten.

Why would anyone want to write a new operating system?  Am not sure of why others want to write, but following are the reasons that interest me.

• I love systems programming
• Existing projects are already too mature for me to contribute anything.  The most appealing is the linux kernel, but there is hardly anything left for me to do
• Its always exciting to say "I use my own operating system".
• World Dominance :)

Need more reasons to write an OS?  Take a look at any of the famous osdev websites.  Google would help you better in getting the links to those sites!

A great visionary and a young hacker, it took these two to start what we now know as the gnu and the linux kernel. It took ten years after the packages paired up for gnu/linux to be well known in India. Even this day, there are many computer programmers and engineers who have never heard of gnu and have a little idea about linux. Who is responsible? Is it the poor internet connectivity or the rush for money that makes the proprietary software more well known? Certainly there are more reasons than what most people understand... I would blame the Indian universities and the stake holders in policy related decision making.

Yesterday, my brother asked me if i could find him a visual studio cd. I asked him why and the answer almost shocked me - "We have M$ VB as part of a course in the curriculum". I was disturbed by the way a university forced its students to work on proprietary software. Anxiously had a look at the university's website to see if i can find more 'good' things. Most of the application forms distributed over the web were in the proprietary 'doc' format. A university to which atleast a ten thousand students apply every year for various programs was distributing its forms in a format which was not known to anyone except the makers of the software! Hence, atleast ten thousand more people using the proprietary software!

Many professors even this day use the proprietary formats for making presentations and distributing assignments, this not only forces use of non-free software but also encourages piracy and loss of ethics among the students. If the professors and the college policies encourage use of non-free standards where else will the students learn to use open standards?

So who is the salesman? People sitting out there in their offices or the universities that directly interact with tomorrow's engineers and scientists?

Suggestions on alternate formats for use:

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