CYBER QUIZ: i4d Quiz-10: Open Source by Dr D.C.Misra

CYBER QUIZ: i4d Quiz-10: Open Source by Dr D.C.Misra
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Proprietary versus Open Source continues to be a raging debate for last more than a decade. Both sides have passionate advocates and they have their advantages and disadvantages. As a result both sides continue to exist though fiercely challenging each other. Nevertheless, the open source movement has made impressive gains in the recent past. Let us check.
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1.Who may be regarded as the (a) grand father, (b) father, and (c) favourite uncle of the open source movement?

2.(i) What is common between the following: (a) Linus Torvalds, (b) Alan Cox, and (c) Ted Ts'o, and (ii) What is Open Source and who coined the term and when?

3.What is GNU Project?

4.Who founded the Free Software Foundation and when?

5.What are the following: (a) GNU Emacs, (b) GCC, (c) Bash, (d) Copyleft, (e) GNU GPL, and (f) GNU Hurd?

6.(a) What is Minix, who wrote it, and for what, and (b) What is TEX, who created it, and when?

7.Claimed to be the largest open source project ever and the first `killer app' from the open source, what are OO and OOO?

8.Who launched world's first open source geographical information system (GIS) software, Gram Chitra, and when?

9.This was an interesting year in retrospect– a major operating system with free source code, a legendary figure of open source movement, and a major network, the precursor to Internet – were all born this year. Which was this year?

10. If this is stated to become the foundation for a complete, stand-alone open source operating system (OS) distribution, similar to FreeBSD or Linux, what is Darwin and who has launched Open Darwin?

11.Companies such as Amazon.com and Deja.com use this language to run their sites. It claims to have more than a million users and it is an open source language. What is its name?

12.If it enriches the open source community, what is SourceForge.net?

13.Which are the top ten most active projects of all time?

14.Which are top ten downloads?

15.(a) Which are top ten projects by popularity, and (b) Which are top ten projects by user ratings?

16.(a) Which Web site has the slogan "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters", and (b) What is Freshmeat.net?

17.What are the following: (a) Mplayer, (b) cdrecord, (c) xine, (d) gaim, (e) gcc, (f) Galeon, (g) Nmap, (h) GTK, and (i) GIMP?

18.What is the breakdown for the following: (a) GNU General Public License (GPL), (b) GNU Lesser General Public License, (c) BSD License (original), (d) Freely Distributable, and (e) Shareware?

19.This provincial German town of crooked medieval streets, whose biggest employer is a savings bank, claims to be the first city in the world by replacing Microsoft software on all city computers with open-source applications based on the free, unproprietary Linux operating system (OS). Name it.

20.If the Headstart programme has been claimed to be the biggest
implementation of open source technologies in schools in India till date, what is the Headstart programme and in which state is it being implemented?
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ANSWERS TO CYBER QUIZ: i4d Quiz-10: Open Source by Dr D.C.Misra
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1.(a) Donald Knuth, the well–known author of programming classics–The Art of Computer Programming (3 volumes), (b) Richard Stallman, the founder of Free Software Foundation (FSF), and (c) Larry Wall, the inventor of Perl rogramming language (Source: Based on Glyn Moody (2001): Rebel Code).

2.(i) They are just three developers of Linux kernel. (Source: Hall, Michael and Brian Profitt (2001): The Joy of Linux: A Gourmet Guide to Open Source), and (ii) Bruce Perens (http://www.perens.com/Bio.html) who first announced "Open
Source" to the world in an article carried on Slashdot and elsewhere in 1998. He is the primary author of the Open Source Definition, the formative document of the Open Source movement. A computer scientist (programmer), he is the founder of Software in the Public Interest and is Senior Strategist, Linux and Open Source.

3.It is one of the earliest attempts to build a free operating system. It was started by Richard Matthew Stallman (born in 1959 in New York), formerly of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and others in 1983 who formed Free Software Foundation. It became a complete operating
system in August, 1996. GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix." Stallman is recognized by his initials "rms" in the hackers community. For details about GNU, visit its website http://www.gnu.org/.

4.A tax–free charity based in Boston, MA, it was founded by Richard Matthew Stallman in 1985 to "promote computer users' right to use,copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs." FSF also protects, preserves, and promotes free software, promotes the development and use of GNU operating system, and concentrates on development of new software.(Source: http://www.gnu.org/fsf/fsf.htm).

5.(a) GNU Editing macros, a GNU editing program for creating and manipulating text initially created by Richard M. Stallman in 1975 and made available publicly. It was the editor of hackers, (b) GNU C Compiler written by Richard M. Stallman, (c) Bourne again shell (a play on Unix shell called the Bourne shell), (d) Introduced with GNU Emacs General Public License in 1985, it allows users, as opposed to copyright, to copy, modify and sell the original and/or modified
version(s) of a program but the modified version(s) is/are also required to be available free. Similarly, if a free software is combined with a proprietary (that is, nonfree code), it is also required to be free, (e) GNU General Public License, a standard single license developed by Richard M. Stallman for various programs
under the GNU project, and (f) The kernel being developed for the GNU
operating system. (Source: Moody, Glyn (2001): Rebel Code).

6.(a) Minix stands for Mini-Unix, and is a Unix-compatible operating system (OS), a free Unix clone. Andrew Tannenbaum, Professor at the Free University, Amsterdam wrote it for teaching students how an operating system works by examining its source code. Development of Minix was a reaction to release of Unix Version 7 in 1979 by AT & T which stopped making the source code available free to students. The source code was available free since release of Unix in 1969 under a license from AT&T. Tannenbaum began Minix in 1984 and released it in
1987 in his book Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (1987, Second edition with Albert S. Hull in 1997). Minix Information Sheet is available at the website http://www.cs.vu.nl/`est/minix.htm. Last change made was, however, on November 15, 1996) (Website checked on March 30, 2002), and (b) A typesetting program for creation of beautiful books created in 1978 by Donald Knuth. He created the program as a response to deterioration in typography and layout of
later editions of his Art of Computer Programming. The name TEX is derived from the Greek word ôå÷íç (techne) which means "art" and is also the root of words "technology" and "technique." (Source: Moody,Glyn (2001): Rebel Code).

7.Open Office (OO) and OpenOffice.Org (OOO) (http://www.openoffice.org/) respectively. Open Office is free, open source, MS Office-compatible, cross-platform (Windows, Linux (including PPC), and Solaris; FreeBSD, IRIX and Mac OS X versions under development), and international (available in 27 languages with more being added) office productivity suite. Written in C++, with XML file format and open component-based APIs, it has been issued under dual licensing– GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL).OpenOfffice.org is an open source initiative of Sun Microsystems, Inc. it is both an open source product – the multi-platform office productivity suite by the same name – and a project – the overall project comprising some 24 public projects. It has been sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc., which acquired StarDivision, the original German author of of the StarOffice suite, in 1999. The Web site is hosted by CollabNet (http://www.collab.net/), a leading provider of collaborative software development services based on open source principles. Sun placed all 9 million lines of StarOffice 6 alpha code on October 13, 2000. A result of 18 months of collaboration among 10,000 volunteers (and Sun engineers), and claimed to the largest open source project ever with more than 7.5 million lines of code, OpenOffice.Org 1.0, according to John Lettice (http://www.theregister.co.uk/) was released on May 1, 2002. At the same time, Sun continues to sell its StarOffice 5.2 commercially and its new version StarOffice 6.0 will use OpenOffice.org.

8.Media Lab Asia (MLA) in New Delhi on April 29, 2002 during Elitex exhibition organized by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India. The software enables creation, storage, editing and accessing of map-related databases for visually intuitive and effective decision making. Typically GIS software costs anything between Rs. 65,000 to Rs. 300,000-400,000. MLA has released it free of cost for its use for development purposes. The software has been developed by Centre for Spatial Database Management and Solutions (CSDMS), Noida, a non-profit organization founded by professionals in New Delhi in 1997 (http://www.csdms.org/), on the Linux operating system. Gram Chitra can be downloaded from http://www.csdms.org/gramchitra.

9.1969. The operating system was Unix, the legendary figure Linus Torvalds, and the network ARPANET.

10.Originally released in March 1999, Darwin is an open source initiative of Apple Computer, Inc. It is an open source version of Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) UNIX operating system (OS) that offers advanced networking, services such as the Apache Web server, and support to both Macintosh and UNIX file systems. Darwin currently runs on PowerPC-based Macintosh computers and is being ported to Intel processor-based computers. (For details, visit the Web site
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/darwin/faq.html). Darwin is the core of Mac OS X (pronounced `ten' and not `ex') v / 0.1.4. The Darwin kernel is based FreeBSD (originally developed at University of Calfornia at Berkeley) and Mach 3.0 (originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University)tecnhnologies and provides protected memory and pre-emptive multitasking. It features new
graphical user interface (GUI) called Aqua which is based on cutting-edge graphics technologies –Quartz (for 2-D objects), OpenGL (for 3-D objects), and Apple's QuickTime (for multimedia support). Applications environment is provided by a Java virtual machine (JVM), Cocoa (application programming interfaces (APIs) for OS X software), Carbon (APIs based on Apple's earlier OSs),
and Classic (Apple's 9.1 OS under OS X). Code-named Jaguar, this "super-modern" desktop operating system (OS)was released in summer of 2002 by Apple. For further details, visit the Web site
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newversion/. In 1998, Apple became the first major computer company to make open source development a fundamental part of its software strategy. To broaden the collaboration between Apple and development community,Open Darwin organization has been jointly launched in April 2002 by Internet Software Consortium , Inc. (ISC) and Apple Computer, Inc. For details, visit the website http://www.opendarwin.org/. Hexley, the platypus (http://www.hexley.com/) is the official community mascot of Darwin project.

11. Perl. It is developed by perl5porters, p5p for short. Online since October 26, 1995,the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) has 2641 MB 259 mirrors,3,998 authors and 7,203 module (http://cpan.perl.org/). For details, visit the website http://www.perl.org/.(November 12, 2004).

12.It is the world's largest open source software development Web site which aims to enrich the open source community by providing a central place for open source developers to control and manage open source software development. It provides free hosting to tens of thousands of projects. It is owned by Open Source Development Network Inc. (OSDN) which is a wholly owned subsidiary of VA Software Corporation. The OSDN family also includes Slashdot and Freshmeat.
Each month more than 5 million information technology (IT) professionals visit OSDN destinations delivering more than 110 million page views per month. For details, visit the Web site http://sourceforgenet.net/.

13.1. SourceForge.net, 2. Crystal Space 3D SDK, 3. phpGroupWare, 4. Python, 5. Direct Rendering Infrastructure, 6. Gaim, 7. CoreLinux++, 8. Common C++ Libraries, 9. SquirrelMail, and 10. The Freenet Project. (Source: http://sourceforge.net/top/mostactive.php) (November 12,2004).

14. 1. eMule, 2. BitTorrent, 3. Azureus – BitTorrent Client, 4. CDex, 5. DC++, 6. VirtualDub, 7. ZSNES, 8. phpMyAdmin, 9. Dev-C++, and 10. eMule Plus (Source: http://sourceforge.net/top/toplist.php?type=downloads (November 12, 2004).

15.(a) 1. MPlayer (100.00%), 2. Linux (76.24%), 3. cdrtools (63.95%), 4. Gaim (47.85%), 5. gcc (44.90%), 6. MySQL (44.68%), 7. xine (43.39%), 8. PHP (42.06%), 9. TightVNC (41.45%) and 10. Apache (38.71%) (Source: http://freshmeat.net/stats), and (b) 1. Linux (score: 9.49 - 554 votes), 2. Fluxbox (score: 9.37 - 325 votes), 3. Apache (score: 9.36 - 232 votes), 4. Slackware (score: 9.30 - 203 votes), 5. bash programmable completion (score: 9.17 - 308 votes), 6.
MPlayer (score: 9.12 - 570 votes), 7. Mutt (score: 9.06 - 187 votes), 8. The Gallery (score: 9.03 - 390 votes), 9. Debian GNU/Linux (score: 8.95 - 138 votes), and 10. Mozilla (score: 8.78 - 162 votes) (Source: http://freshmeat.net/stats/ (November 12, 2004).

16.(a) Slahdot (http://slashdot.org/), and (b) The Web's largest index of Unix and cross-platform software, themes, and Palm OS
(http://freshmeat.net/about/).

17.(a) A movie player for Linux, (b) A tool to create disk-at-once and track-at-once, (c) A Unix video player, (d) A GTK+-based messaging client, (e) The GNU compiler collection, (f) A GNOM Web browser, and (g) A network exploration tool and security / port scanner (Source: http://freshmeat.net/), (h) GIMP Tool Kit , and (i) GNU Image Manipulation Program (originally General Image Manipulation Program). GIMP and GTK were designed by two students at Berkeley, Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis.

18.(a) 25,491 (b) 2,174 (c) 1,359 (d) 946, and (e) 306. (Source:
http://freshmeat.net/stats/#license).(November 12, 2004).

19.Schwaebisch Hall. (Source: AP, Schwaebisch Hall, Hindustan Times,
New Delhi, March 26, 2003, Wednesday, p-15).

20.It is a computer-enabled programme for universalisation of upper primary (middle) school education under the Rajiv Gandhi Shiksha Mission (RGSM) in Madhya Pradesh. Under Headstart, a unit of three computers is provided in the nodal school of a school cluster called Jan Shiksha Kendra (JSK). 648 JSKs have been covered, and 4,000 teachers trained. Headstart is being extended in its second phase to 2,070 JSKs in 2002-03 while the remaining JSKs are proposed to be covered in the third phase in 2003-04.The distinctive feature of Headstart is development of customized culturally familiar educational software in Hindi, Mathematics, Environmental Studies and English designed to be used for the children. For details, visit the Web site http://www.mp.nic.in/rgm/shiksha.htm. Red Hat India (http://www.in.redhat.com), a subsidiary of Red Hat Inc., has
partnered with RGSM for implementation of the programme.
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© D.C.Misra 2004. Beta version. Posted November 11, 2004.
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Disclaimer: While every care is taken to compile the quiz, readers are requested to check the authentic sources before acting upon any information contained here. The use of the material, which is generally documented, is encouraged for self-education and non-commercial purposes provided the copyright is acknowledged and due credit is given to the author for the authorship. Use of material for commercial purposes is, however, strictly prohibited without the
written consent of the concerned author in whom the copyright vests.
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CYBER QUIZ: i4d Quiz Series by Dr D.C.Misra

Quizzes published so far in this series

1. i4d Quiz – 1: ICT and Women
2. i4d Quiz – 2: eGovernance: States
3. i4d Quiz – 3: ICT and Health: A Quiz,
4. i4d Quiz – 4: Wireless Communication : A Quiz
5. i4d Quiz – 5: ICT For the Poor: A Quiz
6. i4d Quiz – 6: ICT and Local Language Content: A Quiz
7. i4d Quiz – 7: ICT and Agriculture: A Quiz
8. i4d Quiz – 8: Community Radio: A Quiz
9. i4d Quiz – 9: Telecentres: A Quiz
10.i4d Quiz– 10: Open Source: A Quiz

(Last Quiz: Posted on November 12, 2004).

Next Quiz in the i4d Quiz Series
11.i4d Quiz–11: ICT and Disaster Management:A Quiz (Forthcoming)
(December 2004).
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Today is Diwali,the festival of lights in India. Wish you a Happy Diwali.Enjoy yourself.

Dr D.C.Misra
November 12,2004.