Open Source Simple Computer for Agriculture in Rural Areas
(OSCAR)

Technical Resources

GNU and Simputer:

Our main sources of inspiration for this project. The philosophy of free software advocated by GNU and a hardware open source initiative by Simputer Trust sparked the basic idea for an open source project.

www.gnu.org
www.simputer.org

The Linux documentation Project: http://www.tldp.org/

GNOME - The Free Software Desktop Project: http://www.gnome.org/

Open Source Initiative: http://www.opensource.org/
The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.

Free Software Foundation - India: http://fsf.org.in/

Free & Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan: http://www.fossfp.org/

Nepal Linux User Group: http://www.linux.com.np/

Open Source Software Resource Centre - India:
http://ossrc.org.in/portal/index.shtml

National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software, MIT Campus of Anna University, Chennai, India: http://www.au-kbc.org/nrcfoss.htm

The GIMP Toolkit: http://www.gtk.org/
GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off projects to complete application suites.

The Arm Linux Project - Linux for all ARM based machines:
http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/

Encore's Simputer: http://www.ncoretech.com/simputer/
The Simputer is not a Personal Computer in the conventional "PC" sense. The "Win-tel" architecture of the de facto standard PC is quite unsuitable for deployment in the low-cost mass market in any developing country. The entry barrier due to software licensing of proprietary, though de facto standard, software is just too high. While the Wintel PC provides a de facto level of standardisation, it is clearly not an open architecture.

Amida Simputer - Full Featured handheld computer for individuals and companies: http://www.amidasimputer.com/

SourceFORGE.net - The world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications: http://sourceforge.net/

Science, Technology & Society, Knowledge, Development, Intellectual Property Rights:

World Summit on the Information Society: www.itu.int/wsis/

International Open Source Network: http://www.iosn.net/
The International Open Source Network (IOSN) is a Center of Excellence for FOSS in the Asia-Pacific Region. It shapes its activities around Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) technologies and applications. (and they have some very good primers..)

Software Freedom Day - September 10: http://softwarefreedomday.org/

United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force:
http://www.unicttaskforce.org/

World Information Technology Forum: http://www.witfor.org/

United Nations Millenium Development Goals:
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

Europe's Information Society - Thematic Portal:
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/index_en.htm

OpenCultures.net - Towards a culture of Open Networks:
http://www.opencultures.net/

IT&Society - A Web Journal Studying How Technology Affects Society:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/siqss/itandsociety/

SED-IDPM - Development Informatics Working Papers and Short Papers - Series Editor - Dr. Richard Heeks:
http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/publications/wp/di/index.htm

Creative Commons - is a nonprofit that offers a flexible copyright for creative work:
http://creativecommons.org/

The OpenScience Project: http://www.openscience.org

Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.doaj.org/

OpenDemocracy - free thinking for the world: http://opendemocracy.net/

OurMedia - The Global Home for Grassroots Media: http://www.ourmedia.org/

Gnowledge - Weaving Gnowledge: http://www.gnowledge.org/
By `gnowledge' we mean the knowledge accessible freely for the community in general, and to the users of the WWW in particular. We expect that the `g' in the term `gnowledge' is pronounced hard, and is not silent as `k' in `knowledge'. The possible Sanskrit and Greek roots of the term `knowledge' and the ideal of GNU to share knowledge in general and software knowledge in particular inspired us to use this term.

Digital Divide Network: www.digitaldivide.net

Information for Development - Print Magazine
http://www.i4donline.net/index.asp

HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/index.html

Bridges.org - Spanning the international digital divide: http://www.bridges.org
Information and communications technology (ICT) can be used as a tool to strengthen communities, democratic institutions, development efforts, and local economies. Providing access to ICT in the developing world is critical, but ICT will only have Real Impact in developing countries when people have Real Access to it.

Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/

Localisation:

Indian Linux Community: http://www.indlinux.net/

Localisation Research Centre - Ireland: http://www.localisation.ie/

Janabhaaratii - Localisation of Free/Open Source Software:
http://www.janabhaaratii.org.in/janabhaaratii/page_gen.php?lang=en&body=/intro.html

BharateeyaOO - Openoffice in Indian Languages:
http://trinetra.ncb.ernet.in/bharateeyaoo/

Tamil Linux HOWTO
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Tamil-Linux-HOWTO/index.html

Tamil OpenOffice: http://ta.openoffice.org/

Hindi OpenOffice: http://hi.openoffice.org/