Plans for work with NIXI

Mr. Rajesh Aggarwal, and Mr. Ajay Tripathi from NIXI, the National Internet eXchange of India, have been very pro-active in trying to reach out to the FOSS community in India. Thanks to their patience, after several rounds of discussions, we have finalised on immediately taking up the tasks outlined below:

• Servers:
  • Open-source mirrors can directly connect to backbone with 1Gbps, but 2 Mbps to other points in India. People local to servers (i.e., in big cities) can download at high speed. Can replicate servers in different major cities. Devdas has been volunteered to look over requirements for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and SourceForge? , and come up with hardware specifications.
  • Servers for specific tasks: NIXI can make available some servers, and/or rackspace in their network centres for several servers. Currently, we have in mind servers for IndLinux? and other Indian language computing work, NewsRack? , CreativeDot? , Sanskrit utilities, and Hindawi. If you have a specific open-source application in mind that you need webspace for, please let us know within a couple of days, as specific requirements will be sent to NIXI soon.
• Localisation: 10 fellowships for localisation, and computing in Indian languages, focusing on ones that have not yet seen much activity. E.g., Kashmiri, Sindhi, Chhatisgarhi, one or more Northeastern languages (Manipuri?), and a few workshops. Funding for someone to handle OpenOffice? , Mozilla review, packaging, and integration. To be handled through IndLinux? /Sarai.
• IPv6: Ashish Shukla, and Raj Mathur have put together the outline of a course in ipv6 (need details on Wiki). Need volunteers in other Indian cities, as NIXI would like to do up to 20 workshops in 20 different locations. Hands-on workshops in using ipv6, and train-the-trainers programme. Also, implement incentive schemes for adoption. Courseware development, webcasting of seminars, and providing technical expertise in ipv6 support to NIXI.
• Internationalised domain-name issues
  • Domain names in all languages separately.
  • Country has control over its names in all of its official languages, e.g., .in, .india, .bharat, .भा , .भारत.
  • Cannot use Unicode because of legacy equipment.
  • Using punicode as a temporary pages. Standard mapping to Unicode.
  • Needed input from community to work on:
    • Variant tables for punicode. Start as a pilot in a few languages, and eventually do all official languages. NIXI to provide initial details about the work involved.
    • Open-source solutions for .in registry. Some open-source possibilities exist: Cocca. Need programmers to update, and maintain the software. Some 4.7 lakh domains now registered. As soon as possible, otherwise tendering will need to happen in a few months time. Experiment with 10-15 domain names registered through NIXI.

-- GoraMohanty - 29 Jul 2008