Wikipedia

A form of poetry in India called Vachana sahitya is part of the popular Indian language, Kannada. It evolved in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th as part of the religious Lingayatha movement. Since that time, more than 259 Vachana writers, called Vachanakaru, have compiled over 11,000 Vachanas (verses).

21,000 of these verses were digitally published into 15 volumes, called Samagra Vachana Samputa, by the government of Karnataka. These volumes were then turned into a standalone project called Vachana Sanchaya; this project was taken on by two Kannada Wikimedians, a Kannada linguist, and the author O. L. Nagabhushana Swamy—to enrich the Kannada WikiSource. This team used Unicode, a standard of consistency for converting text (and code) into a new format. » Read more

I was introduced to the Wikimedia movement primarily as a communications consultant for Wikimedia Foundation’s first Global South project that began in India in 2011. My work with the Wikimedia Foundation and editing Wikipedia has helped me take a hard look at myself as a woman of colour from India in technology. » Read more

Open source news for your reading pleasure.

November 17 - 22, 2013

We scoured the web for some of this week's most interesting open source-related news stories so you don't have to. Here's what we found:

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Download the free All Things Open interview series eBook

Hampton Catlin is the creator of Sass, Haml, Wikipedia Mobile, Tritium, and Moovweb. He's also the author of the Pragmatic Guide to Sass and is the founder of the libsass project.

He's known for a relaxed, joking, self-deprecating style—mixed with very strong opinions, a dirty mouth, and a penchant for building technologies that break convention (successfully).

I got to chat with Hampton ahead of the upcoming All Things Open conference where he'll be speaking. Read more in this interview. » Read more

Have you visited the Wikipedia page for your hometown or the city you live in? There are likely images of local landmarks and interesting places, people, and things that are missing. To better represent your town or city, join the Wikipedia Takes America event this year! » Read more

I vividly remember the time when my early opinions about open source software were built around questions that made natural (and perfect) sense to me at that point in my life, like: "Why would someone sell a software product for free?" and "Why should anyone participate in a project that does not reap financial rewards?" These formed the basis of my rationale. » Read more

Mirror mirror on the wall, what's the most important open source project of them all? » Read more

Micheal Tiemann, Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat, moderated our October 2011 Open Your World Forum webcast with Clay Shirky. Tiemann and Shirky explored how the principles of open source are being applied to further advance our collective cognitive surplus. » Read more