15. Wrapping up

15.1. Acknowledgements

This HOWTO is a by-product of many years of experience setting up and managing Usenet news servers. We have learned a lot from those who have trod the path ahead of us. Some of them include the team of the ERNET Project (Educational and Research Network), which brought the Internet technology to India's academic institutions in the early nineties. We specially remember what we have learned from the SIGSys Group of the Department of Computer Science of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. We have also benefited enormously from the guidance we received from the Networking Group at the NCST (National Centre for Software Technology) in Mumbai, specially from Geetanjali Sampemane.

On a wider scale, our learning along the path of systems and networks started with Unix, without which our appreciation of computer systems would have remained very fragmented and superficial. Our insight into Unix came from our ``Village Elders'' in the Department of Computer Science of the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) at Mumbai, specially from ``Hattu,'' ``Sathe,'' and ``Sapre,'' none of whom are with the IIT today, and from Professor D. B. Phatak and others, many of whom, luckily are still with the Institute.

Coming to Starcom, all the members of Starcom Software who have worked on various problems with networking, Linux, and Usenet news installations have helped the authors in understanding what works and what doesn't. Without their work, this HOWTO would have been a dry text book.

Hema Kariyappa co-authored the first couple of versions of this HOWTO, starting with v2.0.

15.2. Comments invited

Your comments and contributions are invited. We cannot possibly write all sections of this HOWTO based on our knowledge alone. Please contribute all you can, starting with minor corrections and bug fixes and going on to entire sections and chapters. Your contributions will be acknowledged in the HOWTO.

15.3. Copyright

Copyright (c) 2002 Starcom Software Private Limited, India

Please freely copy and distribute (sell or give away) this document in any format. It is requested that corrections and/or comments be fowarded to the document maintainer, reachable at usenet@starcomsoftware.com. When these comments and contributions are incorporated into this document and released for distribution in future versions of this HOWTO, the content of the incorporated text will become the copyright of Starcom Software Private Limited. By submitting your contributions to us, you implicitly agree to these terms.

You may create a derivative work and distribute it provided that you:

1. Send your derivative work (in the most suitable format such as SGML) to the LDP (Linux Documentation Project) or the like for posting on the Internet. If not the LDP, then let the LDP know where it is available.

2. License the derivative work with this same license or use GPL. Include a copyright notice and at least a pointer to the licence used.

3. Give due credit to previous authors and major contributors. If you are considering making a derived work other than a translation, it is requested that you discuss your plans with the current maintainer.

15.4. About Starcom Software Private Limited

starcom (Starcom Software Private Limited, www.starcomsoftware.com) has been building products and solutions using Linux and Web technology since 1996. Our entire office runs on Linux, and we have built mission-critical solutions for some of the top corporate entities in India and abroad. Our client list includes arguably the world's largest securities depository (The National Securities Depository Limited, India, www.nsdl.com), one of the world's top five stock exchanges in terms of trading volumes (The National Stock Exchange of India Limited, www.nseindia.com), and one of India's premier financial institutions listed on the NYSE. In all these cases, we have introduced them to Linux, and in many cases, we have built them their first mission-critical business applications on Linux. Contact the authors or check the Starcom Website for more information about the work we have done.