Kannadigas do not support BLINDLY Mr. Sheshadri Vasu just because he gave FREE DOWLOADS of BARAHA SOFTWARE to NRI KANNADIGAS which was copied from AKRUTHI FONTS. VASU himself has written letter to owner of AKRUTHI Fonts Mr. S. K. Anand.

Kannadigas do not support BLINDLY Mr. Sheshadri Vasu just because he gave FREE DOWLOADS of BARAHA SOFTWARE to NRI KANNADIGAS which was copied from AKRUTHI FONTS. Later these BARAHA FONTS were used in NUDI FONTS and solt by KAGAPA /KGP to Govt. of KARNATAKA for 30 LAKHS.
Mr. Sheshadri Vasu himself has written letter to owner of AKRUTHI Fonts Mr. S. K. Anand.

 

Mr. Sheshadri Vasu has got lots of benefites out of this IPR VIOLATION.

 

Mr. Sheshadri Vasu got recognised for this STEALING OF IPR from AKRUTHI FONTS to release his BARAHA FONTS.

 

Mr. Sheshadri Vasu got honored at several places because of this STOLEN BARAHA FONTS released by him.

KANNADIGAS need to look at what effect it had in Kannada Software Development in Karnataka State and to make KANNADA to be adopted by all Departments in GOK.

Please look at where KANNADA LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT due to this !!

KANNADIGAS need to look at what is the STATUS of KANNADA SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT. What effect this BARAHA FONTS and NUDI FONTS  has on KANNADA SOFTWARE DEVEOPMENT.
The following is written by  Dr. U. B. Pavanaja.

Birth of Baraha

I had put up Kannada’s first web-site called Vishva Kannada during Dec. 1996 with the support of S K Anand of Cyberscape. Dynamic font technology was not being used by Vishva Kannada at that time. Akruti fonts were given for download at the web-site. Users have to download the font, install it in their PC and then they could read the Vishva Kannada web-site in Kannada. Sometimes in the first half of 1997, I got an email from Sheshadri Vasu who was at USA. In that mail he appreciated Vishva Kannada. He added that it takes a long time to copy characters through CharMap (an utility present in Windows to copy a glyph of a font into any application) and make a Kannada sentence. I explained him how to type in Kannada using the keyboard driver which has to be bought from Cyberscape. I gave the contact details of S K Anand and the approximate price of the software also. Then there was no mail from Vasu for some time. (Recently, during his visit to India in June 2004, Vasu wrote an article for Vijaya Karnataka, wherein he mentioned the discussions he had with me about the relation between font and keyboard driver). One day I got an email from Vasu saying that he has made a software called Baraha that can be used as an editor for Kannada. He wrote that he wanted to give this software free to everyone. The version sent to me was a beta version. He had actually written an editor for the font he downloaded from the web. I asked him about the copyright of the font. He had not thought anything about that. I explained to him the he need to take the permission of S K Anand of Cyberscape to use Akruti fonts in his software. He included the Kan Ballal font which was given to read Udayavani web-site with the first release of Baraha, which was given to some select friends only. Later on he changed the ASCII values of the glyphs of Akruti font and released the Baraha package officially. His idea was that just by changing the ASCII values of the glyphs, his font becomes different from Akruti font. But morally, ethically and legally, this amounts to violation of intellectual property rights. After a long gap of six years, recently (2004), Vasu admitted that he used the glyphs from Akruti fonts, in a mail to S K Anand.

Fonts used in Nudi

Now let me discuss the about the fonts bundled with Nudi. Nudi was initially thought as a testing software. This was made into a package later on. Myself and Harsha (the programmer who did the coding for Nudi) were opposing the release of Nudi without our own professional fonts. Making a font is an elaborate process. Artists have to draw each character (glyph) on paper, they have to be scanned, digitized, hinted, etc. It takes months for each font. C V Srinatha Sasthry (CVSS), Chief Secretary, Kannada Ganaka Parishat (KGP), told me that he got the font made from someone before submitting the final package to GoK. In one of the executive committee meeting S K Anand and myself questioned CVSS about who made the fonts, how much was paid to him, etc. G N Narsimha Murthy (GNNM), Secretary, KGP, gave a reply that someone at Koppa made the fonts. I mentioned that KGP should have the complete record of making of the fonts like original drawings by the artist, first raw digitized data, the final font, etc. GNNM promised to get all these from Koppa and show to us in the next meeting. He never bothered to do that.

I came to know about the entire story about fonts much much later. Initially I used to believe the statements of CVSS about the fonts. But it took almost 2 years for me to accidentally discover the truth. While experimenting with opentype font creation, I was studying the glyphs of all Kannada fonts. When I opened Baraha, Akruti and Nudi fonts in a font editing software, I found that they all have the same glyph sets, even though their ASCII values are different. As Sathyanarayana has detailed in his write-up, the glyphs from Akruti fonts were used in the first version of Baraha, which was then used in the first version of Nudi. As per my knowledge CVSS got this conversion of font encodings done by someone here at Bangalore itself. The fonts were not made from scratch at Koppa. This is clear violation of intellectual property rights. I had a strong and heated argument with CVSS and GNNM about one or two months before the elections to the executive committee of KGP. I blasted CVSS for misleading me and telling lies to me that the fonts were developed at Koppa. CVSS and GNNM have told lies to me and cheated GoK by supplying them with pirated fonts. Definitely my position became very awkward that I being the mentor and the person in charge of Nudi in the initial stages was not informed of these backdoor activities by CVSS. I fired both CVSS and GNNM left and right. At that time GNNM even challenged me to prove these in the court along with S K Anand who had already threatened to sue KGP for violation of intellectual property rights.

Conclusion and request

Baraha has copied and used one font from Akruti software. This font is one of the many fonts bundled with current version of Nudi.

I have written everything that I know about the font issues pertaining to Akruti, Baraha and Nudi. My intention is to bring out the truth, however bitter it is. I have no personal animosity with anyone whose name appears in this write-up. Please read this objectively and subjectively. That is, do a vasthunistha (objective) reading rather than a vyakthinishta (subjective) reading.

Thanks for your patience and time.

Dr. U. B. Pavanaja

___________________________________________________