Vol. II No. 10
October 2004
The first monthly magazine on ICT4D
Untapped potential
FOSS usage in Africa
Information for development
ISSN 0972 - 804X
FREE / LIBRE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE (FLOSS)
www.i4donline.net
A social movement
for freedom of
knowledge
FLOSS in Latin America
and the Caribbean
Why civil society is
not embracing FOSS?
and CSO
April 2004 | www.i4donline.net
1
Contents
i4d Vol. II No. 10
Features
October 2004
Columns
7
Mailbox
Mail
info@i4donline.net
FOSS and Civil Society
Organisations (CSO)
Why civil society is not embracing FOSS?
Loe Schout
17 FLOSS
Down to basics
6
Free/Libre and Open Source
Software (FLOSS)
21 News
Understanding the global debate
8
FOSS Usage in Africa
Untapped potential
Bildad Kagai and Nicholas Kimolo
25 Interview
Javed Tapia, Director, Red Hat India
Open Source
29 International
Network (IOSN)
Building a global resources
in Latin America and the
11 FLOSS
Caribbean
A social movement for freedom of
knowledge
Lena Zuniga
Sunil Abraham and Khairil Yusof
content and open
31 Open
standard in FLOSS
Promoting partnerships
Jayalakshmi Chittoor
36 Insight
Ankur Bangla Project
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay
38 Bytes for All...
14 FLOSS in Asia
Bridging the yawning digital divide
Fredrick Noronha
40 ICT and Education
FOSS resources in education
18 Closed Vs. Open Software
License fee and GDP per capita
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh
27 A vision
In the years to come...
Maneesh Prasad
33 Revolutionising the process
FOSS and localisation
Jitendra Shah
Editorial Note : In this issue two terms FOSS and FLOSS have been
used. FLOSS refers to Free/Libre Open Source Software to emphasize ‘Free as in Freedom’. We have retained each author’s preference
in the usage of the two terms.
41 What’s on
42 In fact
FLOSSophy
i4donline.net
News
Search ICT4D news by date in the sectors of governance,
health, education, agriculture and so on.
E-mail
Subscribe to daily, weekly, monthly newsletters online or
send request to info@i4donline.net
Research
e-Learning projects from India.
www.i4donline.net/elearn.asp
Print edition
The past issues of the magazine is available online
www.i4donline.net/archive/archive.htm
I got the opportunity to browse some of
the previous issues of i4d distributed at
the seminar at India Habitat Centre.
I was really delighted to see the contents
and the quality of the magazine.
Congratulations!
Dr Ravindra K. Gupta
rkgm@bol.net.in
I enjoy the range of articles in i4d, some
of them quite critical of ICT as it is
manifested in numerous foundation and
aid agency projects. I only wish that more
people in Africa and Latin America could
read them. Their situations are different
from S. Asia, but the assumptions about
ICT by companies, granting agencies,
and struggling NGOs is somewhat
similar. Kudos on the issue related to water
projects.
Steve Cisler
California, USA
cisler@pobox.com
I take this opportunity to thank for the
whole i4d team for the wonderful
edition of the community multimedia
centres/telecentre issue.
Hara Padhy
UNESCO, Paris
h.Padhy@unesco.org
Thanks for sending me the i4d newsletter, its an excellent idea, much needed
for the sector.
Viji Balakrishnan
vijibalakrishnan@yahoo.co.in
I have been reading the two previous
issues of your magazine and found them
really very informative. I would like to
thank your team for such a valuable
magazine on ICT4D.
Mahendranath Busgopaul
Internet Child Safety Foundation, Mauritius
mahen@icsfonline.org
Editorial
Unity in diversity
Information for development
www.i4donline.net
Advisory Board
M P Narayanan, Chairman, i4d
Amitabha Pande
Department of Science and Technology,
Government of India
Chin Saik Yoon
Southbound Publications, Malaysia
Ichiro Tambo
OECD, France
Karl Harmsen
Centre for Space Science and Technology
Education in Asia and the Pacific, India
Kenneth Keniston
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Mohammed Yunus
Grameen Bank, Bangladesh
Nagy Hanna
Information Solutions Group, World Bank, USA
S. Ramani
Research Director, H.P.Labs, India
Walter Fust
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation,
Switzerland
Wijayananda Jayaweera
UNESCO, France
Editorial Board
Akhtar Badshah
Fredrick Noronha, Bytesforall
Editor Ravi Gupta
Editorial Consultant Jayalakshmi Chittoor
Research Associates Anuradha Dhar, Gautam Navin,
Saswati Paik, Divya Jain, Jhinuk Chowdhury
Design Deepak Kumar
Business Executive Neeraj Budhari
Group Directors
Maneesh Prasad, Sanjay Kumar
i4d
G-4 Sector 39, NOIDA, UP, 201 301, India.
Phone +91 120 250 2180-87 Fax +91 120 250 0060
Email info@i4donline.net
Web www.i4donline.net
Contact us in Singapore
25 International Business Park,
#4-103F, German Centre,
Singapore - 609916
Phone +65-65627983 Fax +65-656227984
Printed at Yashi Media Works Pvt. Ltd.
New Delhi, India
i4d is a monthly publication. It is intended for those interested and involved in the use of Information and CommnicationTechnologies for development of underserved communities.
It is hoped that it will serve to foster a growing network by
keeping the community up to date on many activities in this
wide and exciting field.
In India, there is an adage one plus one is equal to eleven, and
the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community around
the world fits exactly into this adage. These virtual communities
of developers and followers have a vision of coming together
to solve the problems of the world. It is not without reason
that one can call the FOSS community as the classical success
story of a Community of Practitioners (CoP), a term so widely
used in the knowledge sharing sector.
Had it not been for a bunch of people believing in this
philosophy, the World Wide Web or Internet would not be what it is. Free, sharing
and growing without losing business. Developing the concept of Open Standards
and inter operability while addressing key issues like costs, resolution of buggy
problems and solving the menace of worms and viruses, these developers have
opened to the world of international development, immense opportunities to leapfrog into the digital world.
But is this fight all about principles alone? What about policies, training, finding
adequate support manpower and addressing the true costs of moving away from
proprietary to open source software? The i4d team and the contributing authors
have compiled this issue to give a flavour of the developments in this field. Their
journey into this world has provided a fascinating experience, which we are happy to
share with you in this edition.
Forums around the world of Linux users groups and efforts for localisation of the
Internet have ensured that the digital world does not lead to the death of many
languages and cultures and the vast heritage of the diverse world can get documented
digitally. It also makes sure that projects that are started off as creative products of
software developers have local relevance and improve the lives and livelihoods of
people.
The International Open Source Network has done some commendable work to
develop primers and dossiers to enable the universities and teaching community to
adapt to the rapidly growing field of FOSS. With adequate manpower ready in a few
years, this movement that has already captured 8 per cent of the desktop market for
operating system will be able to make its mark in the world of development.
We always want to know how we are faring in our research and documentation in
each issue, so please do let us know what the problems are or if you have a counter
view to some topics that we have presented, please do not hesitate to write to us.
i4d does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed
in this publication. All views expressed in this magazine are
those of the contributors. i4d is not responsible or accountable for any loss incurred directly or indirectly as a result of
the information provided.
© Centre for Spatial Database Management and
Solutions, 2004
Supported by:
Ravi Gupta
Ravi.Gupta@i4donline.net
and
February 2004 | www.i4donline.net
5
FOSS
AND
C IVIL S OCIETY O RGANISATIONS ( CSO )
Why civil society is not
embracing FOSS
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is
affordable and easy to obtain. FOSS is
flexible and adaptable to local needs. It even
claims to provide a better protection against
computer viruses and other intruders.
Due to these characteristics, FOSS
appears to be well suited for adoption by
Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). After all,
Loe Schout
CSOs are active in the public space between
Hivos, The Netherlands
the State and citizens. In many cases, they
l.schout@hivos.nl
work with public funds, which means that
they are accountable to the taxpayer. CSOs have an interest in
effective networking at the national and international levels in order to attain their goals. Worldwide, tens of thousands of CSOs
form a bridge between, or provide a voice for culturally and linguistically diverse local communities.
Indeed, during the World Summit for Information Society
(WSIS) in 2003, CSOs presented the manifesto ‘Shaping Information Societies for Human Needs,’ in which FOSS was seen as the
tool to overcome the worldwide digital divide.
Nonetheless, FOSS usage is spreading less rapidly than its advocates wish, and less rapidly than one would expect given the aforementioned advantages. There are a number of reasons.
The first is that the CSO community often does not speak the
same language as the FOSS community of developers and FOSSproducing companies. These are two different worlds: the world of
development cooperation, with its jargon of poverty reduction
indicators, and Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), versus
the world of software development, with its ‘techies’ and a jargon
that is just as difficult for outsiders to follow. Those two worlds will
have to communicate more often and in a more intensive way for
this to lead to a winning match. Why do we see so few partnerships
between FOSS companies and development CSOs?
The second obstacle is that the community of software
developers, and particularly the FOSS community, is strongly
male-dominated. It is embarrassing and a completely outdated fact
that meetings on OSS attract an almost exclusively male audience,
and that FOSS spokespeople are almost without exception,
men. Of course, there are a few excellent exceptions, such as the
women from Women’s Net and Gender Changers, who organise
computer workshops for and by women. But it stands beyond
doubt that many more of this type of initiatives should be given a
chance. And far more attention should be paid to gender concerns
when it comes to the use of FOSS.
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
A third problem is that the biggest advantage of FOSS - flexibility and freedom for everyone to modify the software to their own
needs - sometimes becomes the largest disadvantage. There is an
abundance of new FOSS -applications and tools. This is encouraging of course and diversity is one of the much-celebrated addedvalues of FOSS. But the user-friendliness and the standardisation
of FOSS leave much to be desired. This is also the case for the
documentation and support possibilities for users.
Many kinds of FOSS-based CMSs (Content Management
Systems) for websites and for knowledge sharing compete with
each other. These all claim to be the perfect solution for CSOs
working in development and civil campaigning areas for the publication of their local content and towards real ownership for the
users. Much knowledge and time are being invested to find the
ultimate solution, in many cases reinventing the wheel. OSS claims
to be based on collaborative values, but in reality this collaboration
is often completely lacking.
Perhaps the largest problem of all, with the level of adoption of
FOSS in the world of CSOs and NGOs, is the lack of a true political
debate over the importance of FOSS. For example, at the end of
2003, Microsoft and the UNDP came to a $1-billion agreement in
which the UN committed itself to the Gates empire. This
agreement passed without as much as a stir in the slipstream of the
WSIS in Geneva, and the CSO community that had gathered there
let this happen. This agreement means that respectable public
organisations and the governments that support them endorse the
relentless expansion of Microsoft, while the slow advance of FOSS
is nipped in the bud. Another example is the difficulty that local
NGOs and FOSS activists have encountered in obtaining support
for their lobby to prevent their governments from becoming
involved with Microsoft in a large e-Mexico project. Yet another
example, is the overwhelming silence surrounding another deal,
again involving Microsoft, with an NGO in South Africa, which
earlier had won different development prizes for its locally
developed, low-cost ICT solutions in whole of Africa. These types
of projects signify the end of local computer and software development companies in Africa and elsewhere.
Perhaps this is an overly pessimistic view. After all, the advance
of FOSS in Asia in particular demonstrates that FOSS is here to
stay. But it would be unfortunate if CSOs and NGOs would not
make use of it on time. So, let’s establish more FOSS and CSO
partnerships, let’s encourage more women to ‘hack’ their way into
current male dominated FOSS communities and technologies, let’s
standardise and make user friendly OSS tools.
7
F REE / L IBRE
AND
O PEN S OURCE S OFTWARE ( FLOSS )
Understanding the
global debate
Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)1 represents a new
and growing phenomenon, which is much discussed these days as
it implies a radically new method of production, cooperation and
exchange. In this introduction we argue that Open Source Software (OSS) besides its technical advantages has a special importance
in the context of development cooperation.
The philosophy behind OSS
The knowledge that is embedded in operating systems and
software programmes to make them run, also known as the source
code, can be either ‘closed’ and ‘proprietary’, or ‘open’, that is public
and shared. FLOSS is a software which has its source code available,
that may be used, copied, and distributed with or without modifications, and that may be offered either with or without a fee.
Although the open source movement goes back to almost forty
years, OSS has become a mainstream-topic only recently. Worldwide, more and more organisations and governments are using
open source. This ongoing adoption can be attributed to two reasons, namely, the maturing of some key open source products like
GNU/Linux and office production software (Open Office) and
the increased resistance to the effective monopoly of Microsoft in
the worldwide software market. The (still dominant) closed format
of software seems to suit corporate interests well, but at the same
time it appears to be increasingly at odds with the current shift from
‘tangible’ (concrete products and services), towards ‘intangible’‚
(i.e. knowledge-based) production. The efforts to ‘proprietarise’ it
has resulted in severe legal and political conflicts around the disputed concept of ‘intellectual property rights’.
OSS by putting knowledge (the source code) in the public
domain‚ offers much more opportunities for sharing and co-operation between all players in the field, reduces dependencies, hinders
the rise of monopolists, and fosters healthy competition. Contrary
to widespread beliefs, OSS is not adverse to commerce and business
as open source based products and services can be sold by anyone.
In the field of development, ‘good governance’ and ‘local ownership’ have become important criteria for allocating resources. In
contrast to proprietary software, key elements of these can be
found in the FLOSS approach to software development, distribution and implementation: The principles of transparency and
participation for example are embodied within FLOSS. This means
that FLOSS provides tools that are in line with the goals and
intentions of development cooperation projects.
6
OSS and development cooperation
• The most significant advantage is the right to view and modify
the source code according to individual or regional needs. In the
context of development cooperation this means that applications can be adapted to country specific circumstances regardless
of the fact if this is profitable for a vendor or not.
• As OSS applications are not the property of a single entity, using
them makes the user less dependent. This is especially important
in the South where organisations running on subsidised or pirated software face the risk of becoming dependent on essential
infrastructure they cannot sustain. Additionally OSS does ensure that specialised knowledge that was generated with public
resources is not kept as a protected secret of the North. The use
of OSS implies a willingness to share knowledge between North
and South.
• While it is disputed if OSS is less expensive to run than proprietary software, it is undisputed that the acquisition costs are
lower (some studies claim higher administration and training
costs). In the context of development cooperation this means
that little or no money need to be spent for goods imported from
the North while local personnel in the South can carry out training and maintenance tasks. Additionally OSS solutions can be at
the base of local distribution and support networks that can
create autonomous economic activity in the South.
Open Source Software also has some weaknesses. The focus of
most FLOSS-products is more on the technical user, which can be
a hindrance for the inexperienced users. Furthermore, due to the
fact that not many people are using OSS, there might be a lack of
training opportunities and support, although this is being
compensated by an extensive amount of Open Source Softwaresupport on the Internet.
In the context of international cooperation and development,
Open Source Software has a very promising approach, because it is
far more conducive to its stated goals of non-dependent development, fostering of local knowledge, diversity and sustainability.
1
‘Free, Libre and Open Source Software’ and ‘FLOSS’, as well as
‘Open Source Software’ and ‘OSS’ are all used in this document and
are interchangeable. FLOSS is more correct, OSS more commonly
used.
This article is taken from the manifesto produced during a
workshop on the role of OSS in the development cooperation organized
by Waag Society and Hivos, 2-4 June 2003 in Amsterdam.
i4d | October 2004
FOSS
AND
C IVIL S OCIETY O RGANISATIONS ( CSO )
Why civil society is not
embracing FOSS
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is
affordable and easy to obtain. FOSS is
flexible and adaptable to local needs. It even
claims to provide a better protection against
computer viruses and other intruders.
Due to these characteristics, FOSS
appears to be well suited for adoption by
Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). After all,
Loe Schout
CSOs are active in the public space between
Hivos, The Netherlands
the State and citizens. In many cases, they
l.schout@hivos.nl
work with public funds, which means that
they are accountable to the taxpayer. CSOs have an interest in
effective networking at the national and international levels in order to attain their goals. Worldwide, tens of thousands of CSOs
form a bridge between, or provide a voice for culturally and linguistically diverse local communities.
Indeed, during the World Summit for Information Society
(WSIS) in 2003, CSOs presented the manifesto ‘Shaping Information Societies for Human Needs,’ in which FOSS was seen as the
tool to overcome the worldwide digital divide.
Nonetheless, FOSS usage is spreading less rapidly than its advocates wish, and less rapidly than one would expect given the aforementioned advantages. There are a number of reasons.
The first is that the CSO community often does not speak the
same language as the FOSS community of developers and FOSSproducing companies. These are two different worlds: the world of
development cooperation, with its jargon of poverty reduction
indicators, and Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), versus
the world of software development, with its ‘techies’ and a jargon
that is just as difficult for outsiders to follow. Those two worlds will
have to communicate more often and in a more intensive way for
this to lead to a winning match. Why do we see so few partnerships
between FOSS companies and development CSOs?
The second obstacle is that the community of software
developers, and particularly the FOSS community, is strongly
male-dominated. It is embarrassing and a completely outdated fact
that meetings on OSS attract an almost exclusively male audience,
and that FOSS spokespeople are almost without exception,
men. Of course, there are a few excellent exceptions, such as the
women from Women’s Net and Gender Changers, who organise
computer workshops for and by women. But it stands beyond
doubt that many more of this type of initiatives should be given a
chance. And far more attention should be paid to gender concerns
when it comes to the use of FOSS.
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
A third problem is that the biggest advantage of FOSS - flexibility and freedom for everyone to modify the software to their own
needs - sometimes becomes the largest disadvantage. There is an
abundance of new FOSS -applications and tools. This is encouraging of course and diversity is one of the much-celebrated addedvalues of FOSS. But the user-friendliness and the standardisation
of FOSS leave much to be desired. This is also the case for the
documentation and support possibilities for users.
Many kinds of FOSS-based CMSs (Content Management
Systems) for websites and for knowledge sharing compete with
each other. These all claim to be the perfect solution for CSOs
working in development and civil campaigning areas for the publication of their local content and towards real ownership for the
users. Much knowledge and time are being invested to find the
ultimate solution, in many cases reinventing the wheel. OSS claims
to be based on collaborative values, but in reality this collaboration
is often completely lacking.
Perhaps the largest problem of all, with the level of adoption of
FOSS in the world of CSOs and NGOs, is the lack of a true political
debate over the importance of FOSS. For example, at the end of
2003, Microsoft and the UNDP came to a $1-billion agreement in
which the UN committed itself to the Gates empire. This
agreement passed without as much as a stir in the slipstream of the
WSIS in Geneva, and the CSO community that had gathered there
let this happen. This agreement means that respectable public
organisations and the governments that support them endorse the
relentless expansion of Microsoft, while the slow advance of FOSS
is nipped in the bud. Another example is the difficulty that local
NGOs and FOSS activists have encountered in obtaining support
for their lobby to prevent their governments from becoming
involved with Microsoft in a large e-Mexico project. Yet another
example, is the overwhelming silence surrounding another deal,
again involving Microsoft, with an NGO in South Africa, which
earlier had won different development prizes for its locally
developed, low-cost ICT solutions in whole of Africa. These types
of projects signify the end of local computer and software development companies in Africa and elsewhere.
Perhaps this is an overly pessimistic view. After all, the advance
of FOSS in Asia in particular demonstrates that FOSS is here to
stay. But it would be unfortunate if CSOs and NGOs would not
make use of it on time. So, let’s establish more FOSS and CSO
partnerships, let’s encourage more women to ‘hack’ their way into
current male dominated FOSS communities and technologies, let’s
standardise and make user friendly OSS tools.
7
software industry in Africa depends on the ability of regional
engineering schools to produce dedicated FOSS developers.
The Free and Open Source Software Foundation for Africa
(FOSSFA- www.fossfa.net), with a team of other partners has
therefore embarked on a process to develop local education
content. Urgent support is needed in this area.
FOSS based companies are also beginning to emerge in Africa
and already two official Linux distributions/operating systems have
been launched. These include Impi (www.impi.org.za) and Ngoma
Linux (www.ngomalinux.com). Most of Africa’s population is
illiterate or with minimal education. If any kind of technology is to
succeed in Africa, it has to rely on local language communication.
Several efforts have been made towards localisation and the
development of local content. ‘Translate.org.za’ is a translation
effort to make Linux and other FOSS based applications available
in the 11 South African languages. Efforts to localise FOSS applications to Kiswahili in Kenya are underway. This will greatly increase
the availability of FOSS based ICT solutions to the Africans.
The multinational companies and other ICT heavy-weights,
who previously did not consider Africa of any significant economic
value, have begun establishing offices and channel partners
within the region in anticipation for the opportunities that FOSS
will present. African governments have taken a keen interest in
FOSS and this has contributed to a lot of background competition
between proprietary and Open Source Software companies.
However, some of African governments have not woken up to this
fact and have signed Memorundum of Understanding (MOUs)
with proprietary software vendor companies. This has greatly
contributed to the death of locally based software development
companies. However, governments like South Africa and
Uganda have engrained FOSS technologies in their National
ICT policies.
Several locally based FOSS companies have also thrived and
have served the role of providing support and training for FOSS
based products and services. Examples include Obsidian
(www.obsidian.co.za) in South Africa, Circuits & Packets Communications Ltd (www.circuitspackets.com) in Kenya and Linux Solutions in Uganda (www.linuxsolutions.co.ug). Some universities in
the region have also incorporated FOSS in their curriculum. Some
examples include the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and
Technology (JKUAT- www.jkuat.ac.ke) and the University of
Nairobi School (www.uonbi.ac.ke) of Computing and Informatics
in Kenya.
The Linux user community in Africa has considerably grown
with 17 user groups from several countries. Though, initially the
user groups might be formed by a band of techies, trends indicate
that the lay user participation has increased due to the need of peer
support.
Conclusion
The relevance of FOSS to Africa’s economic agenda is beyond question. The opportunity is there and it’s time to make use of it. FOSS
solutions provide the opportunity for African software developers
to contribute to the development of software, especially that which
is tailored for the continent’s needs. This will create training and
career opportunities, increase access to Information Technology
solutions, especially those tailored for specific demands.
On a big scale, continued use of FOSS will bring significant cuts
in national budgets. On a micro/personal level, more people would
have access to an array of opportunities. This will contribute
towards the vision of universal access to ICT solutions for Africa
and the world as a whole. FOSS gives the opportunity to Africa to
rise up to the challenge of becoming an information society.
Free and Open Source Software Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA)
FOSSFA is an organisation
that supports and promotes
open source software in Africa. It believes that open
source solutions are viable,
cost-effective and sustainable
options for Africa’s participation in ICT for development.
FOSSFA has its origin in the ICT Policy and Civil Society workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2002. The need for developing a framework for open source solutions was felt and so FOSSFA
was formed. It was formally constituted in February 2003 in
10
Geneva during WSIS Prep Com 2. The 53 member states of the
Committee on Development Information (CODI), a unit of the
Economic Commission for Africa endorsed FOSSFA as the open
source foundation for Africa. Its secretariat has been established in
Nairobi, Kenya. Among its various activities, FOSSFA has also
compiled a collection of country best practices on FOSS usage
around the world. FOSSFA is determined to develop local capacity and create jobs in Africa by developing an OSS market that will
initially target the public sector in government, health and education through encouraging change of policies in African governments to adopt its use and research and development.
Source: http://www.fossfa.net
i4d | October 2004
FLOSS
IN
L ATIN A MERICA
AND THE
C ARIBBEAN
A social movement for
freedom of knowledge
We maintained a
perspective of
understanding
about how FLOSS
is impacting the
region in the
formulation of
technological
alternatives oriented
towards social
change.
In November 2004, Bellanet Latin Ameica
and the Caribbean began work on a project
with the objective of obtaining an overview
of how Free/Libre and Open Source
Software (FLOSS) is being used and
produced in this region, as well as what are
the common agendas that bring diverse
groups and organisations together around
“Free Software”?
We approached the free software community with the notion to not only collect
data and answers, but also with the idea
that they could help generate the questions
that would be most useful, relevant and
appropriate for them. This was a participative investigation and therefore, our participation was also important. In the process of
understanding the community, we integrated ourselves into it, by attending and
utilising its spaces of interchange and by
supporting its common initiatives. The following are some of the lessons that we have
learned till date.
FLOSS, a social movement
Lena Zúñiga
Bellanet International Secretariat,
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)
lzuniga@bellanet.org
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
From the onset of the project, a constant
need to generate knowledge regarding free
software from a perspective of social research
was felt. The literature reviewed, allowed
us to determine the economic, legislative or
technical character of many of the existing
materials. For that same reason, we maintained a perspective of understanding about
how FLOSS is impacting the region in the
formulation of technological alternatives
oriented towards social change.
From this perspective emerged one of the
first elements of the dialogue with other
stakeholders in the region, that is, the need
to orient the research towards the ‘movement’ working with FLOSS in the region.
The ‘movement’ encompasses the groups,
organisations, and institutions who from
very diverse perspectives and positions,
support and participate in the adoption and
the development of free technological alternatives. The interest would then be to
focus the study towards FLOSS as a theme
that by its very characteristics allow it to
generate a social movement around it,
rather than towards the study of FLOSS as
a technological phenomenon.
Some of the characteristics of FLOSS that
generate the organised social movement
around it are linked with the growing (although still very limited) access to information and communication technologies, the
acquisition of technological user skills by
some of the key sectors (for example, social
organisations and universities) as well as the
recognised need to take control of the language to allow for the transformation of the
technologies, for the technologies to begin
responding to their own needs.
Like many other social movements, the
movement around FLOSS finds its origin
in the surrounding conditions and realties
of the region.
• The structural tensions that are prevalent have an impact in concrete interests
of a group of individuals and organisations. In the case of FLOSS, a large diversity of groups have seen their economic,
political and social interests limited by
conditions that favour a monopoly of
knowledge products, in particular, software. The huge costs incurred for the
acquisition of software, the intellectual
property schemes that make it difficult
for a large portion of the population to
create new knowledge, and the exclusion
of marginalised groups due to their
irrelevance in the market, are some of the
prevailing structural tensions that have
created the FLOSS movement.
• There are deficiencies in the abilities to
confront these conflicts. The existing
structures are not adequate to be able to
11
develop concrete proposals for confronting these types of
conflicts, or the organisations and individuals do not have
sufficient knowledge in order to do it. Particularly, in a theme
that is identified as merely technical, or very related to the intricate legal system of each country, the movement around FLOSS
has begun to cover an area that until now has been explored but
not put into practice. Concepts such as knowledge products,
‘copyleft’, the freedom to share and to create in the community,
are all being related to everyday life and have started direct
action from groups and individuals.
• In the case of the movement around FLOSS, groups and
individuals come from varying and diverse fields. Some come
from a technical background, which enables to produce better
software through a collaborative model and the free distribution
of the results. Others, who come from social and economic
development backgrounds, identify with FLOSS as a key way to
promote more equitable and sustainable societies. Others view
FLOSS as an opportunity to generate income through a
competitive business model when confronting the monopolistic
forces in the market. From diverse interests, personal approaches
and mystics, the groups and individuals form a community of
abundant political and ideological diversity.
A social movement, such as the movement around FLOSS,
attempts to identify a collective identity and finds its bases in
pre-existing networks in diverse sectors. For the purpose of our
research, we chose to include and to differentiate the various
sectors. National and local governments, private enterprise, civil
society organisations, and user groups and developers of FLOSS
were grouped for the purpose of investigation.
The diverse elements that jointly form the context in which this
social movement has arisen would require a separate analysis that is
beyond the scope of this investigation. However, it is important to
emphasise that the work of many individuals and organisations,
identified as part of the movement of FLOSS in the region, have
conceptually surpassed the technological approach of software as
well as the conditions of hardware, in order to begin a concrete
debate on the implications of a free model versus a proprietary
model for the construction of a society in which knowledge is and
remains free.
Aspects of the study on the movement of
FLOSS in LAC
Due to its huge diversity and amplitude, the FLOSS theme raises a
complex and interesting panorama. In the first month of work, we
identified partners in each of the six sub-regions of Latin America
and the Caribbean. Based on their own experiences and expectations, these partners, working as a group, defined the investigative
approach of the research.
In the first participative process, the themes became clearer. If we
are studying the social movement around FLOSS, several aspects
emerged as high-priority.
The collective production of commons
Individuals and organisations group together and participate in
diverse processes of collaboration in order to use and to produce
(in this case), software. These processes have their own rules for
participation, for the establishment of leadership, for the creation
of community identification, and for the massive communication
and distribution of contents.
The gender roles in these collaborative processes
The participation of women and men, the areas in which they
collaborate and the forms in which their participation is developed
reflects (and in some instances, challenges) the prevailing gender
roles in the region. The small number of women participating in
the community of FLOSS development in coding and documenta-
Governmental open source interests
Brazil’s open source policy
Spain’s ‘educational’ open source initiative
Last year the Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, finalised
a policy recommending that federal ministers, agencies and state
enterprises will install open source software, such as Linux, instead
of proprietary software on the new computer systems. One of the
primary goals of this policy was to have at least 80 per cent of
government computers purchased during 2004, to support open
source software. Today Brazil is one of the leading countries in
FOSS adoption. Early this year it was announced that it would
train 1,000 state workers to use FOSS. This is part of an initiative
expected to save the government as much as 33 million US dollars.
The training programme will consist of over 100 different courses
ranging from basic usage to more advanced topics such as networking. There are variety FOSS initiatives in progress in the Brazilian government that will need these skills. Brazil’s Health Ministry
is migrating 30 per cent of its computers to Linux this year. Brazil’s
national congress saved 15 per cent of its IT budget after moving
to Open Office.
In April 2002, the Extramadura Ministry of Education, Science
and Technology, had initiated a project to convert computer
systems from proprietary systems to open source software (OSS).
This included creation of Ministry’s own OSS distribution called
GNU/LinEx.
There were two reasons for choosing this: First, unaffordable to
pay for 100,000 licenses, and second, safety reasons. It was seen as
impossible to depend on a single company, and not have access to
the codes. Now, using OSS, everything can be updated as and
when required. From an educational point of view, there is no
difference between GNU/LinEx, as what students require is ‘transparent software’.
12
References:
http://www.asiaosc.org/article_201.html
Open Source Software, by Paul Dravis, infoDev
i4d | October 2004
tion reflects the limited number of women in technical and scientific careers. However, women participate to a greater extent in the
user communities as well as the groups dedicated to the distribution, education, and reflection on the social impact and incidence
in public policies related to FLOSS.
The conditions for the appropriation of FLOSS
Elements such as the integration of FLOSS initiatives in education,
governmental institutions, as well as the initiatives of public access
to the information technologies, affect the possibilities of a true
appropriation of FLOSS as a tool for development. The FLOSS
movement works in a context with certain existing conditions of
hardware and software, as well as defined conditions of access to the
Internet. As well, there are dissimilar legal realities that either facilitate or obstruct the development of initiatives and products in a
model of free licensing.
The specific characteristics of the movement
FLOSS is referred in diverse scenarios in Latin America and the
Caribbean. The social movement around FLOSS is working in
areas such as local resource use (human and technical) for the generation of their own solutions, as well as the transparent and effective use of public funds and international cooperation (for example,
through the use of FLOSS in the public sector and social organisations). In Latin America and the Caribbean, the need for collective
decisions regarding software that we use is apparent and, as there is
less effective possibility of carrying out individual decisions, the
educational system, public institutions and social organisations are
key spaces in order to make these decisions. The true appropriation
of knowledge, and the possibility of transforming the technology
so that it is capable of helping to solve problems in the region, is a
factor that has helped create the movement around FLOSS.
The relationship between this social movement with
the existing networks of civil society organisations
In this context, it is of particular interest to us, to understand how
the organisations dedicated to development are approaching the
FLOSS movement, what is their ‘point of entry’ to the theme, what
particular values and characteristics of the movement they identify
with (for example, the collaborative creation, the use and free
distribution of the knowledge products), and to what extent this
identification affects its practical decisions, for example, in the
decision to use FLOSS in a particular organisation. In particular, we
are interested to understand, what bridges have been developed
between the “technical” community and the development
community, as well as the individuals who form those bridges based
on their interests, expectations and experiences.
Currently, Bellanet LAC, is jointly elaborating, with the research
partners, the instruments that will be used to collect information in
the region. Beyond the collection of data for various concrete elements, there are additional themes that are worth observing, such as
what the tendencies of the movement of FLOSS in the region are.
For example, the movement of FLOSS in Latin America and the
Caribbean, at least in the more notable organisational structures, are
conscious of social and political contexts and take stands in controversial debates, not only those related to FLOSS, but also those
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
related to freedom of knowledge and the integration of Latin
American countries into the Information Society. Although, some
groups of more technical orientation, prefer not to be identified
with particular political positions, the movement of FLOSS in the
region maintains common stands before certain topics, such as the
regulation of intellectual property and governmental policies orientated toward the democratisation of the access to the technologies.
These organisations and individuals, do not only identify with
the theme of FLOSS in itself, but also in many cases are working to
move forward and to better understand the use of open contents in
areas such as education, the arts and science. For example, FLOSS
is connected with the Creative Commons Licenses (http://
www.creativecommons.org), which allow for created material to be
shared for non-commercial purposes and also provides liberties for
the users and authors.
The subject of FLOSS has also driven the debate about ‘Open
Standards’, mainly in relation to the format of public data managed
by governmental institutions, and the possibility that open
standards provide in procuring access to the information,
independent of platforms and products. It is also being integrated
into different sectors, including civil society organisations, in the
debate of intellectual property laws that could affect not only the
access to software, books and music, but to medicines and to the
information generated from the natural resources of the region.
Another important area is the ability of these groups, organised
around concrete interests, to transfer the commons production
model to the common property of knowledge products (such as
software and books) which could also have an impact in the
medium term on the poorer countries in other areas such as health
and food security.
In this context, the study of the movement around FLOSS
raises many expectations. One of the objectives of the second year
of investigation is the creation of common agendas so that
key stakeholders from diverse sectors can jointly put forward their
ideas, capacities and projections regarding the future of the FLOSS
movement in the region. As well as to understand, how to better
take advantage of government and international cooperation
efforts in order to ensure that FLOSS is utilised as a viable tool
for economic and social development, as well as a means to
participate in the broader discussion of developing countries in the
Information Society.
13
FLOSS I N A SIA
Bridging the yawning
digital divide
Let us examine the
role of FLOSS in
bridging the ‘digital
divide’. Can it
bridge the growing
computing gap that
is felt between rich
and poor countries,
and within countries
between the rich
and poor?
In the evening, Ramesh and his friends,
children from the neighbourhood, gathered
more out of curiosity as a container full of
used computers were being shipped-in to a
storehouse in a suburb of the Indian state of
Goa. For the Goa Schools’ computer project
team, getting used computers had been an
uphill struggle against bureaucracy and laws
in force. One minor victory that evening
was the 300 plus computers which got
unloaded, was the realisation that underprivileged children took to the Linux
desktops quite readily.
‘Please could you give us some (software
programmes)? Will ‘our’ school too get
some computers?’ Ramesh’s friends wanted
to know.
Light at the end of the tunnel? Or just a
mirage? Gaps between those who have
access to the power of computing and those
who do not are wide and further yawning.
Getting in affordable hardware might
initially seem like a good idea, but that is
only a small part of the problem.
Moving further on, let us examine the
role of FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source
Software) in bridging the ‘digital divide’.
Can it bridge the growing computing
gap that is felt between rich and poor
countries, and within countries between the
rich and poor?
This issue has many
dimensions
Fredrick Noronha
Bytes for All
fred@bytesforall.org
14
Cost is still the major barrier, and a huge
problem for anyone serious about the
digital divide. Yohanes Nugroho (http://open
source.or.id/~yohanes) of Bandung’s Instituteof Technology in Indonesia puts it thus:
‘Developments in the South East Asian
countries vary a lot. Here in Indonesia,
Open Source Software (OSS) is mostly
used to fight piracy, by providing low
cost software. Unlike in some parts of Asia
(like Thailand), where Microsoft and some
other commercial companies create cheap
version of Windows or their products, it is
not happening in Indonesia. So we are faced
with expensive softwares.’ ‘Affordable’ is a
relative term. ‘The price of a typical, basic
proprietary tool-set required for any ICT
infrastructure, Windows XP together with
Office XP, is US$560 in the U.S. This is
over 2.5 months of GDP/capita in South
Africa and over 16 months of GDP/capita
in Vietnam,’ says a study by the Netherlands-based Rishab Aiyer Ghosh.
Hardware obsolescence and softwaregenerated problems is another critical factor
that urgently needs to be addressed.
According to a US National Safety Council
study, only 11 per cent of the 20 million
computers junked in 1998 were recycled.
Therefore, it is not a question of having
insufficient computers. United Nations
University in Tokyo lead by scientist
Eric Williams points out that a personal
computer consumes far more resources,
pound for pound, than many larger
machines. With more than a hundred million new computers manufactured every
year, that is an incredible strain on the world’s
resources. So the pressure to upgrade
is enormous. Software gets needlessly phased
out, and no longer supported. Hardware
turns unserviceable, as compatible
components no longer get manufactured.
Thus, shipping redundant computers to the
Third World is not much of a solution,
as they quickly turn unusable there too.
Thanks to speedy hardware and software
obsolescence traps! So another issue which
has got insufficient attention is that ‘Can
software work to make sure computers last
longer?’
Another issue that comes to mind is that
is GNU/Linux also going the bloatware
way? From India, techie K. Raghu Prasad
i4d | October 2004
explains: ‘This is due to an ongoing effort from GNU/Linux
distros to please or convert Windows users into its fold. This makes
a lot of business sense. Unless a Windows user finds the system user
friendly going by his definition of it, he is not going to use
Red Hat or SuSE distros. This comes naturally with some
additional costs. If you want all the bells and whistles of
latest KDE and GNOME, you need to spend a lot of CPU
power and RAM.’
Prasad’s way out is to look to other, lighter options. This can be
tackled in another way. Take the RULE (Run Up2date Linux
Everywhere ) Project. Fioretti, who is behind the RULE Project,
for some time now his goal has been to modify the Red Hat
Linux installer so that it runs in less than 32 MB of RAM, or create
a new one if needed.
Fioretti points out that 80 per cent of the world’s population
will take years to afford a computer that can run decently the majority of modern, apparently ‘Free’ software.
FLOSS can play a big role in language solutions. Linux-Plus has
developed a special GNU/Linux distribution, along with its
complete tools, administration and office software packages, to be
freely and exclusively distributed by ‘Loghat Al Asr’ magazine,
published by Al Ahram. One of the main development objectives
of this distribution Linux-Plus Core is to make it available on a
single CD instead of three, so that it could be distributed on a large
scale with Loghat Al Asr magazine. See http://www.linux-plus.com
Other complexities add to the problem. Licenses are becoming
increasingly complex - per user, per seat, per year, based on size of
the business, among other things. Only when proprietorial
software realised that FLOSS was filling in the gap, that it started to
make tempting offers that would lock computer learning into the
proprietorial software route.
There are other little-discussed dimensions of the ‘digital
divide’. Proprietorial standards (or non-standards) lead to unhealthy
dependencies. Restricting users to a shallow understanding of
technology further complicate issues. Entry barriers to accessing
software is another concern.
One aggravating factor is the lack of re-use possibilities in
software. One needs to see whether FLOSS offers a way out? FLOSS
offers low entry barriers, and reduces the barriers for anyone
wanting to enter this field by making everything open. But this is
to such an extent that many people fail to appreciate that fact.
Besides, there is the undeniable element of cost.
Source Software is unmatched
Learning is easier in FLOSS. Sharing resources comes naturally,
more so in the case of individuals and academics, rather than
corporates, whether this is software or knowledge.
Recently, Dr Nah and Colin Charles put together some interesting material, published by IOSN (International Open Source
Network). As all of this was released under the Creative Commons
Attribution license, one is free to copy, publish and modify them as
long as one credits the original authors and copyright holders.
(See http://www.iosn.net/training/end-user-manual/)
Dr Quang says that, ‘First of all, Open Source give us the opportunities to learn from the experiences of other developments. We
can change and adapt IT solutions to our specific needs. For
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
Proprietorial standards lead to
unhealthy dependencies.
Restricting users to a shallow
understanding of technology
further complicate issues
less-affluent countries, specially the non English-speaking areas,
there is a very large amount of basic adoption to be done, to push
digital tools into daily life. Companies from abroad cannot earn
much profit working on these changes. So we have to do the work
ourselves, step by step but fast enough to keep pace with global
trends. Only Open Source helps us, and gives us a chance of crossing the ‘digital divide’. Localising IT opens other doors — education, business and others. Only when the poor benefit from IT, can
you talk about the price.’
Bailetti argues that FLOSS moves ‘wealth creation’ from being
concentrated in the location where the software is designed and
developed to the many locations where the software is expanded,
maintained and supported. FLOSS reduces costly imports,
freeing up scarce hard currency. It enables individuals to act locally,
while thinking globally. From South Korea, Soon-Son ‘Shawn’ Kwon,
who is involved in Korean translations, says, “I think the biggest
impact of the Linux/Open Source is the easier access to the technologies which were mostly proprietary. This will give more opportunities to less-developed countries. And it is also important because
they have alternatives against proprietary software. Some countries
have already used Linux as a weapon for negotiation, at least
with Microsoft.”
George Easaw, professor in mechanical engineering at Goa
Engineering College (India) and a FLOSS evangelist, says that ‘In
the technical sense, FLOSS has many software in the public
domain like octave (numerical computation software), gnuplot
(plotting software), latex (document preparation software), scilab
(numerical computation) etc. The equivalent proprietary software,
called MATLAB (numerical computation) costs hundreds of
thousands of rupees, though only marginally superior. This way,
FLOSS is helping bridge the divide between the technical
institutes which are rich and full of resources and the have-nots.’
Currently, the Government of Laos is working to promote
e-Learning in an open source environment, among schools that
received donated second-hand computers from the UNDP or
other institutions. Somsanouk Pathumvan, who works for the
National University of Laos says that, “Most of these schools are
secondary or high-schools, so they need lot of free software. I think
that free is good”.
Japan’s free software campaigner Yutaka Niibe says, “IT isn’t for
the rich any more, it should be for everyone. Everyone should
benefit from technology, and for software, we need to free the
software to do that.”
15
“FLOSS is showing the world
that you can refuse the default
option offered by the system, and
work out something together
with other people, which might
be a better way of doing things”
More than the software here, it is probably the vision that makes
a difference. But Linux has a head-start, in the sense that one is free
to copy the software without guilt, and sharing both software and
ideas tends to come naturally.
FLOSS is throwing up other ideas that help share knowledge.
Professor Anil Seth, an Indian educator, says, “One area I have been
looking into is the use of animation to learn. VPython is a project
created by a physicist to help visualise, well, physics. There is a link
on the site with VPython models demonstrating laws of physics.
These things could help students learn even in the absence of
expensive instruments and equipments.”
Abhijeet Singh (www.abhijeetsingh.com) makes a detailed case
for how GNU/Linux can help poor children in poor countries,
attending resource-starved schools. “Using Linux on a LTSP (terminal server) reduces hardware costs by approximately half, he says.
In this kind of environment he says, ‘you do not need any real
computing power at each node, all the real work is done by the
server which can support upto 25-30 nodes”.
Moreover, additional software tools like source code compilers,
image editing software, DTP software, CAD software, Proxy server,
Mail server etc, are available for free copying in the FLOSS world.
FLOSS has also democratised technology, by placing it in the
hands of the user. Many criticise GNU/Linux for being too geeky,
however, some of the tools it has thrown up, make it rather simple
for even small, powerless people to get a voice.
FLOSS powers wikis, blogs and a large
section of the Net itself
Journalist and technologist Vickram Crishna of Bombay
explains, “India Indymedia (part of a global independent
media network) uses a homegrown solution, naturally in FLOSS,
called Mir. My own experience is that it is extremely powerful for
open publishing. It handles multimedia and multiple languages
with a single admin interface”.
Various initiatives are being tried out. In Indonesia, ministers
from five different departments signed a declaration for a movement called IGOS (Indonesian Goes Open Source). Some view this
as ‘the first step of this movement is to implement OSS in government agencies’. Could this see more FLOSS being used to fill the
digital divide? From India fighting against many odds, the Simputer (http://www.simputer.org) is a good example of attempts to use
16
technology to bridge the digital divide. This computing device is a
piece of sharable hardware, meant to lower the cost of computing.
One participant at the Simputer mailing-list on Yahoogroups,
Arun Kumar Anand said, “What started with affordable and convenient PC solution for rural area, is now trying to compete in the
PDA market. The only difference seems that vendors are projecting
it as a low-cost general purpose programmable PDA platform. If the
Simputer needs to be seriously presented as an Indian innovation
for Indian circumstances, then we should avoid mere following of
the form factor or feature list, in the otherwise widely available
commercial offerings.”
Pressure comes from diverse sides. So do clever arguments. The
Initiatives for Software Choice (www.softwarechoice.org) is an
organisation which describes itself as doing ‘work to prevent the
proliferation of ‘preference’ laws springing up across the globe’.
Some point out that unless serious corrective action is taken, the
‘digital divide’ will turn into a further yawning chasm, with a tiny
section going further ahead of the vast majority.
Sivaram Neelakantan is struck by the idea that it costs around Rs
25,000 (USD 500) to develop a single Indic font. He says, “For an
alternative to be provided and to be used (Linux/*BSD et al), the
infrastructure has to be provided. With a diverse population speaking, at least 14 major languages, whatever IT solutions deployed,
has to fundamentally address the language issue.” He further adds
that, “From what I have read on the Net, current efforts are fragmented (IndLinux, Bangla, Gujarati Linux) and does not meaningfully address the scale and magnitude of problem.”
Ashish Kotamkar who works with Indian-language solutions
from the central Indian city of Pune, points to the other dimensions
involved. He points out, “There are larger issues to bridging the
digital divide than just FLOSS (or IT for that matter). Access to
information and opportunities to the underprivileged is one of the
ways to march towards this and IT is just a tool in making it (access
to information) happen. The choice of the right IT tool (and not
necessarily the technologically most advanced) is extremely important.” He further suggests that FLOSS comes into the picture only
‘much later’ when one encounters issues like cost, or freedom to
develop and deploy applications. He says, “I feel FLOSS will
require the desired user-friendliness and necessary support structure in place for it to make the desired impact at the grassroots level.
Chen Shunling, a young lady lawyer studying the intersection
between FLOSS and the law and till recently at Academia Sinica in
Taiwan, says, “The digital divide is not just about technology, but
also about all other kinds of divides - wealth, age, gender, the city
and the countryside, the majority population and the minorities,
etc. I am not optimistic that FLOSS itself could go very far in
bridging digital divide, which will remain if other divides are not
bridged. I do not mean that it cannot help at all, but for people
who do not read code, the influences are quite limited. But I am
very positive on the influences it might have on programmers.”
On the legal side, she re-looks at the copyright system. “FLOSS
is showing the world that you can refuse the default option offered
by the system, and work out something together with other people,
which might be a better way of doing things.”
FLOSS might have the answers, but to become meaningful,
surely a lot more needs to be done.
i4d | October 2004
FLOSS
Down to basics
With an increase in OSS awareness, a variety of technology platforms
and software categories have come up.
• Mozilla – This is a web browser available for Windows, Apple
Macintosh, Sun Solaris and Linux platforms.
Operating Systems
Many alternatives are available for server operating systems, ranging
from proprietary systems like Sun Microsystem’s Solaris and other
UNIX variants, to the following prevalent OSS solutions:
• Linux – Released under the GNU General Public License (GPL),
it was initially designed to provide low-cost alternative to the
UNIX operating system. There are numerous distributions of
Linux such as Debian, RedHat, and SuSE. While the penetration
of Linux is highest with servers, there is increasing attention to
Linux on the desktop.
• FreeBSD – This is an operating system used primarily for server
computers, often in data centres. Released under the Berkeley
Software Distribution (BSD) license, it is derived from BSD
UNIX, a version of UNIX developed at UC – Berkeley.
Development Tools
This includes software for creating and developing websites and
applications including programming languages such as Perl,
PHP and Python. There is also an array of content management
solutions available.
Server Application Software
This is used to share information and other computing resources on
a computer network with many users. E-mail, database, web servers
and software to share files and printers are included
in this category.
• Apache – It runs on Linux, Sun Solaris, UNIX and Windows
2000, and is used to manage and display web pages.
• MySQL – This is a relational database started in 1995 by MySQL
AB, based in Sweden. The product is available under the GNU
General Public License (GPL) and a commercial license.
• PostgreSQL – This is a project relational database started in 1986
at UC-Berkeley, released under the Berkeley Software
Distribution (BSD) license. It runs on many different operating
systems.
• Sendmail - Released under the Berkeley Software Distribution
(BSD) license, its development started in 1981, to enable the
routing of e-mail between networks.
• Samba – It provides file and printer sharing capabilities, and
runs on most UNIX systems, Linux, Sun Solaris and BSD variants.
Desktop Application Software
Consists of a vast array of product categories including personal
productivity, games, accounting, graphics and web browsers. While
Microsoft’s Office, Internet Explorer and Outlook dominate the
desktop, OSS solutions are the following:
• OpenOffice.org – This is an office applications suite, available
for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris and Apple Mac OS
X systems.
• Evolution – In one application it integrates e-mail, calendar,
meeting scheduling, contact management, and task lists.
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
Most prevalent Open Source licenses
While open source is associated with Linux and GNU GPL licensing agreement, the open source initiative has certified over 40 different open source licensing agreements. The most prevalent licenses
under use are:
GNU General Public Licensing (GPL)
This most widely used license for open source software, was written
by Richard Stallman in 1989, for the purpose of distributing
programmes released as part of the GNU project. It is considered
to be the ‘purest’ by requiring that all source code is free and available, and that changes must be shared with the community
of developers.
BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) License
This is adopted from Berkeley Unix, requiring copyright notification, and permits the source to be used in any manner, as long as
notification is provided. The FreeBSD operating system and PostgreSQL databases use this license, and Apple Computer’s OS X is a
derivative work based on BSD licensed technology.
Mozilla Public License (MPL)
It defines terms and provides code that can remain propriety under
very specific terms, and dual licensing when necessary under the
provisions of GPL. This is likely to be a more flexible model for
open source organisations. Mozilla, Firebird and Thunderbird Web
browsers are available under this license.
Creative Commons License (CCL)
Creative Commons is a non-profit corporation that has created a set
of licenses, which others can use to license their creative works. All
Creative Commons licenses say that creative works licensed under
them may be copied and distributed by others. In addition, one
can select additional terms and conditions that apply to others’ use
for creative works.
Each of these licenses state that the source code is open and users
are free to use, copy, duplicate, distribute and modify them.
Reference: Open Source Software, by Paul Dravis, infoDev
17
C LOSED V S . O PEN S OFTWARE
License fee and GDP
per capita
The open source
development
community provides
an environment of
intensive interactive
skill development at
little explicit cost,
which is particularly
useful for local
development of
skills, especially in
economically
disadvantaged
regions.
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh
MERIT/Infonomics,
University of Maastricht,
Netherlands
rishab@dxm.org
18
Free software communities
Open source, or free software as it was
originally called, has become in recent years
one of the most talked about phenomena in
the ICT world. This is remarkable, not only
for the usual reasons that open source has
been around for many years as a volunteer
driven success story before being discovered
by big business and now government, but
also because it has largely developed on its
own without the headline coverage and glare
of international attention that it now
receives.
This in turn makes it more attractive to
governments and policy makers. Yet what is
the special value of open source software,
and how can it be harnessed? The Free/
Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) study
in 2002, a comprehensive study of developers and users, showed that the most
important reason for developers to participate in open source communities was to learn
new skills — ‘for free’. These skills are
valuable, help developers get jobs and can
help create and sustain small businesses.
Meanwhile, the most important reasons
given by users of OSS were not the lower
costs but the higher security and better
performance as compared to proprietary
software. Therefore, the open source method of development is clearly seen by users as
being innovative and providing the same or
better quality.
The FLOSS survey also showed that
while just over 30 per cent of all developers
earn directly from their support, development or administration of OSS, a further
20 per cent earn indirectly, most of whom
reported being given a job because of their
experience in developing OSS. This
indicates that employers value the skills that
are learnt through participation in the
developer community.
This finding was also supported by the
FLOSS survey of user organisations, of
which 36 per cent reported allowing their
employees to participate in open source
projects during their time at work.
To a considerable degree, therefore, the
OSS community must be regarded as an
informal and skill development environment
that provides good training, and competitive advantages on the labour market. It is
‘costless’ in that the costs for training are not
explicitly borne in monetary terms by any
of the parties benefiting from the new skills
made available in the market. Universities
are not paying for this training (only 20 per
cent of developers are students), and nor,
explicitly are companies, it is the individual
developers themselves who are contributing their time and effort to learn and teach
others in an informal ‘apprenticeship’
system. As these costs are social costs
distributed widely across individual participants, they are effectively a subsidy for
sectors of society which do not or cannot
explicitly pay for skill development.
This skill development process is particularly valuable for small businesses and for
less wealthy regions and countries, where
the high direct costs of training ICT
professionals may otherwise hinder the
development of a local information
economy. Participation in the global open
source community can help offset such costs
by effectively providing a (voluntary)
subsidy from the global community.
The FLOSS study showed that
developers who provided ‘learning new skills’
as their reason for joining the community
often show ‘sharing skills’ as an equally or
more important reason for continuing their
community participation. This is correlated
with the duration of their participation in
the community, naturally, and represents a
shift from ‘apprenticeship’ to ‘mentor’ roles.
In a reflection of the development process
i4d | October 2004
for individuals, countries that profit most from open source are
those that contribute back to the community and knowledge base,
and there is a built-in incentive (and low barriers) for a shift from
being a recipient of skills to being a skills donor. So the process of
‘subsidy’ is very dynamic, and is likely to lead not to a dependency
relationship but rather to a equal relationship based on, among
other things, local specialisations for locally relevant issues.
Such skill development extends to the creation of new, local
businesses, which are able to provide commercial support for and
build upon OSS in a way not possible with proprietary software.
This effect is heightened by any public support of the open source
software sector. For example, the taking up of open source by the
Extremadura region in Spain through its support for the LinEx
project (a localised, Spanish-language version of the GNU/Linux
operating environment) has led to an economic regeneration in a
relatively poor region of the EU. This has not just allowed the
implementation of activities for a lower price, but also enabled
activities especially in education and training which were simply
not possible with proprietary software. It has also led to the growth
of a number of small businesses to provide commercial support,
since with open source there is no need to approach one sole vendor
for support — approaching local entrepreneurs is possible and an
obvious choice.
Total cost of ownership and low labour costs
Inexpensive skill development is an important reason for developing countries to promote OSS. But, in contrast to the situation in
richer countries, another reason is simply cost. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) studies show varying results in rich countries, where
labour costs are high, the relative low license fee of OSS need not
necessarily reduce total costs of using and maintaining systems.
When labour costs are high, labour-intensive components of the
total cost (such as support, customisation, and integration — i.e.
everything other than the software license fee, communication and
hardware costs) represent a high share of the total cost, making the
license fee itself (which is not present in the case of OSS) less crucial.
In contrast, when labour costs are low, the share of license fee in the
TCO is much more significant, even prohibitively so.
This relationship is neatly demonstrated by comparing license
fee with a country’s GDP per capita (i.e. the average individual
income). As is quickly apparent, in developing countries, even after
software price provide discounts, the price tag for proprietary software is enormous in purchasing power terms. The price of a typical,
basic proprietary toolset required for any ICT infrastructure, Windows XP together with Office XP, is US$560 in the U.S. [2]. This
is over 2.5 months of GDP/capita in South Africa and over 16
months of GDP/capita in Vietnam. This is the equivalent of charging a single-user license fee in the U.S. of US$7,541 and US$48,011
respectively, which is clearly unaffordable. Moreover, no likely
discount would significantly reduce this cost, and in any case the
simple fact that a single vendor controls any single proprietary
software application means that there can never be a guarantee that
any discount offered is intended to be sustained for the long term,
rather than as a temporary measure used to tempt consumers
into a lock-in situation at which point in time the discount
can be reduced.
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
Country
GDP/cap
PCs
(‘000s)
Piracy
WinXP Cost [3]
Albania
Algeria
Angola
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cape Verde
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros
Congo, Dem. Rep.
Congo, Rep.
Costa Rica
Cote d’Ivoire
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt, Arab Rep.
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji 2061
Finland
France
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hong Kong, China
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran, Islamic Rep.
Ireland
Israel
Italy 18788
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Korea, Rep.
Kuwait
Kyrgyz Republic
Lao PDR
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macao, China
Macedonia, FYR
1300
1773
701
9961
7166
686
19019
23186
688
12189
350
10281
1226
22323
3258
368
644
936
1175
3066
2915
1713
215
99
278
559
22343
1317
257
202
4314
911
1915
386
99
886
4159
634
4625
12004
5554
30144
894
3661
2494
1396
1511
2147
3935
164
4051
95
50
23295
22129
3437
291
601
22422
269
11063
3965
1754
394
162
912
460
970
24074
5097
27312
462
695
1767
26908
17024
11286
3005
32601
1755
1503
371
430
8917
16048
308
326
3200
3811
386
163
3444
42041
14089
1684
24
220
17
n.a.
3415
24
10000
2727
n.a.
92
254
25
n.a.
2394
33
11
5
175
n.a.
66
10835
n.a.
17
n.a.
18
60
14294
31
7
12
1640
24222
1810
3
n.a.
12
659
118
376
188
1490
2896
7
5
n.a.
300
1010
140
2
8
238
75
n.a.
2197
19949
15
17
n.a.
31471
66
860
13
150
30
n.a.
20
n.a.
80
2600
1021
118
6031
2298
4495
1500
1564
45%
130
44311
165
n.a.
172
2
12142
270
n.a.
16
361
247
n.a.
n.a.
246
228
79
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
62%
n.a.
27%
33%
n.a.
77%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
77%
n.a.
n.a.
56%
75%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
38%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
51%
92%
52%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
64%
n.a.
67%
61%
43%
26%
n.a.
n.a.
64%
62%
58%
73%
n.a.
n.a.
53%
n.a.
9584
27%
46%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
34%
n.a.
64%
n.a.
73%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
68%
53%
48%
n.a.
70%
88%
n.a.
42%
40%
1051
n.a.
37%
67%
n.a.
77%
n.a.
48%
76%
n.a.
n.a.
59%
79%
n.a.
n.a.
56%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
Effective
$
15196
11140
28184
1983
2757
28806
1039
852
28708
1621
56401
1921
16120
885
6064
53613
30668
21109
16818
6444
6777
11534
91801
198864
71184
35319
884
14998
76998
97728
4579
21678
10316
51208
199394
22288
4750
31140
4272
1646
3557
655
22107
5396
7922
14149
13075
9203
5021
120613
4877
208612
3.26
848
893
5747
67847
32884
881
73442
1786
4982
11261
50090
121634
21670
42984
20371
821
3876
723
42725
28412
11177
734
1160
0.36
6573
606
11257
13143
53283
45919
2215
1231
64178
60625
6173
5184
51122
121417
5736
470
1402
11735
GDP
Months
5.17
3.79
9.59
0.67
0.94
9.80
0.35
0.29
9.77
0.55
19.19
0.65
5.48
0.30
2.06
18.24
10.43
7.18
5.72
2.19
2.31
3.92
31.23
67.65
24.21
12.01
0.30
5.10
26.19
33.24
1.56
7.37
3.51
17.42
67.83
7.58
1.62
10.59
1.45
0.56
1.21
0.22
7.52
1.84
2.69
4.81
4.45
3.13
1.71
41.03
1.66
70.96
0.29
0.30
1.96
23.08
11.19
0.30
24.98
0.61
1.69
3.83
17.04
41.38
7.37
14.62
6.93
0.28
1.32
0.25
14.53
9.66
3.80
0.25
0.39
2.24
0.21
3.83
4.47
18.12
15.62
0.75
0.42
21.83
20.62
2.10
1.76
17.39
41.30
1.95
0.16
0.48
3.99
19
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali 239
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Micronesia, Fed. Sts.
Moldova
Mongolia
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Niger
Nigeria
Norway
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Romania
Russian Federation
Rwanda
Samoa
Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
St. Kitts and Nevis
St. Lucia
St. Vincent and
the Grenadines
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syrian Arab Republic
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Timor-Leste
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Uganda
Ukraine
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela, RB
Vietnam
West Bank and Gaza
Yemen, Rep.
Yugoslavia, Fed. Rep.
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Regional Aggregates [4]
European Union
EU Accession countries
EU applicant countries
The Caribbean
Latin America
Africa
Middle East
Asia
Oceania
288
166
3699
2082
13
9172
1830
366
3750
6214
1973
346
433
1173
200
1730
236
23701
13101
175
319
36815
415
6280
3511
563
1337
2051
912
4561
10954
17682
1728
2141
215
1465
311
8711
476
6912
146
20733
3786
9443
614
2620
14150
849
7609
4222
39
13
3000
6
n.a.
91
3
28
131
6835
n.a.
68
35
400
63
65
83
6872
1511
6
889
2292
585
n.a.
110
298
76
1262
1702
3301
1177
n.a.
801
7200
n.a.
1
n.a.
1343
182
12
n.a.
2100
800
549
22
2962
6916
175
8
23
n.a.
n.a.
70%
n.a.
82801
53%
n.a.
n.a.
65%
55%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
61%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
39%
26%
n.a.
71%
34%
83%
n.a.
61%
n.a.
72%
60%
63%
53%
43%
47%
75%
87%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
52%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
51%
46%
60%
n.a.
38%
49%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
68550
118904
5341
9487
28.17
2154
10795
53959
5268
3179
10012
57020
45598
16840
98978
11420
83770
834
1508
113078
62014
537
47630
3146
5627
35071
14777
9630
21658
4331
1803
1117
11433
9226
92034
13485
63600
2268
41539
2858
135380
953
5218
2092
32173
7541
1396
23257
2596
4679
0.73
3.67
18.35
1.79
1.08
3.41
19.40
15.51
5.73
33.67
3.88
28.50
0.28
0.51
38.46
21.09
0.18
16.20
1.07
1.91
11.93
5.03
3.28
7.37
1.47
0.61
0.38
3.89
3.14
31.31
4.59
21.63
0.77
14.13
0.97
46.05
0.32
1.77
0.71
10.94
2.57
0.47
7.91
0.88
1.59
3047
395
1803
1175
23590
34171
1175
169
271
1874
517
270
1406
6752
2066
2155
1097
249
766
24219
35277
5554
450
1058
5073
411
1286
514
1020
354
706
13
115
19
n.a.
4991
3906
270
n.a.
115
1698
n.a.
100
n.a.
91
229
2792
n.a.
71
898
21533
178326
370
n.a.
n.a.
1300
933
n.a.
35
249
72
155
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
31%
33%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
77%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
58%
n.a.
n.a.
86%
25%
25%
63%
n.a.
n.a.
55%
94%
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
68%
6483
49990
10955
16816
837
578
16815
116879
72860
10540
38212
73033
14054
2926
9560
9167
18010
79324
25802
816
560
3557
43943
18677
3895
48011
15366
38434
19373
55824
27965
2.21
17.00
3.73
5.72
0.28
0.20
5.72
39.76
24.78
3.59
13.00
24.84
4.78
1.00
3.25
3.12
6.13
26.98
8.78
0.28
0.19
1.21
14.95
6.35
1.32
16.33
5.23
13.07
6.59
18.99
9.51
20863
4840
2023
4560
4335
652
2679
2128
13946
116997
8286
3592
308
18703
7636
9708
102229
11886
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
947
4082
9766
4332
4557
30297
7375
9282
1417
23.32
40.45
1.82
3.23
0.32
1.39
3.32
1.47
1.55
10.31
2.51
3.16
0.48
Table 1: License fee relative to GDP/capita.
Source: World Bank World Development Indicators Database, 2001; Piracy data from Business
Software Alliance GDP/capita in US$, Windows + Office XP cost in effective US$
equivalent.
20
This simple calculation is presented in the table for 176 countries, together with 10 geographical and political aggregates. The
table also includes the piracy figures published by the Business
Software Alliance (BSA). It should be noted that there is a correlation
between the piracy rate and the effective software license fee, that
is, the more expensive the software is, the higher the piracy rate.
This is common sense, but does not seem to be reflected in the BSA
estimates of the ‘losses’ to the software industry based on piracy,
which assume that all the estimated unlicensed copies of software in
a country should (or could) be replaced with paid licensed copies.
Ironically, the logical conclusion of the increasingly stringent
international campaign for strong enforcement of copyright is the
reduction of piracy rates not through taking up licensed, proprietary software, but through the use of OSS. Anecdotal evidence
shows that this is the case in Argentina, Peru and other countries
especially in Latin America, where a campaign for strong copyright
enforcement has coincided with poor economic conditions.
Conclusion
There is much current debate on whether governments
should promote or encourage adoption of OSS in their economies,
such as through public procurement practices. While there are a
number of reasons cited for and against such action, any policy
based purely on value–for–money considerations would, faced with
a choice of spending either 0 or 16 months of GDP, necessarily
prefer the former.
ICTs are supposed to be an ‘enabler’ for growth in developing
countries. Such growth cannot spread much beyond a very small
elite if the basic enabling software infrastructure requires the
investment of several months’ worth of GDP on software license
fee, repeatedly, every few years in an upgrade cycle beyond the
control of users.
Moreover, economic growth driven by ICT depends on the
wide dissemination of ICT usage and competences. The skill
development aspects of open source encourage this, provide
support for the generation of local ICT industries, and furthermore
facilitate a reciprocal relationship where developing economies and
local players can quickly start contributing to the global software
developer community, and hence to the global economy.
To conclude, in the interest of sustainable, long-term and
widespread economic growth and ICT development, developing
countries need to seriously consider the adoption, and promote
OSS in order to develop local skills and businesses, actively
participate in the global ICT economy, and avoid unnecessary
expenditure.
Reprinted from First Monday, Volume 8, number 12
(December 2003)
Notes
• MERIT/Informics and Berlecon Research 2002, “Free/Libre/
Open Source Software Study– Final Report,” at http://
www.flossproject.org/report/.
• Price from amazon.com in June 2003.
• Windows + Office XP equivalent US$ cost calculation = $560*
(country GDP per capita/U.S. GDP per capita).
i4d | October 2004
Vol. II No. 10
October 2004
Information for development
www.i4donline.net
Open source
Open-source process server
released
In India, the Apache Software Foundation
launched an open-source project around
business process management (BPM)
server. The software called Agila, is designed
for writing Java applications that automate
business workflow, such as multistep
process for handling business documents.
The software will be available free of charge
under Apache 2.0 open-source license.
Agila is designed to be a simple BPM
product that can be easily embedded in
other applications and run on a range of
devices, including handheld computers.
http://news.com.com
Major Linux push by
Taiwanese bodies
Taiwanese government organisations, as
well as its industrial and academic organisations, have started a plan, which will help
the island’s industries using Linux software to turn out up to an USD 3.25 billion
revenue in three years. The goal includes
getting software companies using Linux to
generate an USD 0.29 billion revenue, and
the hardware industry to gain an USD 2.95
billion revenue.
http://www.theinquirer.net
South African government
keen on OSS technology
Since 2003, the South African government
has increasingly advertised its intentions
and efforts to become more technologically enabled, with the aim to improve its
internal operations, its service levels, and
its accessibility to its citizens. It aims to
do so using the open source software
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
technology. The government has made
available on its website, the potential
benefits that open source software and
open standards offer to its internal projects
and for its e-Government initiatives.
According to the South African government
open source software is a useful tool, with
the major benefits including reduced
software and licensing costs, a decreased
dependency on imported technology and
skills, easy access to data without data
format barriers, and the ability to customise the software to local languages and
cultures.
http://www.tectonic.co.za
MySQL embracing Microsoft
Open Source Project
Open source database server company
MySQL’s next production release of its open
source MySQL database server will be sporting a new Windows installer, partially built
with an open source project, courtesy
Microsoft. The WiX (Windows Installer
XML) toolset that MySQL is using is Microsoft’s first official open source project and
is freely available via the SourceForge open
source repository. The upcoming 4.1 release
of the MySQL Database Server includes
Windows installer files as part of a
revamped and improved Windows installer
for the application. WiX is part of Microsoft’s shared source initiative and is
licensed under the CPL (Common Public
License), which makes the application
freely available to download and use.
http://www.internetnews.com
New Linux software for
desktop
By early November 2004, Novell plans to
release a new version of its open-source
operating system for desktops. SuSE Linux
Professional 9.2 is designed for computers
with 32-bit processors, those based on
Advanced Micro Devices’ Athlon 64 chips
and those, which use Intel’s Extended
Memory 64. The software is based on Linux
Kernel 2.6.8 and features Bluetooth support, the ability to roam between wireless
Local Area Networks (LANs) and other networks, and enhanced power management
and hardware support. The product comes
bundled with development platforms such
as KDevelop, Eclipse and Mono, for opensource users interested in working on Linux
as well as cross-platform applications. The
product is designed to appeal to consumers as well as technical enthusiasts. The
product will be priced at US $89.95, including 90 days of installation support.
http://www.techworld.com
France and China come
together for Linux alliance
The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and the French Atomic
Energy Commission (CEA) have signed an
agreement to work together on an opensource software product. The government
organisations will cooperate on the development of a Linux-based platform, which
will run on multiple environments including Personal Computers (PCs), servers and
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). The
system will support online services and
communication applications.
http://zdnet.co.uk
French government to
provide public Internet access
points across Africa
Mandrakesoft has teamed up with the
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on a programme to provide a network of sixty public Internet access points throughout Africa.
21
The i4d News
‘Open Source Software
Resource Centre’ in Mumbai
IBM India, C-DAC and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Bombay, have signed a cooperation agreement to set up an
‘Open Source Software Resource Centre’ (OSSRC) in Mumbai
with an investment of $1.2 million over the next three years. The
objective of OSSRC is to foster significant OSS development in
India 0by establishing a development portal and initiating and
spearheading significant proof of concept projects. Under this
agreement, C-DAC, IIT Bombay and IBM would undertake activities to foster OSS development, enhance the understanding of
the OSS model by imparting training and promote the development of content in areas of education and general awareness of OSS across the country.
http://www.ciol.com
This government-sponsored project ‘Aden’,
is to include access points running on a
version of Mandrakesoft’s Linux distribution. The aim of the project is to foster the
development and use of Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) in
Africa through the creation of a network of
public Internet system. The programme
hopes to create favorable conditions for the
exchange of ideas and skills and encourage inter-cultural dialogue. The software
will be available as a free download from
Mandrake and Aden project websites.
http://www.desktoplinux.com
Governments in Europe
considering shift to Linux
Early this year, the German city of Munich
had decided to change the operating software of 14,000 government computers to
Linux open-source computer system. Now
it is Paris (France), which is considering
the shift of 15,000 computers and servers
from Windows to the open-source system.
Factors of cost, security and a reluctance
to be beholden to a single American software vendor, led governments in Europe
and elsewhere to take a deeper look at
open software like Linux, which is freely
modified and shared over the Internet.
According to French press reports,
Microsoft has offered to drop its prices by
57 per cent if Paris stays with its products.
The final decision will soon be taken as
the French consulting company, Unilog has
already submitted a feasibility study on open
source deployment to the government.
Various other government bodies have
begun examining or implementing open
source systems. As per the reports of
the International Herald Tribune, the
Austrian city of Vienna is considering
22
replacing Windows with Linux for its
15,000 desktops.
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg
Spotting open-source code
through a new tool
US-based Black Duck Software has
released an application designed to spot
open-source code in proprietary software,
to allow lawyers to resolve the Intellectual
Property (IP) issues around open-source
software. This is the latest offering from
the company, which released two IP
products for developers in May this year.
ProtextIP/development, highlights potential license issues through consulting a
knowledge base of open-source code and
associated licenses, while protexIP/
registry, allows employees to put code it has
developed into the knowledge base to
assure customers and partners that it
has followed best practice in software
compliance.
The Black Duck product uses a 50GB
knowledge base, which is updated with new
code from the open-source community
through the use of spiders, which trawl the
Web looking for open-source code, and by
monitoring 250 leading open-source
projects and community websites such as
Apache, Sourceforge and Freshmeat.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk
Novell to use patent portfolio
to protect its open source
software offerings
Novell has announced its public commitment to use its patent portfolio to protect
its open source software offerings. A policy
statement made by Novell, at http://
www.novell.com/company/policies/patent,
says that it will utilise its patent portfolio
to defend against potential intellectual
property attacks by others on its open
source products. The statement serves as
a reassurance to the customers to choose
open source solutions with confidence,
knowing they have strong backing from
Novell on patent issues. Novell has
adopted the approach to protect customer
choice, not threaten it, and support
the innovation inherent in the open
source model.
http://www.itweb.co.za
Open source training centre
in Kampala, Uganda
The launch of a Linux based training institution in Kampala has given a boost to the
business of managing and maintaining
Open Source Software in Uganda. The
Eastern African Centre for Open Source
Software (EACOSS) was opened for the
public last week, with a training workshop
attended by university lecturers and
officials from government departments and
non-government organisations. The
centre, located at the premises of Uganda
Institute for Communications and
Technology, Nakawa, will provide ‘a onestudent per connected computer’ training.
It will operate as an Internet café at
daytime and training centre in the evenings
to accommodate the working class. This
centre will serve to train people to use
Linux-based technology for office solutions,
including setting up the free Linux
software on their computers.
http://allafrica.com
India going more the
Linux way
More and more state governments, educational institutions and corporates are
exploring the possibility of adopting Linux
operating system, industry experts say.
While the states of Madhya Pradesh,
Kerala, West Bengal and Maharashtra are
already exploiting the advantages of opensource software of Linux, corporates like
Life Insurance Corporation have started
the migration from SCO-Unix to Linux to
take advantage of the cost-effective
alternative. Red Hat India, which caters to
95 per cent of the Linux market in the
country, expects Linux to play a major role
in bridging the digital divide in India.
http://pib.nic.in
i4d | October 2004
The i4d News
IBM, PeopleSoft agreement
open doors to Linux CRM
A joint initiative of IBM and PeopleSoft allows them to focus more sharply on small
and mid-size businesses (SMBs) worldwide.
The alliance calls for joint hardware and
software development of vertical applications, joint marketing efforts, cooperative
Linux development and also industry specific solutions for resellers. The agreement
is being seen as a means to strengthen the
trend towards alternative operating
systems for CRM. PeopleSoft may also
consider a move towards Linux.
http://www.linuxforu.com
Launch of Creative
Commons License in UK
Creative Commons, a U.S. based non-profit foundation, has
created a copyright license that lets musicians and authors decide
what limits to put on their creations. This new flexible form of
copyright for creative material is set to launch in Britain on 1st
November 2004, at a time when ‘remix culture’ is gaining in popularity despite the fact it is often illegal. The Creative
Commons concept has already been gaining steam in the United
States, Brazil and elsewhere. Inexpensive software has made it
possible for anyone to remix songs or video, and distribute his or her creation on the Internet.
But rights holders rarely approve of unauthorised mixes, and in some cases have filed lawsuits
to enforce their rights.
http://www.reuters.co.uk
Railway ministry in China
goes for Linux
The railway ministry of China will use
Japan based Linux specialist Turbolinux’s
software for centralised package delivery
operations. The Turbolinux product,
TurboHA, is ‘high-availability’ software
designed to ensure that computer operations stay available, by moving processes to
functioning computers if one crashes.
Three hundred copies of the company’s
server software will be used on 160 servers.
Microsoft software to open source Linux
programmes. This will be a gradual ‘soft
migration’, expected to be complete by
2009. The shift will begin with office
desktop applications and then move to
more specialised applications. The reason
for the shift is that the code in the open
source software is freely available, and
benefits from the continual scrutiny and
improvements made by a community of
programmers.
Development of OSS in
Vietnam
The city of Bergen, Norway, has moved away
from its proprietary Unix and Microsoft
Windows application to Novell’s Linux technology to strengthen its technology infrastructure. This two-phased implementation
of SuSE (comes from the German phrase,
Software-und System – Entwicklung)
Linux Enterprise Server 8 will impact
50,000 users of city’s administrative and
educational networks. The implementation
will initially see 20 existing Oracle database servers running on HP-UX, powering
the city’s core health and welfare services.
The second implementation phase involves
migration and consolidation of the present
Microsoft Windows application servers,
powering the city’s educational network to
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 on IBM
eServer BladeCentres.
From this year onwards Vietnam will see
the development of open source software.
This government initiative is designed to
promote copyright protection, reduce
spending on software purchases and boost
the development of information technology in general and the software industry in
particular, in Vietnam. Under this five-year
project, one million young volunteers will
disseminate IT knowledge to 20 million
others, primarily in rural areas. Provision
will be made for two million low-cost
computers to targeted areas, which will be
run on open source software.
http://www.linuxforu.com
Matrix, in Israel, which locally sells the Red
Hat Linux infrastructure, has reported
that its Linux sales reached USD 0.22 million in the third quarter. This is a 10-fold
increase in the second quarter, when
it began its operations. Since receiving
local representation to market Red Hat
Munich’s shift to Linux
(July 2004)
City officials of Munich have approved a
plan to change their 14,000 computers from
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
http://www.haaretzdaily.com
http://www.linuxforu.com
http://www.linuxforu.com
Norwegian city opts for Linux
Enterprise Linux, Matrix has sold some
250 licenses, most of them in the third
quarter. The clients include, the Weizmann
Institute, Comverse, Amdocs, Tel Aviv university, government ministries and insurance companies. Red Hat concentrates
only on operating systems, and its key platform is the Linux infrastructure. The company trades on Nasdaq at a company value
of around USD 2.5 billion.
http://www.linuxforu.com
Tenfold rise in Matrix’s Red
Hat Linux sales in Israel
Brazil, IBM team for new
technology centre
IBM and the Brazilian government have
signed a cooperative agreement for the
establishment of a Knowledge and Technology Centre, to be called CDTC, which
will promote and develop open standard
solutions in Brazil, under the auspices of
the Information Technology Institute (ITI).
The Ministry of Culture and the University
of Brasilia (UnB) are also involved in the
project. The CDTC will encourage the
popularisation of open standard solutions
by training technicians, and supporting
professionals and users of public administration systems. The intention is to
establish a growing group of open standard
users. The CDTC aims to stimulate and
supply tools for the Brazilian market to
adopt new information technology
standards, based on open-code software.
http://linuxtoday.com
Linux courses to get
accreditation
The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) will
soon be launching a quality assurance
programme for the UK-based training
23
The i4d News
Using mobiles to tr
track HIV
treatment
The researchers in South Africa have developed a unique application for mobile phone technology that helps health workers monitor HIV patients cheaply and efficiently. The Cell-Life project, backed
by local mobile phone giant Vodacom, has developed software and
data management systems that let clinic workers use their mobile
phones to monitor patients’ treatment and spot health problems
before they become life-threatening. The phones are equipped
with a special menu that enables the HIV counselors to record data
on a patient’s symptoms and whether they are sticking to drug
regimes. Other factors that might affect their health, such as a lack
of money to pay for transport to the clinic, or shortage of food, are also monitored. The
information collected is instantly relayed over Vodacom’s network to a central database,
which can be accessed by the clinic staff through a secure Internet connection.
http://www.scidev.net
courses in the open source operating system. The LPI-approved training programme
was announced at Linux World Expo in
London held in October 2004. It will be the
only training programme covering all
versions of Linux, and will complement
the LPI’s internationally accepted
certification standard. The programme will
be run in the UK by LPI affiliates. It
aims to set a benchmark that will boost
Linux use. Open Forum Europe with the
ITS Group will be the first approved
training partner.
exercise their rights in their own country
and when visiting other member states.
Guides are available in ten areas of EU
law, including living, working, studying and
traveling in other EU countries, buying
goods and services across the EU, equal
opportunities, data protection, and settling
cross-border financial services disputes.
The portal also provides printable fact
sheets on a multitude of subjects in
English, French, German and the language
of the relevant member state.
http://www.electricnews.net
http://www.computerweekly.com
Miscellaneous
Railway ticket booking
through mobile phones
The Indian Railways have launched a new
service where the rail tickets can be booked
through mobile. The railway has tied up
with Reliance and Hutch for launching ticket booking through mobile phones. The
service would be available initially only in
Delhi, India’s capital, and would expand
gradually. Customers would be able to
order ticket on mobile and pay through their
credit cards.
http://pib.nic.in
EU launched Citizens’
rights portal
The European Commission has launched
a portal site offering European Union (EU)
citizens advice on their rights. The portal
named ‘Dialogue with Citizens’ provides
information on how EU citizens can
24
UK health department makes
its website speech enabled
In an attempt to improve accessibility,
the Department of Health in UK has speech
enabled its website with ‘Browse-aloud’.
When plugged in it reads web pages
aloud, highlighting text as it goes. This
makes the website more accessible for
those who are dyslexic, with learning
disabilities, those for whom English is not
their first language, and those with mild
visual impairment.
http://www.publictechnology.net
Text-to-speech enabled
phone
In the U.S, Cingular Wireless LLC has
started offering a handset specially
designed for blind and vision-impaired
people. It contains software that can
convert everything on the phone screen
including text messages to synthesised
speech. As the users push buttons to scroll
through the handset menu, they will be
able to hear aloud every category-such as
‘call log’ and ‘profiles’. It also provides the
added distuingishing feature of hearing
the of phone numbers of incoming and
missed calls.
http://www.financialexpress.com
Online digital literacy course
for agricultural professionals
A digital online literacy course has been
designed for agricultural professionals in
the Asia Pacific region. Making use of some
basic skills, software and a computer
connected to the Internet, agricultural
professionals will be able to communicate
with other individuals connected to the
Internet. Agricultural professionals will
have access to the tremendous and evergrowing body of professionals and general
information available on and through
interlinked computers throughout the
world. They will also be able to take
advantage of formal and informal training
offered on-line from virtually anywhere.
Besides this the course materials are
available on the web, and the course is
self-paced.
http://community.eldis.org
Microsoft supports ICT
education in schools
In an attempt to support information and
communication Technology educational
projects, Microsoft Australia has launched
the first in a series of national roll outs of
the partners in learning programme. The
programme was launched in Perth in
partnership with the Western Australian
Department of Education. It will see more
than 13,000 teachers in Western Australia
participate in a professional development
initiative, over the next five years, aimed
at increasing their knowledge of, and
their ability to teach, ICT. Microsoft has
also linked up with 140 colleges and
universities in Philippines in the same
educational programme.
Under the same initiative, the Ministry
of Education and Microsoft South Gulf has
signed a Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) to bring improved ICT education to
schools in the Sultanate of Oman. This
five-year agreement will encourage school
teachers, staff and students to use ICT to
improve the learning process, and will
support teachers in raising their level of
ICT awareness.
http://www.computerworld.com.au
i4d | October 2004
Interview
Red Hat: Fuelling the
OSS movement
Javed Tapia, Director, Red Hat India Pvt. Ltd
How has your company’s journey been
from the starting point? How do you
envisage your present and future endeavors to bring OSS for the benefit of larger
community?
We started talking to Red Hat, USA in 1999
when Linux was not a commercial operating system. It was very much for techies and
enthusiasts rather than the enterprise. We
felt that this technology is appropriate for
India. The period from April 2001-March
2002 was our first year of operations. At
that point of time, Linux was very much in
its infancy. People had started looking at it
but had not yet decided to adopt it. So what
we did was build a programme to get Linux
adoption. We called it our ‘Three AAA’
programme which would focus on awareness, appreciation and adoption.
There was a huge degree of awareness
about Linux because Indians are very
proactive on technology and have Unix
skills. We needed to get people to appreciate
Linux from an enterprise standpoint. Only
if we get appreciation, will there be adoption. So we really worked on appreciation,
in terms of large projects and proof-of-conOctober 2004 | www.i4donline.net
Although the most talked about topic in IT sector,
FOSS is yet to make its way beyond intellectual
debates and reach out to the masses. Red Hat is an
organisation generating the momentum of OSS
movement, helping FOSS by taking its major
applications operating system Linux, ahead. Javed
Tapia talks to i4d on Red Hat’s efforts to spread
awareness about FOSS and its adoption.
cept, building lighthouse cases, skills in
migration, etc. We did a number of things
that required a lot of investment from a
people’s perspective as well as customers’
perspective. We held road shows, seminars,
etc, across the country and all this was
focused on enterprises. We were very clearly
focused on the fact that we needed enterprise customers to get on the bandwagon if
we wanted Linux to grow.
We see adoption taking off in a big way
today. Rarely do we come across enterprises
today that do not have some sort of Linux
strategy in place. The more proactive and
aggressive ones have an entire strategy on
Linux. The less aggressive ones are starting
out small but looking to grow their Linux
strategy. So we find that Linux is rapidly
getting acceptance at the enterprise level.
In the initial phase, we focused on
acquiring critical mass and now we are
expanding our reach to address requirements
across the country. Red Hat is now working
on creating an open source ecosystem by
partnering with ISVs (Independent Software
Vendors) to get more applications built or
ported to Linux, we are working with the
community in localising Linux and other
open source software to the major Indian
languages and working on popularising the
use of open source software in education,
government and industry.
Though Linux is low cost, there has been a
common opinion among Linux users that
it is difficult to install, it takes time to learn
and there are more commands to be written to get a small job done. Keeping all these
in mind, why do you feel an organisation/
person should switch from Microsoft to
Red Hat?
The Graphical User Interfaces for Linux
and leading open source applications are as
good as that of proprietary software. Users
who are coming from the proprietary
software world will get familiar with Linux
within a day or two.
On the system administration side,
system admins familiar with Unix can
easily pick up Linux skills. Linux is one
of the most popular server platforms
for web servers, mail servers etc so
the availability of these skill sets is
growing daily.
25
Organisations across the world are switching to Linux because
of reliability, affordability, security, manageability and the fact that
Linux is less prone to viruses.
Linux is also known to have the lack of support for maintenance.
Has there been any development in improving this issue?
Enterprise deployment of Linux is supported by leading companies like IBM and Oracle. Red Hat and other open source vendors
also sell support, training and other services that corporates need
and this has been a major factor that encouraged leading companies
like Amazon, Merill Lynch, Central Bank of India, Bharti and
others to adopt Linux.
What is your view on the way the use of OSS has been spreading
in the last few years? Can you share with us the trend?
Most of the major educational institutions in India are big
supporters of open source. The fact that anyone can modify the
source code has lead to a huge amount of development in areas like
clustering, grid computing, security, localisation etc. It is no
coincidence that the growth of the Internet has paralleled the
popularity of open source software. We see the network effect working in the open source world too! There are an estimated one
million developers working on open source projects today, and as
the pool of open source software keeps growing, it becomes
increasingly attractive as an alternative to proprietary software.
How much, do you feel, Red Hat has played a role in the OSS
movement?
Many of the leading open source developers work with Red Hat.
The Fedora project which, is supported by Red Hat is one of the
leading open source distributions. Red Hat India is contributing to
the localisation of open source software in Hindi, Punjabi, Bangla,
Tamil and Gujrati. We have been pioneers in persuading
enterprises to adopt Linux and our success has helped establish the
viability of the open source business model.
What is the kind of market for Linux/OSS in India/Asia?
We believe that the market potential is huge and untapped. For
example, there are 120,000 schools in India and eventually all of
them will need to have an IT component. There is a wealth of OSS
available for education and schools and colleges can lower their cost
of deploying IT by using OSS.
In e-Government, there is a huge requirement for the Indian
government to reach out to a billion plus citizens and OSS can play
a major role in this by making IT deployment more affordable.
The usage of IT in India is very low compared to the US and
other countries and this is where our localisation initiatives will
help. Localisation to Indian languages is an absoloutely essential
step in taking IT to the masses because barely 10 per cent of India
speaks English. Indian language Linux desktops will help us address the other 90 per cent of India and expand the market for IT.
26
How can the developing countries use OSS to their advantage to
trigger the developmental process? Can you share the programmes
of Red Hat currently underway in developing nations?
Localisation is a key area where open source can play a major role. In
open source, everyone has the freedom to modify the source code
and tailor it to his/her requirements. At a recent localisation workshop that was sponsored by Red Hat India, localisation teams from
all the major Indian languages were represented. The advantage
with open source is that the initiative lies with individuals, organisations or governments and not with proprietary software vendors
who work according to their commercial agendas. Many countries
have taken the initiative to localise Linux to their national languages and from an ICT4D perspective, this is a critical step towards
bridging the digital divide that is made possible by OSS.
In what ways does OSS play a role in sectors like education,
e-Governance and health? What initiatives Red Hat is taking to
capture these sectors?
The philosophy of OSS is in tune with the philosophy of education which is based on peer review and sharing of knowledge. Red
Hat has launched the Red Hat Scholarships aimed at encouraging
OSS development among engineering and MCA students
across India.
Is Red Hat safe to be used by the governments? What measures
are you adopting to ensure the security?
Many defence departments in India and abroad are users of Linux.
The National Security Administration in the US has released the
Security Enhanced Linux.
Linux was chosen as the platform for this work because its growing success and open development environment provided an
opportunity to demonstrate that the security enhancement
functionality can be successful in a mainstream operating system.
Red Hat is incorporating features of the same in Red Hat Enterprise
Linux.
What are the cost-benefits of developing an independent software
using Linux as an operating system?
Linux is predicted to be one of the most popular server operating
systems over the next few years. Application developers therefore
get a platform that reaches the largest number of users when they
develop applications on Linux.
The demand is also being driven by users. Since Linux can run
on commodity hardware, many users are demanding that applications that run on expensive hardware platforms and proprietary
operating systems be rewritten to run on Linux. This enables them
to lower the cost that customers pay for their solutions and helps
ISVs expand their market reach.
Can you share with us more about the localised versions you offer?
What other steps are you taking to make Linux more acceptable?
The next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux will have support for
Hindi, Bengali, Gujrati, Punjabi and Tamil. Red Hat has also acquired and released, under the GNU General Public License, high
quality fonts in these languages. High quality fonts were a crying
need felt by the Open Source community for the last several years
and the fonts released by Red Hat finally fulfill this need.
i4d | October 2004
A V ISION
In the years to come...
This article envisions
how open source
software would
cater to the needs
of rural India in
2020. A much
needed change in
policy at
the government
level is required to
take open source to
the grassroots.
Maneesh Prasad
JT Maps, India
mp@jtmaps.com
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
2020: Dadka village, in the
district of Faridabad, North
India
In the midst of a discussion, the village
sarpanch1 fishes out his PDA2 and unfolds
its two wings to get a small computer with
keypad. He presses his thumb over the screen
and the biosensor brings up his customised
and friendly screen with relevant application programme icons, which he has done
for himself, over last few months. He has an
e-mail, a circular, which has been issued by
the Ministry of Agriculture, informing the
Gram Pramukh and the sarpanch about the
budget for the villages in the panchayat3
for the current year. The fund transfer to
each panchayat in the country now takes
less than a day, thanks to the high security
networking between all the banks in the
country. Build on open source platform, it
is an integral part of the NASF4 .
Last night his son used the same device.
He had a long session of Quake5 with his
friends in the neighbouring villages, along
with kids at the village kiosk. They have
been preparing for a Global Quake Championship semifinal, where they would be
competing with kids from either Finland or
Israel. Sarpanch is not much aware of this,
thanks to the new version of the operating
system released by Open Source India,
which took care of his and many like him,
long standing demand of personal space
and application storage at the DnicS
(District NIC6 Server).
Today, he is a happy man; he is not
hooked to a device, but to the ‘National
Framework’. He has his ‘Personal User
Interface’ along with application software,
available to use anywhere across the
country. All he has to do is to get an access to
computing device, login to the system and
go through the bio-verification and he is on
the job. At the DnicS, he has for himself a
terabyte of storage space and it takes him
less than a minute to download files of
200MB from the DnicS to his hand
held device.
Back in the village, the sarpanch who
was moderating the discussion on which
crop to sow in the coming Kharif season,
once again had to rely on his trusted ally,
the wise and knowledgeable DnicS. The
database in the DnicS provides information
on the crop obtained in the past two
decades in his village, and the yield per
hectare for each year, along with the market
price which was realised. Soon he pulls down
information on the crop grown by other
villages in the district over the decade.
Although more than 60 per cent of the
agricultural land is now under corporate
farming, there are people who love the
independence to grow what they like. The
Sarpanch gives a cursory look on the data
available on the government subsidy for
specific crop cultivation.
Soon he hooks on to the NIA7 , which
has high-resolution data for the entire country accessible for the project planning and
implementation. The NIA server authenticates the user by the way of thumbprint
and the national authorised user database;
soon it crops the satellite image for the locality and sends the image as compressed file
to the sarpanch. The NIA also shoots a mail
to the local Block Development Officer
(BDO) about the use of the NIA archive by
the Sarpanch. The BDO sends a ‘Hi’ to the
sarpanch confirming the download of data
from NIA. On learning about the discussion, the BDO decides to join the discussion from remote location. The sarpanch
informs his fellow villagers about the BDO
joining the discussion. There is small rumble and people straighten up a bit. They call
a local boy to get the ‘EM’8, an e-Conference device. Soon a webcam on tripod is
placed in front of the gathering and the EM
looking more like an A0 plastic sheet, is unrolled and hung on the nearby wall. Within
couple of minutes the BDO appears on the
plastic sheet sipping his tea and smiling at
the villagers. While at the other end the
BDO is watching the villagers in discussion.
They are now ready for one of the many
27
discussions, which is now a modus operandi. Referring to the information provided by the DnicS, the discussion moved from perception to fact analysis. This has been a result of culmination of a
programme initiated by the Government of India (GoI) in 2010,
to explore the new line of integrated operating system along with
utility application in the event of ‘Global Software Crisis’.
2010. Ministry of Communications and
Information Technology, Government of India
All the administrative units of the country down to the panchayat
have been computerised in the country bringing roughly six lakh
villages in the country into a wired framework. All birth, death,
migration and education statistics are fed into the computer at
panchayat, which is further linked to the district server which in
turn is hooked to the national data framework. The census department is more focused on data analysis and the forecasting. They
have an advanced super computer managing the data hub of the
country with mirrors in unknown locations in the country. Data
retrieval and access is subject to authorisation, but in general open
to all the citizens of India.
Every individual in the country has his data tagged into the
system including his fingerprints and voice. The massive effort
taken by the government to computerise administration has been
giving results. The service sector is now hooked to the national data
framework and all services are available at the click of a button.
But while all seems to be going well, there was still an element of
uncertainty. Last year, the owners of proprietary software formed an
association and came into an agreement with the microprocessor
manufacturers to further enhance the software security. In turn,
they pledged a part of the revenue to the hardware manufacturers.
Now every registration of the software is linked to the payment,
and this is further ensured by the processor, memory, storage and
motherboard, who’s unique device number is used for registering
the software. Over 60 per cent overlap in hardware combination is
required for the re-registration of the same software elsewhere, hence
forth, making it difficult for the pirated software users.
GoI intervened by subsidising the imports of the software. This
was necessary to sustain the services exports. But this has left the
GoI with a big hole in its Forex reserve.
The Ministry of Communication and Information and Technology in association with Ministry of Human Resource Development and Ministry of Home Affairs formed a ‘task force’ to explore
the open source domain. The task force called ‘Open Source India’
was established under the leadership of three-member
committee. The NASF set forth with establishing a high-speed
network between the IITs, NITs, REC 9 and other premier
institutions of the country. This has been a relatively easy job for
the institutions wherein they had to prioritise the network usage
between different users. The network structure was already in place.
The dilemma for the Task Force was: “Why
do people pay when there is free stuff?”
The first virtual workshop was organised. The leading professors
and scientists from all the premier institutions focused on:
• Failure of the open source to penetrate the grass roots
• Identify the vehicle to take the utility services to the masses
28
Attempts were being made to popularise the open source
amongst the users at the grass root level. There were many
successful implementations too. But the primary variable on which
these successes hinged was the individual who was implementing
the project. The open source movement although much talked and
deliberated, but due to lack of mandate on behalf of the
government still lacked the penetration which could see the open
source software becoming the default platform for usage.
The workshop kept its focus on ‘What is holding back open
source software?’
Typical usage and proliferation of open source software have
been concentrated in the areas where the level of user was quite
advanced, the integration with the existing requirement was not a
problem and the maturity of the software was comparatively high.
Open source software usage is still restricted to the hobby users
in the technical institutions or advanced user in the commercial
segment. The open source software user segment was fragmented
and the failure to form the critical mass which could generate the
self sustaining momentum was not there. Most of the funding
provided by the international agencies went for the workshops/
training and were limited to urban centres. While the government
in principle agreed with the open source software, educational
setups were teaching proprietary software as a part of curriculum,
which later motivated the students to continue in the same direction; lack of coordination between various institutions, boards, councils and commissions failed to deliver the desired result. Government
itself was buying proprietary software worth Rs. 20 billion (USD
500m) annually. Although desktop ruled the 1990s and 2000s,
the ‘Task Force’ said that the future certainly belonged to the PDA
with the convergence of mobile phone, computation device, entertainment, personal organiser and scratch pad.
The Task Force concluded with a common decision of coordinated approach amongst various government agencies and a policy
level change which would make the use of NASF product mandatory for the government and educational setups. The task force also
stressing on the role of private institutions in the development of
strong commitment by the government, could see the reversal of
the situation in five years time.
Footnotes:
1. Elected public representative of group of villages, looking
after implementation and monitoring of village development
programmes
2. A high utility device, invented in 1993 by Apple Computer, had
eluded many in terms of ease of use since its invention.
3. An administrative block formed out of a set of villages.
4. National Application Software Framework
5. A computer based game played by either alone or in group.
Requires networking amongst the devices if played amongst a
group of people.
6. A Government of India initiative to centralise the activities
related to computerisation and application software solution for
various industry verticals.
7. National Imagery Archive, maintained by the National Remote
Sensing Agency, has archive of processed remotely sensed images.
8. An electronic device, with synthetic paper appearance.
9. Indian Institute of Technology, National Institute of Technology
and Regional Engineering College.
i4d | October 2004
I NTERNATIONAL O PEN S OURCE N ETWORK (IOSN)
Building a global
resource
IOSN is a centre of
excellence for FOSS
in the Asia-Pacific
region. It is tasked
specifically to
accelerate the
adoption of FOSS
by facilitating and
networking relevant
technologists,
advocates,
institutions and
end-users.
Sunil Abraham
sunil@apdip.net
Khairil Yusof
khairil@apdip.net
IOSN, Malaysia
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
The International Open Source Network
(IOSN), www.iosn.net, is a centre of excellence for Free/Open Source Software
(FOSS) in the Asia-Pacific region. IOSN is a
project of the UNDP’s Asia-Pacific Information Development Programme (APDIP),
www.apdip.net, which has been supporting the strategic and effective use of Information Communication Technology (ICT)
for poverty alleviation and sustainable human development in the Asia-Pacific region
since 1997. Via a small secretariat, the IOSN
is tasked specifically to accelerate the adoption of FOSS by facilitating and networking relevant technologists, advocates,
institutions and end-users.
IOSN considers FOSS to be in line with
UNDP’s Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) because it increases access to,
ownership of, and control of information
and communication technologies. FOSS in
our opinion provides a copyright cum licensing framework and global collaborative
methodology, which can be applied in all
areas of development theory and practice.
The principles and practices underlying
FOSS can be used to stretch the development dollar and dramatically scale up the
impact of various interventions. FOSS
development methodology could foster
new forms of knowledge production in a
collaborative, non-hierarchical, peer-to-peer
manner. IOSN also believes FOSS provides
a model to protect and strengthen the public domain and creative commons. A vibrant
public domain and creative commons is considered critical for innovation, enterprise and
vitality in private and development sector.
Free Software Foundation and Open
Source Initiative are two of the larger
organisations that represent the FOSS community and cause. However, most FOSS
campaigns are presented from software and
technical perspective. Not surprisingly,
members of the general public do not
sympathise with this cause. Yet the aims of
FOSS movement are in line with other advocates that seek to empower the commons.
Therefore, we would like the Free Software
advocates to join similar causes such as Free
Medicine [ex. generic HIV/AIDS drugs],
Free Seeds [ex. seed banks], Free Books [ex.
Open Access Movement] and Freedom of
Information Movement. We believe this
alliance will allow us to effectively capture
the imagination of the public.
Free / Open Source
information resource facility
Regional collaboration
The IOSN website is the platform through
which the global FOSS community works
with the IOSN secretariat. It is a community driven site, and the community helps
maintain news and events from around the
region. One of the aims of IOSN is to foster
regional cooperation and the website provides a collective resource of all the FOSS
efforts in the region. For example, a resource
for education in Sri Lanka on the website,
will show related links to other educational
efforts in the Asia-Pacific region. Any FOSS
project, no matter how small can now tap
on regional FOSS resources for support. The
community also uses a mailing list for support. The website currently hosts a thriving
international community of more than a
thousand members, which collaborates on
projects such as localisation of software and
translation of FOSS documentation.
FOSS primers series
These are concise, comprehensive and nontechnical introductions to different aspects
of FOSS addressed at people working in
the development and government sector. A
general introduction to FOSS by Kenneth
29
Wong and Phet Sayo has already been published. Other primers on
FOSS currently under production include licensing, government
policy, network and security and localisation. The authors come
from countries in the Asia-Pacific region like Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Nepal and Laos. These primers are being authored using a
FOSS-like methodology, drafts are uploaded on the website for
feedback from the general public. Domain experts are invited to
submit peer reviews. Many regional and international FOSS
experts have provided feedback as part of the open process.
Software repository
A collection of FOSS software and GNU/Linux distributions
specific to the Asia Pacific are being compiled and maintained at the
IOSN secretariat. Copies of this software will be posted to nonprofit organisations based in countries with poor bandwidth. The
list currently includes localised GNU/Linux distributions, free
software that runs on Microsoft Windows, special distributions for
education, software for open access publishing and content
management systems.
Training and workshops
FOSSAP 2004: This is the acronym for Free/Open Source
Software Asia Pacific consultation which was held in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia from 9th - 11th February 2004. More than 50 senior
policy makers and open source practitioners from 20 countries attended this event. It focused on government policies, implementation issues in education and government sector, licensing and legal
issues, software localisation, network and security infrastructure.
Training of trainers and proctor: The lack of trained and
certified personnel is a major stumbling block for adoption of FOSS
in this region. Therefore, IOSN will conduct training for trainers
and proctors in collaboration with Linux Professional Institute (LPI).
The trainers will be enabled to deliver training based on course
material has been developed by LinuxIT, United Kingdom. This
course material has been released under GNU Free Documentation
License and therefore is freely available to all. IOSN is working on
improving this material and localising it for the Asia Pacific context.
30
Research and development
End-user training manual and multimedia module: The
manual introduces the GNU/Linux desktop to users without prior
experience of computers or free software.Volunteers have offored to
translate the manual to German, Dutch, Philipino, French, Italian,
Portuguese and Spanish. GetIT Multimedia, Singapore, will be
converting the manual to a multimedia module with video clips,
voice over and interactive exercises.
Localisation ‘How To’ and toolkit: Dr. Sasi Kumar from Centre
for Advanced Computing (CDAC), India supported by specialists
from Pakistan, Cambodia, Laos, Greece and Thailand will provide
step by step instructions to developers interested in localising GNU/
Linux, KDE, GNOME, Mozilla, Open Office and other applications, covering issues such as Unicode and Open Type Fonts. The
toolkit will be a compilation of software, conversion utilities, reference documents and other resources, to help the developers.
GNU/Linux Live CD: The partner for this project is Colin
Charles, Australia of the Fedora project. Live CDs allow users of
proprietary software to experiment with GNU/Linux safely. All
they have to do is reboot the machine with the live CD inserted in
the drive. GNU/Linux will load without writing a single file onto
the hard-disk. The IOSN live CD will be unique because it will
contain soft copies of all the primers, the end-user training manual
and multimedia module.
Micro-grant programme: This is a collaboration with University of South Pacific. Twenty grants of six months duration each of
USD 900 will be awarded to individuals and organisations from
the the Pacific Island countries in the first round. Projects will be
selected based on originality and innovation; utility value to an
identifiable user group and usefulness in the local developmental
context. The resultant software will be made available under some
FOSS license. Next year, IOSN hopes to launch a collaborative
grants programme that will fund cooperations between voluntary
organisations and Linux user groups.
Case studies on FOSS: Case studies in the areas of FOSS
research, development and implementation will be prepared by
IOSN secretariat or by community members.
i4d | October 2004
O PEN C ONTENT
AND
O PEN S TANDARDS
IN
FLOSS
Promoting partnerships
The concepts are
called open content
and open standards.
These are critical
concepts that have
to be understood
for building a baseline knowledge on
the FLOSS ideology.
The debate in FLOSS has often featured on
the software aspects and the philosophy of
“free” and open source software. “Free”
means different things to different groups.
In the context of making available the source
code of software freely on the Internet and
to allow free modifications in the source
codes for both improving the existing package as well as to improve the features or
modules on a product. The community of
followers of such a philosophy have transformed the intellectual property debates and
provided a key example of how communities, geographically distant, and not even
knowing each other, have built a body of
knowledge and solutions far more rapidly
and creatively than the corporate model for
software development.
There are yet two other aspects of this
movement that this article features. The
concepts are called open content and open
standards. These are critical concepts that
have to be understood for building a baseline knowledge on the FOSS ideology.
The “Open Development”
approach
Jayalakshmi Chittoor
i4d, India
jchittoor@csdms.org
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
Bellanet International Secretariat (www.
bellanet.org ) has been building the concept
of Open Development. The Open Development approach is about supporting and
creating an environment of sustainable information and knowledge sharing. Having
a cultural environment that is supportive of
open approaches leads to improved access
to quality information and knowledge, and
to more effective and coordinated development efforts.
The approaches and tools of Bellanet’s
Open Development programme, includes
Open Standards, Open Source, and Open
Content. It serves as an integrated package
that not only provides opportunities for
operating in an open manner, but also
promotes the ideals of common ownership
and collaborative development work for the
collective benefit of all participants in the
development community. This programme
in a distinct way fulfills the mission objectives of the organisation of promoting
effective collaboration in the international
development community, especially
through the use of ICTs.
Open content
Creative Commons is a unique licensing
system and movement that promotes the
generation and sharing of creative work in a
flexible copyright policy. The movement has
gained a lot of support in the music, art,
talent and creative writing industry of
people who believe that the knowledge in
these areas is a gradual and traditional process that must be openly shared. Interesting
analysis of the creative commons licensing
system has evoked renowned publisher and
anthropologist Dr. Marshall Sahlings of the
University of Chicago to promote a concept
of Internet Pamphleteering. This enables
people to move away from “all rights
reserved” concept of traditional copyright
to “some rights reserved” under flexible
copyright concept of Creative Commons.
The Open Content Network available
at www.open-content.net, is a forum that
promotes the strength of the Open Content Network will lie in a diversity of implementations that each meet different user
needs. Thus, unlike many other projects,
the focus is not on creating a single kitchensink implementation that tries to meet
everyone’s needs. Instead, a primary focus
will be on creating detailed specifications of
the simple, yet powerful, protocols upon
which the OCN is built.
Content-Addressable web
specifications
• HTTP Extensions for a Content-Addressable Web (CAW) - This document
describes a set of simple, yet powerful,
extensions to HTTP that enable clients
to perform secure, distributed downloads.
• Tree Hash EXchange format (THEX) This document defines a serialization and
interchange format for Merkle Hash
31
Trees. These hash trees allow very efficient, fine-grained integrity checking of content in a distributed network.
• Content Mirror Advertisement Specification - This document
defines a flexible lease-based protocol for announcing mirrors in
a distributed content network.
• Partial File Sharing Protocol - This document defines HTTP
extensions for discovering which bytes in a file are available to be
downloaded. This protocol enables “swarm downloads” to be
implemented over HTTP.
• WebMUX - This document defines a multiplexing protocol that
allows multiple “virtual sockets” to be established over a single
TCP connection. WebMUX augments the Content-Addressable Web by allowing connections to be established to hosts
behind firewalls and NAT.
The International Network for the Availability of Scientific
Publications (www.inasp.org.uk) based in UK aims to enabling
worldwide access to information and knowledge. INASP is a
cooperative network of partners. Its objectives are three fold: (i) to
map, support and strengthen existing activities promoting access to
and dissemination of scientific and scholarly information and
knowledge; (ii) to identify, encourage and support new initiatives
that will increase local publication and general access to quality
scientific and scholarly literature; and, (iii) to promote in-country
capacity building in information production, organisation, access
and dissemination.
The Open Knowledge Network (OKN) is a human network,
which collects, shares and disseminates local knowledge and is supported by flexible technical solutions. Resources in their website
(http://www.openknowledge.net) describes it as a global network
project of the One World International Network in UK. Poor people must be able to express and communicate locally relevant knowledge in local languages if they are to shape the decisions that affect
their livelihoods. Local content development is closely tied to human development, and the ultimate aim of OKN is the empowerment of local communities.
Open standards
An Open Standard is more than just a specification. The principles
behind the standard, and the practice of offering and operating the
standard, are what make the standard Open. The Open Standards
Repository (www.openstandards.org) is a location that contains standards relevant to the Open Source community. Standards will
include licenses, standards, protocols, RFCs, etc.
The principles of running the Open Standards repository is to
make them available for all to read and implement; to maximize end
user choice. This creates a fair, competitive market for implementations of the standard, without locking the customer in to a particular vendor or group. Open Standards are free for all to implement,
with no royalty or fee. Certification of compliance by the standards
organisation may involve a fee. Open Standards and the organisations that administer them do not favor one implementer over
another for any reason other than the technical standards compliance of a vendor’s implementation. Certification organisations must
provide a path for low and zero-cost implementations to be validated, but may also provide enhanced certification services. Extensions, subsets and predatory practices are also issues that are
predefined principles of Open Standards, which may employ license terms that protect against subversion of the standard by embrace-and-extend tactics. The licenses attached to the standard may
require the publication of reference information for extensions, and
a license for all others to create, distribute, and sell software that is
compatible with the extensions. An Open Standard may not otherwise prohibit extensions.
A standards organisation that wishes to support itself through
certification branding should establish a premium track and a lowcost or zero-cost track. This would provide self-certification by the
vendor and baseline branding.
The standards organisation may wish to apply an agreement
similar to the Sun Industry Standards Source License to the standard documentation and its accompanying reference implementation. The Sun agreement requires publication of a reference
implementation (not the actual commercial implementation) for
any extensions to the standard, making it possible for a standards
organisation to preserve interoperability without stifling innovation.
Another interesting site for learning more about the Open Standards resources for Web, Internet and System Interoperability is (http:/
/open-standards.gbdirect.co.uk). It describes some of the key open
standards and the organisations that make them. These include
web standards (HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, XLST)–
(www.w3c.org), Core Internet standards (TCP/IP, (E)SMTP, DNS,
etc.) – (www.ietf.org), underlying electronic communications standards (Ethernet, Firewire, WiFi, etc.) (www.iee.org), general International standards (www.iso.org) and fast tracked specifications drafted
in international standards format (JavaScript/ ECMA Script, C#,
CLI, etc.) – European Association for Standardising information
and communication systems (www.ecma-international.org)
GIS INSTITUTE
AD
32
i4d | October 2004
R EVOLUTIONISING T HE P ROCESS
FOSS and localisation
The Free/GNU
platform was making
strides on software
front in many ways
but a little slowly on
Indian languages.
But this slowness
was steadily towards
universal standards
and hence almost
deliberate.
Creating documents in local languages with
ease is now well established. Use of free
software for this is still only rare in
e-Governance . However, localisation in
e-Governance requires much more than
that. It requires fluency in use of local languages in mass usage . For this to happen,
the localisation components will have to
snugly fit into the government system, in
particular into the currently used database
and public interface systems. Here, localised free/opensource has tremendous advantage which has the necessary freedom to
adapt without costing a bomb. The national asset of software talent is of little worth if
it cannot or does not take on this challange.
Background: Over ripe
What has happened over the last few years
was laying the ground for breaking the
language barrier in the digital world.
National and international state initiatives,
voluntary movements, academic research,
individual zeal and commercial interests have
all propelled it.
Skew debate
Often debates were reduced to national
pride versus multi-national conspiracy
theories if not cacophony. The element of
truth on both sides was getting clouded due
to immaturity of technology. At this
juncture the Free/GNU platform started
making strides on software front in many
ways but a little slowly on Indian languages. But this slowness was steadily towards
universal standards and hence almost
deliberate. GNU/Linux community then
adopted unicode standard after a deep
thought and could do so, easily.
The technological
springboard
Jitendra Shah
CDAC Mumbai
jitendras@vsnl.com
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
Over last few years, efforts like those of
corporations (most notably IBM) have
worked towards making many localisations
technically and commercially feasible. These
include establishing locale specifications i.e
culturally specific invariants for a given language/nation/script, harping on unicode
standard, supporting GNU/Linux vendors
and supporting GNU/Linux as platform
for many of its applications, ICU, ECLIPSE
etc. For many young minds seeking career
in software, ‘Linux’ started appearing as an
alternative after all. Sun Microsystems (along
with support from IBM again) towards
OpenOffice.org made office users see an
alternative. Similarly support by many other international corporations have made
‘Linux’ a respectable name in corporate and
government parlance. This the undersigned
sees as the springboard for a quantum jump.
As a passing observation, one is compelled to remind that in all this emphasis
on ‘Linux’ and ‘Open Source’, one misses
the ‘free’ (as in freedom) element of the
GNU/Linux movement. But that remains
the challenge for ethically inspired proponents of free software like the undersigned.
Free software in localisation
Localisation in general, and that in Indian
language in particular, poses the issue of free
software frontally. If the mass of Indian
population has to access benefits of IT
revolution, the proprietor tags and
associated price tags will prove to be the
insurmountable obstacles. Freedom will be
necessary condition to reach out to people.
The economic model that will make this
viable and financial muscle, that government may provide would provide the sufficient condition. The government policy will
play a major role in this.
Till recently, the undersigned was
convening the localisation effort through a
non-profit, un-organised group of traineevolunteers called Indictrans team. What
Indictrans team has done over the last one
year is the emphasis on deploying the free
software in e-Governance and to a slight
extent in education and rural context.
Principally our aim was to identify stumbling blocks in adoption of the free localised open source software in e-Governance.
33
More importantly we looked at the difficulties in governmentcitizen interface. Team looked at the problems in adopting unicode
standard in applications developed for government functioning
and much more.
This may be seen in contrast to many others who started much
earlier than us and have been doing the yeoman’s service to indic
localisation. They are completing the important tasks of localising
GUI’s like GNOME/KDE or some applications. See
www.indlinux.org site for more details of language teams. While
users who would want a complete GUI in local language are growing, they will significantly impact the use of software only after a
few years. There are teams working on some even more ambitious
projects like making machine translations from one Indian language to another etc. The machine translation, we expect will mature only after a few years, i.e. after massive corpa are analysed and
lexicons built. These tasks require much greater resources, skills and
much deeper commitment. Many enthusiasts have been working
on these projects with frugal resources. Indictrans team always acknowledged that we stood on the shoulders of these teams.
Following is a brief description of two major tasks accomplished
by Indictrans team in the area of localisation. First was standardisation i.e. conversion of live data and file-journey-management database from non-unicode to unicode standard. The second was Voterlist
search engine for Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra.
Standardisation: Conversion to unicode
When we started in August 2003, we decided to choose government offices as the starting point for implementation of our technology as we saw a lot of potential in interacting with the community
through this channel. The biggest obstacle that we could see was
the huge silos of data already created in older technology. This was
preventing some bureaucrats who were positively inclined towards
use of Free/Open Source solutions in their offices like directorate of
IT Maharashtra, in adopting the solutions.
We therefore decided to first provide solution for converting
this legacy data into new open standard i.e. Unicode. The Department of IT Maharashtra already had a system in place called DJMS
(Document Journey Management System). It was a browser-based
system supported by documents and a database of metadata for
these documents. This application was used for transparently tracking each and every document as it passes from one table to another.
Their major problem was making this available in local language i.e.
Marathi in an affordable manner. They also wanted a standard
solution to manage Marathi content at administrative level
(i.e. Database level). They were using ISM/ISFOC as solution for
Marathi. Unicode sounded perfect solution for them as it offered
minimal reengineering at administration level and affordable
alternative at user level.
We undertook the job converting the documents from ISFOC
to Unicode using a converter developed by us. The files were of
various formats like doc,xls,rtf ,html. There were about 6000+ files.
We also converted the database, which was based on DB2 so that
the documents could be searched in Marathi using the existing
application. DIT now uses open source applications like
Openoffice.org and Mozilla across different platforms. All this was
completed in less than six months.
34
Voterlist search implementation
In May 2004, while, we had several technologies and tools, we
were looking for some challenge where these tools could be demonstrated in mass-deployment. Just then we saw a huge hue and cry in
the press and electronic media about missing names in voterlist
during the Lok Sabha elections concluded in April. We announced
our intention to use unicode standard to overcome the problem
(see Indian Express Marathi publication dated 9 May 2004).
Maharashtra state assembly elections were due in a few months
(October 2004).
We, proactively, and without much knowledge of the state of art
in electoral roll computerisation, approached the State election
authorities. Naturally, the election authorities were skeptical, but
open and positively inclined to explore. We had the technology to
break the language barriers in the long chain of the process of
voterlist making and could make the access to the list truly universal. In voterlist search engine implementation, in effect, we broke
the language barriers in a mass deployment application.
The original data was in ASCII standard. We made the data
available in unicode standard, searchable using modern tools and
rdbms (pgsql, tsearch2). We made display available in unicode as
also in non-unicode. Thus, we allowed access to latest as well as
oldest OS. We provided interaction across the net. All this while
fully working with free/open source. We must admit that we used
‘dynamic font’ technology as a last resort to support computers
where the user may not even wish to install the free ASCII based
devanagari fonts on MSWindows legacy systems.
We demonstrated that whether on desktop or on the web,
whether on new (unicode compliant) or old, whether a rich or a
poor PC holder, (refer to licensing costs) there is no barrier to work
in Indian language. We provided a smooth transcription from
English to Indic language and vice versa. We have also demonstrated the interoperability i.e unicode and non-unicode (whether
ISCII standard or non-standard) content can be seen by each other
and interaction is possible across the divide.
While our software was put up on the web as free software
under GPL, the implementation was done for the Chief Election
Officer (CEO) of Maharashtra by an agency already in rate-contract with the Maharashtra Government.
i4d | October 2004
•
•
•
•
The software has been accepted by CEO (Maharashtra) as part
of Election Commission, after serious testing by C-DAC Pune. The
coverage was for about a 1.25 crore (12.5 million) voters. This
implementation is seen as a pilot in Mumbai and Thane. For more
details see voter list page on www.indictrans.org.
•
Components of localisation: Felt needs
Apart from the voterlist search program, we came out with the
following broad range of tools/solutions towards localisation. They
are also our perception of the felt needs in the direction of deployment of localisation. These are also candidate tools for componentisation so that pluggable modules can be reused.
• System level localisation: OS (Locale specification and translations of GNOME) messages in Marathi and Gujarati. This work
was halted at Indictrans in the hope that C-DAC project will
take it up.
• Font: Created and maintained fonts for Devanagari and
Gujarati (Unicode opentype, available on TDIL, performance
on all platforms displayed on www.indictrans.org).
• Conversion: Text conversions from legacy font-encoding to
unicode to make way for open source to be used.
- Undertaken a major job for Government of Maharashtra
(see letter of appreciation www.indictrans.org http://
www.indictrans.org/src/letter_of_appreciation.jpg) This includes HTML and other formats
- Recently converted HTML files of IGNCA to Unicode (as
per suggestion at Pune Localisation Review meet organised
by TDIL)
- Conversion of sample of land record data of Bhoomi project
for NIC Karnataka,
- Similarly for Rajasthan Raj Corporation
- Conversion of MarathiWorld.com site (1800 pages from
Mithi font to unicode)
- Conversions from Akruti font to uniocde for IIT
• Inputbhaaratii: Several applications for inputting Indic on web
were developed. Software implementation of inscript on Java
(without the need for a plug-in like ISM), as also IIT Mumbai’s
KeyLekh layout (see http://www.indictrans.org/typebhaaratii/)
Thus, anyone can use web based Indian language without the
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
•
•
•
•
server having a commercial plug in. And that is saved in Indian
languages in unicode.
Naamabharatii (name transliteration see http://
www.indictrans.org/naamabhaaratii/): Many offices/lists have
Indian names in (usual English and need to be converted to
Indian language before they can adopt Indian language systems.
There was no solution on open source. The need was encountered in government of Maharashtra as also LIC etc. A programme using dictionary+hueristic has been developed and is
available on Indictrans site for demo.
Application localisation: Horde, a messaging framework has been
translated into Marathi.
Developemnt of bootable CD for localised GNU/Linux: Gnubhaaratii see tutorials on the site in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and
English.
Localised GIS: Grass, a free GIS map being used to put time
series data of state election commission on Panchayat wise
map of Maharashtra, a voluntary offer. This involves using
pgsql database linked to mapping grass programme. Clickable
maps for any geo-referenced or geographical database can be
created.
Localised software for rural development: As a consultant to
Tata Institute of Social Science, Mumbai for their rural campus
(500 Km south, called Tuljapur), a series of localised
applications were developed for induction into the development
and curricular (B.A. in Social Work) work of TISS. The setting
up of network and localised OS Gnubhaaratii with localised
applications (like Open office and Mozilla) was undertaken and
completed along with training.
Localised geometry: DrGeo is a programme on interactive
geometry. It has been localised with tutorials in Hindi, Marathi,
Gujarati.
CBSE IT curriculum: We have attempted partially to enable
implementation of CBSE curriculum in Indian language using
open office and other free/open source software on GNU/Linux
or proprietary platform.
Localised editor: Yudit has been localised in Hindi , Marathi
and Gujarati
Team building: Motivating and cultivating a team of science
and other graduates to work on localisation with the introduction of GNU/Linux and open standards like Unicode in
e-Governance, the nature of e-Governance applications have
changed a lot.It is now more open for participation by users and
more obvious to operate as against an imposed responsibility
from management. This openness also fits nicely into the
requirements to fulfil the guidelines mentioned in recently
introduced ‘right-to-information act’.
Conclusion
IT revolution has many aspects and therefore it is essential
to look at one of the major aspect of total cost of ownership
for the nation as a whole and see beyond the bureacratic barriers.
With that perspective free/localised software is the obvious,
feasible and perhaps the only choice for mass of people to be
benefited from the IT revolution. If not the digital divide will
yawn further.
35
I NSIGHT
Ankur Bangla Project
The Ankur Bangla
Project is a
collaborative effort
at bringing Bangla to
the FLOSS desktop.
Its core objective is
to make available a
completely localised
GNU/Linux
operating system.
The need to localise
One of the challenges facing modern
societies is the prospect of ensuring equitable
distribution of knowledge with its base at
grassroot levels. Free/Libre Open Source
Software (FLOSS) models provide an ideal
base for utilising Information and
Communication Technologies for
Development (ICT4D). As a part of such
models, localisation (L10n) of the GNU/
Linux Operating System provides an unique
opportunity to create an Operating System
(OS) that is not only culturally aware but
also robust and scalable with globally
accepted standards.
One such effort is ‘The Ankur Bangla
Project’, (www.bengalinux.org) is a collaborative initiative aimed at bringing Bangla to
the FLOSS desktop. Comprising of volunteers, developers, translators, graphic artists,
linguists and technocrats from India,
Bangladesh and other parts of the world,
the Ankur Bangla Project aims to make
Bangla Computing possible. The core
objective of the Ankur Bangla Project is to
make available a completely localised GNU/
Linux OS. Simultaneously it provides a
scalable and standardised technological
infrastructure for Bangla computing.
The Ankur Bangla Live
Desktop
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay
Member, Ankur Bangla Project
sankar@redhat.com
36
As an initial release of the work completed
so far and to provide a glimpse of the scope
and possibilities of the project, the Ankur
Bangla Project has released a Ankur Bangla
Live Desktop. Incorporating all the work
that has been done on the Gnome Desktop
Environment (a popular desktop environment of the GNU/Linux OS) as well as
elements that provide a functional computing environment, the Ankur Bangla Live
Desktop provides a preview of the
completely localised GNU/Linux OS
released during February 2004 in a Live CD
format. On a very minimum hardware
specification (which conforms to those currently available as commercial-off-the-shelf
configuration), the entire localised Bangla
GNU/Linux OS runs off the CD and provides for a wholesome computing experience. The Ankur Bangla Live Desktop
resembles a standard MS-Win9x install with
analogous components and elements. The
‘classical’ GNU/Linux desktop interface has
been customised in look-and-feel to ensure
that end-users familiar with Microsoft
‘Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers’ (WIMP)
are not hindered.
For those who do possess the bandwidth,
the ISO image of the OS (to be thereafter
made into a CD by burning the image file)
is available to be downloaded from the
project home at sourceforge.net.
For a project that is only around 14
months old, the incremental releases of the
CD has seen downloads crossing the 1450
mark. Numerous CDs have also been
distributed by the volunteers on a personal
level based on request.
The work of Ankur can also be seen in
Fedora Core 2 and the upcoming Fedora
Core 3.
Development model
The Ankur Bangla Project is based on
the classical FLOSS model of software
development. It is completely voluntary and
a (till date) non-funded effort. The L10n
project ties in well with initiatives in the
domain of e-Governance, low cost computing as well as other ICT4D projects. The
Ankur Group is in a collaborative discussion with various stakeholders including
major vendors like RedHat, IBM etc; the
Government of West Bengal; academic
institutions like Jadavpur University,
Indian Statistical Institute among others.
The Ankur Group also participates in
the standards creation process by providing
inputs to Gnome Core, Unicode Consortium, Indic Consortium, Indic L10n
Working Group and FOSSI. Such involvement ensures that insights gained by the
group are shared and made available for
replication in other localisation projects.
i4d | October 2004
The Ankur Bangla Project covers all aspects of localisation (L10n)
of GNU/Linux. It not only aims to provide a complete ‘Bangla
Computing experience’ but also creating a standard framework
and computing infrastructure (at least at the technological level),
which makes such computing scalable and economically deployable.
A transition from a paper/normative form of government towards
a complete e-Presence progress through the following phases:
Stage 1: Emerging web presence
Stage 2: Ehnahced web presence
Stage 3: Interactive web presence
Stage 4: Transactional web presence
Stage 5: Seamless or fully integrated web presence
The first two stages of e-Governance transition are already in
place to some extent. Most departments and stakeholders (NGOs
and various other fora) have enhanced web presence that allows
information surfing. The Ankur Bangla Project aims to take it beyond
such formal presence into Step 5 through various intermediate
steps. This means that while the Ankur Group conceptualises and
ratifies the technological standards, it also provides means to enable
data transactions in Bangla. Including Bangla at Public Access Points
(PAPs) allowing the electronic data interchange to be carried out
through Bangla ensures that a greater percentage of the population
has access to information.
e-Governance is based on the transaction of information using
ICT bringing in an element of transparent accessibility. The Ankur
Bangla Project aims to enhance such experience by making data
transactions, data search and retrieval feasible in Bangla. Based on a
completely localised user interface, the Ankur Group provides the
entire toolchain required to implement such localised computing
on an enterprise scale. The L10n effort is in sync with every aspect
of the e-governance toolkit that is currently in implementation and
visualised for the near future.
Other projects
Other projects that are concurrently taken up by the group and
pursued in tandem include:
Bspeller - a spellchecking programme, a dictionary that is
integrated at a modular level in the Ankur Bangla Live CD, a
calendar programme Lekho - a multi-platform editor and
document output programme, Bangla Gutenberg - an archive of
public domain works in Bengali (similar to the Project
Gutenberg effort).
A Localised Low Cost Computing (L2C2) framework and
accessibility program involving Text-to-Speech in Bengali are also
in the development phase. Currently, the L2C2 model will be put
into phased implementation across a projected number of
500 madrassas in collaboration with the West Bengal University of
Technology and the West Bengal Madrassa Board.
Community applications of OSS
Though examining OSS on a global scenario is a complex and multifaceted task, the following cases give a fraction representation of
the potential scenarios for OSS use that could enrich the OSS public policy discussion.
Sao Paulo, Brazil: The Telecentre project, The Municipality of Sao Paulo had initiated a project to establish a network of telecentres
to provide free computer use and Internet access to marginal neighborhoods. With the cost of setting a telecentre being $10,000, today
each telecentre provides service to about 3,000 users. Given the financial constraints, the combination of OSS and diskless workstations
allowed the telecentre project to acquire computers with less hardware and power requirements than required by Microsoft Windows.
Goa, India: Schools Computer Project, The Goa Schools Computer Project (GSCP) was started in 1996, with the goal to help
facilitate access to PCs by students and community around respective schools in rural areas. In January 2002 GSCP provided a
shipment of 380 recycled PCs to Goa. Before distribution, GSCP tested and refurbished the equipment, and later provided training to
teachers in the use of Linux operating system. The rationale for the use of OSS was to avoid both software piracy and greater cost of
installing Microsoft software. The experience of the GSCP team has been that using recycled equipment and open source software in
rural school computer labs, is a sustainable and low cost initiative.
Laos: The Jhai Remote Village IT System, The Jhai Remote Village IT System helps the communities of Phon Kham and four other
villages to obtain information on agricultural market pricing and pursue initiatives to improve the village’s income. The system is
designed to address these needs by providing support for local calls and oversea connections via the Internet, along with document
preparation and spreadsheet capabilities. The system is based upon a low-power embedded computer running localised version of
KDE, called LaoNux (Localised OSS), on the Debian Linux distribution. Linux operating system was chosen for two prime reasons,
first, it brings with it a human infrastructure of people who know how to maintain it, and second, because localisation was easier than
under other platforms.
Reference: Open Source Software, by Paul Dravis, infoDev
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
37
Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for
for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All...
for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All...
for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All...
for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All...
for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All...
for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All...
All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes
Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for
Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for
Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for
Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for
Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for
Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for
for All... Bytes
All... Bytes for
All... Bytes for
All... Bytes for
All... Bytes for
All... Bytes for
All... Bytes for
for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for
All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All
All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All
All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All
All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All
All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All
All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All
Bytes for All...
Bytes For All Readers list (www.yahoogroups.com/groups/
bytesforall_readers) is a platform for information to critically examine
the issues on how ICT fighting against poverty, illiteracy and social
injustice in South Asia? It is an extension of an information portal Bytes for All (www.bytesforall.org) that was launched in 1999. From
this issue, we are beginning a new series which summarises the major
discussions on projects, news and events on ‘Bytes for all’ discussion list.
Following is the summary of the discussions of the August month.
Breakthrough technology
Raj Reddy, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence and a
professor at Carnegie Mellon University, plans to unveil a new
project. The PCtvt is a $250 wirelessly networked personal computer intended for the four billion people around the world who live
on less than $2,000 a year. His low-cost computer doubles as a TV
and a DVD player. Mr. Reddy believes that he will be able to use it
as a vehicle to take computing and communications to populations
that until now have been excluded from the digital world. The
project will work in partnership with University of California
researchers who are attempting to develop high-speed wireless
digital networks for rural communities.
Voice and data
I PBX software for GNU/Linux [www.asterisk.org]
Primarily developed on GNU/Linux for x/86, Asterisk is a
complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD
and Mac OS X Jaguar, and provides all of the features one would
expect from a PBX. Asterisk needs no additional hardware for Voice
over IP. It supports a wide range of TDM protocols and US and
European standard signaling types used in standard business phone
systems. Mark can be contacted at Orkut.com where he moderates
an Asterik community. [Posted by: Bala Pillai]
Software
I Compiere is free [www.compiere.org/home
whyfree.html]
The open source ERP and CRM software is freely available from
Compiere partners and its users and developers rank Compiere
among the top 10 active projects in SourceForge (since March
2002). An Oracle license is currently required to run compiere,
but it can be provided as part of a support contract as per wish.
[Posted by Bala Pillai]
II Weka 3: Data Mining Software in Java
[www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/weka]
Weka is a collection of machine learning algorithms for data mining
tasks. The algorithms can either be applied directly to a dataset or
called from your own Java code. Available for free from Sun, Weka
contains tools for data pre-processing, classification, regression,
clustering, association rules, and visualisation.
38
III Open Source Protege [protege.stanford.edu]
Protégé is ontology editor and knowledge acquisition system. It is
also an open-source, Java tool that provides an extensible architecture for the creation of customized knowledge-based applications.
Protégé’s OWL Plug-in now provides support for editing Semantic
Web ontologies.
IV Kannada Opentype Fonts [brahmi.sourceforge.net]
The Indian Language Technology Solutions Project released two
more Kannada Opentype Fonts named “Kedage” and “Mallige”
due in September. Beta copies of the fonts will be available through
e-mail requests.
Education
Low cost PCs in SA [www.balancingact-africa.com/
news/current1.html]
South African company, On Point Solutions, has invented a lowcost, four-in-one PC that could lower the cost of offering ICT in
learning institutions. The PCs offer Internet, e-mail, phone, word
processing and network facilities exclusively for educational
purposes and concessions provided from Microsoft International
allowed the machines to be sold at the low cost of 298 per system.
Agriculture
e-Mandi eyes multiple buyer, seller scenario
Citing India’s e-choupal scheme’s limitations as a single buyer
system, Vipol Arora pointed to the ‘e-Mandi’ project as an
alternative to establish an Online market of agricultural produce by
neutral players. e-Mandi, a commodities exchange portal, can link
the prices of agricultural produce to market considerations,
liberating agriculture from the above constraints. Four futures
exchanges have already been established and promoted by the
Indian government in the past year.
However, these exchanges manage risk for banks, traders, stock
market and commodity traders. Individual farmers have been
excluded by design. In a manner that BSE and NSE provide a
market for people all over India to trade in Stock of companies, eMandi will allow people from all over India to trade in agricultural
produce. Vipol says he is developing this idea as a visiting fellow at
Stanford.
On the air
Mountain Forum and Sagarmatha reach out to Nepal
[www.mtnforum.org/radio/index.htm]
A unique triad will make the Mountain Forum of Nepal’s
virtual network available to a huge offline population. The Forum
Secretariat is launching a pilot project in association with the
Asia-Pacific Mountain Network and Radio Sagarmatha, which
reaches people in eight districts of Nepal. Despite an astounding
16,000 strong subscription list maintained by the Forum, project
i4d | October 2004
All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes
.. Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes
.. Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes
.. Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes
.. Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes
.. Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes
.. Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes for All...Bytes for All... Bytes
Bytes for All...
managers felt technology limits their access to the average Nepali.
The idea works out simply: Radio Sagarmatha staff and Mountain
Forum staff will collaborate in identifying issues for discussion
and post them on the MF list, seeking subscribers’ input. This will
be sent to the radio producers who will then go in field to pose
questions and record reactions on the issue. The programme will
be broadcast in the local language. It will later be translated and
adapted for MF discussion lists and posted (in English). Responses
of the MF community will be broadcast in the next programme
by Radio Sagarmatha. Producers are eyeing 8-10 episodes and
the first broadcast was set for 17th of September. [Posted by
Prashant Sharma]
instructor who gives classes to young and old, students and teachers
alike. [Posted by Shubhranshu Choudhary]
Telemedicine
II Grameen Tele Center [www.grameentelecenter.org]
Grameen Cyber Society is a not for profit organisation based in
Bangladesh that intends to make a significant contribution to the
quality of lifelong learning, by using ICT in the rural communities.
Developed through a unique multi–sectoral collaboration with the
World Bank, BRAC University, CAMPE, Grameen Cyber Net
Ltd, Bytes for all, BCS and BDGF, the initiative ensures that
the community have access, for the first time to digital based
learning materials.
Mali hospital links to satellite [www.balancingactafrica.com/news/back/balancing-act_217.html]
Situated some 750 km from Mali’s capital Bamako, patients at
Dimbal hospital are now benefiting from the medical opinion of
experts in Geneva. The Geolink Access satellite allows doctors to ask
questions of experts 6,000kms away in case of difficulties.
Websites
I Open Source portal for Africa
[www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=23810]
Open Research, together with the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, is developing an open source information portal to assist
non-profit organisations. Non-profit, governmental and educational
initiatives are welcome to share their experiences to be written up
and made available to a broader community.
Gender and IT
Women in Action [www.isiswomen.org/pub/wia/
wia1-04/index.html]
The first issue of Women in Action explores corporate media environment in a transnational era and how women are grappling with
issues of identity and gender bias. It explores case studies in India,
Africa and Latin America where women took center stage to utilize
ICTs for activism in their communities. Send an email to:
communications@isiswomen.org
Net regulation
Zimbabwe government to plant bugs
[www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=112]
The Zimbabwe government is planning to acquire high-tech
equipment from China for the purpose of bugging the internet.
The Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) is already looking
into ways of controlling internet communication as soon as the
equipment arrives.
Net access
Internet on three wheels [www.charlotte.com/mld/
charlotte/business/9419689.htm?1c]
For 12-year-old Anju Sharma, hope for a better life arrives
in her poor farming village three days a week on a bicycle rickshaw
that carries a computer with a high-speed, wireless Internet
connection. Designed like temple carriages that bear Hindu
deities during festivals, the brightly painted pedal-cart rolls into her
village in India’s most populous state, accompanied by a computer
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
III Karmayog [www.karmayog.com]
A new free site for enabling individuals and corporates to give their
time, talent, money and resources by volunteering, mentoring,
giving materials, providing services (free or at reduced costs) to
Mumbai-based NGOs, nonprofits, charities, etc.
IV Parliament of India [www.parliamentofindia.nic.in]
Replies to India’s parliamentary questions are now available in plain
text format, also questions of issues of interest now can be searched
and downloaded easily.
V National Commission for Human Development
[www.nchd.org.pk]
NCHD newly launched its re-built website featuring its
organizational components, core programmes including education,
health, incubation, micro-enterprise development, global resource
management and volunteerism.
Bytes for All: www.bytesforall.org
Bytes For All Readers Discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/
group/bytesforall_readers
Send a mail to: bytesforall_readers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
for subscribtion. If you have any question or concern, send a
mail at: editors@bytesforall.org
Compiled and summarised by Zunaira Durrani, Bytes for
All-Pakistan and Editor, SPIDER Magazine
39
for
for
for
for
for
for
for
All...Bytes
All...Bytes
All...Bytes
All...Bytes
All...Bytes
All...Bytes
All...Bytes
ICT
AND
E DUCATION
FOSS resources in
education
In Free Software Foundation/UNESCO
Free Software Directory available on http://
directory.fsf.org/, 3588 packages are indexed
among which Fle3, Ggradebook, granule,
Pauker and Recruit are in general used for
education. Apart from these, software available for education are categorised as per the
mode or standard of education. Software
available for different standards and modes
of education are as follows:
Adult education
• AKFQuiz quiz generator - lets one make
own quiz-games or questionnaires;
• bingo-cards - lets one create number,
word/letter, and picture bingo cards;
• Claroline - lets users/institutions host
courses administered by professors/teachers through web;
• Diogenes - Scripts for searching classics
texts;
• DrPython - highly customisable, simple,
clean editing environment for developing Python programmes;
• FET - evolutionary programme for
automatically generating time-table of a
faculty or high-school;
• Gretools - a vocabulary building tool for
GNOME, a fun and efficient way to
learn words;
• Hanzim (“Hanzi Master”) - an interactive visual dictionary for learning and
seeing relationships between Chinese
radicals, characters, and compounds;
• kdrill - helps people learn Japanese
‘Kanji’ characters;
• linSmith - a Smith charting programme
mainly designed for educational use;
• The Manhattan Virtual Classroom –
delivers courses via the web;
• Moodle - a learning management system
for Internet-based course websites;
• Reciteword - helps Chinese-speaking
people study and learn English;
40
• Spotter - lets students check their answers
to maths and science questions;
• Tux Math Scrabble - a math version of
the popular board game;
• Whiteboard-fully-featured integrated
courseware system for colleges and
universities.
Elementary education
The software other than Bingo-cards and
TuxMathScrabble used are:
• Gcompris - Educational suite for children from 2 to 10;
• JILetters - assists children with learning
the Western alphabet by visual and auditory means;
• KLogo-Turtle - an interpreter of the
LOGO language;
• Kronophobia - a complete event-based
school calendaring system;
• ksociograma - sociologic analysis for a
group of students;
• Tux Typing - helps students learn to type
or spell;
• TuxPaint - drawing programme for young
children;
• Vocabumonkey - focused on language
and math skills.
Secondary education
The software other than DrPython, Gretools, linSmith, Reciteword, Spotter and
TuxMathScrabble available are:
• Dr genius - interactive geometry
programme and calculator;
• dr. geo - builds geometric figures;
• FET - automatically schedules the timetable of a school or university;
• GenChemLab - simulates general chemistry laboratory exercises;
• JUDO - vocabulary building tool for
Gnome;
• Kalcul - Java IDE for beginning programmers;
• Kanjidrill - interactive math game for ages
8-15;
• Kronophobia - helps users learn Japanese
‘Kanji’ characters;
• Ksociograma - sociologic analysis for a
group of students;
• PurpleView – paper review system;
• Tau - utility to track student attendance
and scheduling;
• WIMS - hosts interactive mathematical
activities.
Misc, Online, Programming
and Typing
The other categories are Misc (miscellaneous education), Online (education),
Programming, and Typing. For Misc, the
software available are: aldo (Morse code
tutor), Koha (complete library system),
Reciteword (programme to learn English language), WhiteBoard (courseware system for
colleges and universities). AKFQuiz,
Cce-interact, Ilias, Moodle, Spotter,
TelEduc are for online education. For
programming, the software available are:
Cog Engine Project, GNU mdk, Guido von
Robot, PiciLibre.
Complete version of this article is available on www.i4donline.net
Open source in education in
India
As a part of the government’s initiatives
for elementary education, the project
‘Headstart’ in Madhya Pradesh state
(India) began on November 14, 2000,
computerising 648 schools, in which, the
state government switched from Microsoft to Linux in 2070 schools in the second phase of the project.
Saswati Paik, i4d
saswati@i4donline.net
i4d | October 2004
What’s on
The Netherlands
18 November, 2004
Open Standards and Libre Software in Govt.
The Hague
http://www.flosspols.org/conf/
Africa
25 - 29 October, 2004
The Association for Health Information and
Libraries in Africa (AHILA) conference
Blantyre
Malawi
www.ahila.org
19-20 November, 2004
Promoting Enabling Environment for
Digital Development
Berlin
http://www.unicttaskforce.org/seventhmeeting/
Thailand
21-24 November, 2004
Libraries - Gateways to
Information and Knowledge in the
Digital Age, Bangkok
www.alic2004.org
India
The United Kingdom
01 - 03 December, 2004
Pacific Telecentre Workshop
Brisbane
19 November, 2004
Science, Communication and Society:
Needs and Challenges in South Asia
Habitat Centre
New Delhi
www.connectingislandcommunities.com
www.scidev.net/ms/sagatewaylaunch/
http://www.icmg.mgovernment.org/
europeanmg.htm
18-20 January, 2005
Education for a sustainable future
Ahmedabad
United States
Australia
Canada
27 - 02 July, 2005
ED-MEDIA 2005
Montreal
http://www.ceeindia.org/esf/index.htm
07-09 February, 2005
Map India 2005, New Delhi
http://www.aace.org
www.mapindia.org
Finland
11 November, 2004
OpenMind 2004
Tampere
http://www.coss.fi/openmind/index.htm
Germany
Mexico
16-19 November, 2004
Global Indicators Workshop on
Community Access to ICTs
Mexico City
www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/mexico04/index.html
26 - 28 October, 2004
LinuxWorld conference & expo
Frankfurt
South Africa
http://www.linuxworldexpo.d
linux_messe.php?lang=en
02-04 March, 2005
ICTS and Civil Society Conference
Johannesburg
07-10 November, 2004
19th International CODATA Conference
Berlin
http://radio.oneworld.net/article/view/76307/1
10-12 July, 2005
Euro Conference on Mobile Government
Sussex University, Brighton
01-05 November, 2004
E-Learn 2004
Washington DC
www.aace.org/conf/eLearn/call.htm
12-14 December, 2004
Eradicating Poverty through Profit
San Francisco
http://povertyprofit.wri.org
02-05 April, 2005
e-Learning 2005
Dallas, Texas
http://144.162.197.250eLearning
2005glance.htm
01-05 March 2005
SITE 2005
Society for Information
Technology and Teacher Education
International Conference
Phoenix, Arizona
Sri Lanka
http://site.aace.org/conf
www.codata.org/04conf/
08 - 10 November, 2004
MySQL ComCon Europe 2004
Frankfurt
29-01 December 2004
International Conference on
e-Governance (ICEG)
Colombo
14-17 March, 2005
The O’Reilly Emerging Technology
Conference (ETech)
San Diego
http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/events/
www.iitc.lk
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etech/
Get your event listed here. www.i4donline.net/events
October 2004 | www.i4donline.net
41
I N F ACT
FLOSSophy
What is ‘open’ source software? Why it is ‘open’? What makes it
different from ‘free’ software? When did the movement for ‘free’
and ‘open’ software start? How did they start? Many such questions
come to our minds. To search for the answers of all these, readers can
use these links which may or may not quench their thirst, but it is
sure, they will look for something more, once they will get into the
open field of open source.
Articles
•
•
http://www.openknowledge.org/writing/open-source/scb/brief-open-sourcehistory.html
(A brief history of Free/Open Source Software Movement is available online)
http://www.opensourcesummit.org/open-source-200408.pdf
(‘Open Source - open learning’, an article by Chris Coppola explaining why
open source makes sense for education)
•
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html
(An article explaining Why Free Software is better than Open Source)
•
http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html
(An article by David A. Wheeler entitled ‘Why Open Source Software / Free
Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!)
•
http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2054746
(‘Governments like open-source software, but Microsoft does not’ – an article
based on government policy)
Projects/ Case Studies
•
http://www.khmeros.info/
(OSS project in Cambodia)
•
http://opensource.muanglao.com/index.htm
(OSS project in Laos)
•
http://www.ganeshas-project.org/
(Information technology lessons to school children of Nepal)
•
http://www.jhai.org/jhai_remoteIT.htm
(Jhai Foundation’s project with Linux)
•
http://richtech.ca/cgi-bin/seul/case/caseview0.pl
(Case studies of schools that have used open source in their classrooms.
•
http://www.schoolnetafrica.net/fileadmin/resources/Open_Source_in_
South_African_Schools.pdf
(Open Source in South African Schools: Two Case Studies)
•
http://www.schoolnetafrica.net/fileadmin/resources/Opensourcesoftware.pdf
(Case studies of open source implementation in situations as diverse as the US
postal service and rural India.)
•
http://www.kuenselonline.com/article.php?sid=4531
(Dzongkha computing on Linux in Bhutan)
•
http://www.computerbank.org.au/
(An Australian initiative to supply free GNU/Linux systems to low income
individuals, community groups and disadvantaged schools.)
•
http://www.iosn.net/l10n/projects/
(Localisation projects in Asia)
•
http://www.digital-review.org/ahp08.htm
(The article ‘Open source: Empowering the Asia Pacific’ by Pindar Wong)
•
http://leb.net/blinux/
(To improve usability of the LINUX operating system for blind)
•
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue9_4/levesque/
(Fundamental issues with open source software development)
•
•
http://www.developer.com/open/
(Numerous articles on open source software)
http://luminance.sourceforge.net/resources_linuxedu.php
(Link to lot of projects and resources on the use of Linux in education)
•
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0253.pdf
(Article ‘Open-sources Learning’ by Anne H. Moore)
•
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_6/newmarch/
(“Lessons from Open Source: Intellectual Property and Courseware” by Jan
Newsmarch)
•
•
•
•
•
42
http://www.iosn.net/foss/foss-general-primer/
(This primer introduces Free/Open Source Software (FOSS), its philosophy,
history and benefits/disadvantages of FOSS, including developing-country specific issues.)
http://www.aei.brookings.org/publications/abstract.php?pid=296
(Government Policy toward Open Source Software is a book by Robert W.
Hahn that addresses a host of issues raised by the rapid growth of open source
software, including government subsidies for research and development, government procurement policy, and patent and copyright policy.)
http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/documents/QinetiQ_OSS_rep.pdf
(Contents of the book ‘Analysis of the Impact of Open Source Software’ written
by Dr Nic Peeling and Dr Julian Satchell, published in October 2001 is
available online)
http://www.schoolnetafrica.net/fileadmin/resources Alternative_Routes_
in_the_Digital_World.pdf
(Alternative Routes in the Digital World elaborate on the role Open Source
Software can play and plays in the African context.)
http://www.schoolnetafrica.net/fileadmin/resources Free_and_Open_
Source_Software_In_Africa.pdf
(Free and open source software in Africa)
News, reports and other resources
•
http://linuxtoday.com/
(Recent news on open source software)
•
http://www.flosspols.org/
(Description about the FLOSS: Policy Support project coordinated by University of Maastricht – MERIT.)
•
http://www.bridges.org/FOSS/choice.html
(Bridges.org is doing extensive research around the use of Free and Open Source
Software (FOSS) in developing countries to provide the missing unbiased
information.)
•
http://www.opensource.org/
(Latest news on Open Source)
•
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=12034&URL_DO=DO_
TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
(UNESCO’s free software portal is a single interactive website giving articles,
resources, news, events and the latest in free software movement)
•
http://www.infodev.org/symp2003/publications/OpenSourceSoftware.pdf
(Open Source Software: perspectives for development is a report to help decision-makers in developing countries to understand the dynamics associated
with implementing open source software solutions.)
•
http://www.netaction.org/opensrc/oss-report.html
(The Case for Government Promotion of Open Source Software - This paper
explains the open source concept and attempts to show how government can
use open source as a vehicle for promoting economic development and as a
policy tool.)
i4d | October 2004