FLOSS In Asia

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2007-06-09T04:31:00.001-07:00

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Katrina Kaif

2007-03-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

I saw the movie in Inox called Namaste London. My friends had taken me for it, because my friend had taken me for it. Her name is Gabbi. Katrina Kaif used to live in London, but then her father decided to take her to India, and then to some people's house, and they went to the Taj Mahal.

The movie was fun, because there were funny parts. One day she spilt cold-drink on her husband. And her father was drinking milk with his hands, so badly.That was what was funny.

After the movie we went to a restaurant, Kamat, near the church. I ate chole.

It rolls... because it's a ball

2007-03-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

A: You know why this rolls down?

Dada: Why?

A: Because it's a ball...

Dada: So why should it roll down if it's a ball?

A: Otherwise, how can you play with it?

Software Wars

2007-01-15T13:45:00.000-08:00

An interesting chart on "software wars". It's described as "a graphic map depicting the epic struggle of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) against the Empire of Microsoft". Does bring out the totality of the picture... Rather interesting!

Feeds.goa-india.org

2006-07-10T06:31:00.000-07:00

Check http://feeds.goa-india.org/ for links about news from FLOSS in Asia. And if you know of more Asian mailing lists or websites that offer RSS feeds, do let me know. Thanks, Derek, for setting this up!

Feeds.goa-india.org

2006-07-10T06:29:00.000-07:00

Check <a href="http://feeds.goa-india.org/">feeds.goa-india.org</a> for links about news from FLOSS in Asia. And if you know of more Asian mailing lists or websites that offer RSS feeds, do let me know. Thanks, Derek, for setting this up!

Example Note 1

2006-07-10T06:28:00.000-07:00

Anuradha's Diary ... from Lanka

2006-06-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

Anuradha's Diary is the blog of a GNU/Linux geek from Sri Lanka. Its subtitle: "of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings". Interesting!

AsiaOSS

2006-05-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

AsiaOSS Home Page is a network of promoters of Free/Libre and Open Source Software in Asia. Including governments, academia (mainly them) and a lesser number of techies too. A better start page might be this.

Self-description: "We, Asia Open Source Software Community, are just starting to collaborate each other.
Background

"The popularity of Open Source Software (OSS) has grown at an astonishing rate such that government, business sector, academy, R&D related organizations, and community groups have been expecting its policy to promote the use of open source software. The major advantage of open source software includes operation/development cost reduction, computer security raise, and, ultimately, competitiveness gain in software business and industry. However, in those economies which are slow in their economic development, the main focus concerns distribution of low-cost, rather than the most powerful PCs. open source software can contribute greatly to this issues.

"Another issues involves the growing gap in the information society or the problem of digital divide, due to enormously varied degrees of technological advances, Government policy, and knowledge and understanding of open source software among the participating economies. This leads to the need for Asian economies to cooperate in order to bridge the growing gap. This also involves promoting open source software.

"At the same time, whereas various kinds of organizations and communities conduct development and promotion activities under different circumstances/levels in order for information sharing, regional and international cooperative network including organizations and communities, have not been fully connected to share their knowledge and experience.

"Considering above background, peoples who are eager to develop their own software technology by their hands are gathered from various areas in Asia. We held the "Asia Open Source Software Symposium 2003" in March, 2003 at Phuket, Thailand. "

In Bangladesh...

2006-05-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

This is a link to a presentation on Free/Libre and Open Source Software in Bangladesh by Ms. Tazrian Khan presented at The 6th Asia Open Source Software Symposium held in Colombo in September, 2005.

RSS feeds from India

2006-03-03T10:19:00.000-08:00

What are techies and geeks in India saying about Free/Libre and Open Source Software? Take a look at... http://feeds.goa-india.org/

Simputer, why not free hardware too?

2006-03-01T13:15:00.000-08:00

This note to the GNU/Linux-driven Simputer mailing list comes from Bazil and from Victor Rocha who makes a series of key points.

He says that currently it is not possible to download hardware specs from the Simputer site. The ".tar.gz" file is not available, he notes.

Says Victor Rocha:

"I guess a wider spread of the specs, in a true "open-source" spirit, would encourage design-houses and contract-manufacturers around the world to join the Simputer effort, to some day achieve the intended 'critical mass'.

I am particularly interested in studying the simputer as a basis for low-cost industrial PLCs, for use in developing countries like Brazil, where the cost of industrial automation is still prohibitive for small
manufacturers.

Chris Glur earlier wrote reminded all about the issue of licences and the 'open hardware Simputer'. Glur said he had confirmed by newsgroups traffic [arm & embedded etc],
that there are an increasing number of people who would like to do some arm hardware hacking/experimentation.

Said Glur: "Apparently there are several boards available for this, but many would prefer to pay more and start from a running system. Like in the old-days when you wanted to develop/investigate some new pc-based hardware
device, you would do so on your standard pc. With all the advantages of the running/proven system available for conventient I/O."

"So also a version of the simputer: open box, with convenient external PSU connector[s] and 'extendable facilities' would be of great value to many and involve negligible additional development cost to the Simputer marketers," the earlier poster wrote.

And:

Or do the existing I/O connectors suffice? Apparently not, if the developer wanted to eventually develop his own arm-based product, he wouldn't be comfortable with a 'black-box' simputer, because the conceptual distance to his intended product would be too great.

For example, my prefered OS/lang is ETH-S3/Oberon and there's apparently an arm port, which I'd like to investigate. The handheld Sharp Zaurus started collecting a number of open-software contributions [these things take a few years to evolve] but now it's out of production. I still maintain that Simputer's failure to reach critical mass is caused by the Indian society/tradition failure to understand the dynamics of free/open contributor=based software or applications.

The Korea Times : Korea Plans to Build Linux City, University

2006-03-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

The Korea Times : Korea Plans to Build Linux City, University is a report which says:

The Korean government plans to select a city and a university late next month where open-source software like Linux will become the mainstream operating programs. The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) Wednesday revealed the scheme of building up the city and university, which will operate as test beds for the open-source programs.

Interesting!

Some more figures:

In fact, Korea is not a world leader in adopting Linux and other open-source programs. Currently, less than 1 percent of desktop PCs are based on Linux in Korea, much lower than the global median 3 percent. For servers, Linux accounts for about a fifth of the market here. The Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency wants to increase the rate to 5 percent for desktop PCs and 40 percent for servers by 2010.

And, this is inteesting:

``In order to become a genuine software powerhouse, Korea has no choice but to secure source technologies. We cannot achieve the goal under the command of dominant closed-source programs,’’ said Ko Hyun-jin, president at the state-backed agency. To do so, the government will stage a campaign to use Linux. Korea Post, the nation’s postal service provider, last year embarked on a four-year program to install a Linux-based operating system on 4,748 PCs in its 2,800 branches. The Ministry of Planning and Budget plans to launch 37 state informatization projects with Linux this year, which would cost approximately 80 billion won. A new online information system for schools, dubbed the National Education Information System (NEIS), also fixed Linux-empowered platform on its 2,331 servers.

TECTONIC: Free software developers do it to learn new skills

2006-03-01T12:13:00.000-08:00

TECTONIC: Free software developers do it to learn new skills might seem off-topic for a blog on FLOSS and Asia. It comes from Africa. But the researcher, Rishab Aiyer-Ghosh, is of Indian origins, and has been doing some interesting work.

A quote from my e-friend and editor Alastair Otter, which explains things in context:

"Ghosh, FLOSS programme leader at the Maastricht Economic Research Institute Innovation and Technology, said that in a recent survey of 3000 free software developers it was found that 80% of them said they participated in FOSS projects because they wanted to learn and develop new skills. 70% of them cited wanting to share knowledge and information as a reason to participate in developing free software."

FLOSS breaks many walls.. but not gender ones?

2006-03-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net contains an interesting essay on gender and FLOSS, written by a lady from Taiwan.

FLOSS, or Free/Libre and Open Source Software, has
dramatically changed the way software is produced,
distributed, supported and used. It has a visible impact on
enabling a richer social inclusion.

But how has it allowed the gender problem existing in the software industry to be replicated in the world of FLOSS?

Amsterdam-based Taiwanese researcher Yuwei Lin lists seven reasons why women stay off FOSS -- including its strong long-hour coding culture, a lack of mentors and role-models, discriminatory language (including in documentation), a gendered text-based environment, a lack of women-centered views in FOSS-development, a male-dominated competitive worldview, and the lack of sympathy from woman peers.

Very interesting... and convincing too.

planet.foss.in : where the geeks hang out

2006-03-01T11:49:00.000-08:00

Planet.foss.in is a place where you can find a lot of blogs by Indian (and some not-so-Indian) techies brought together on one platform. Interesting to see what they're talking about.

Vikranth Aivalli is talking about the merits of the Wind(bl)ows Starter edition, priced Rs 399 per *month*. And Vikranth isn't impressed. Gopal V has a review of his first year at Yahoo! Says he: "I've truly enjoyed working on it - it's been a fun experience to just jump in and fixing it up for php5."

It usually takes time to understand what this young man called Philip Tellis is talking about. Our Gujarati friend Kartik Mistry has recently got married, and a blog on his post takes us to the GujaratLexicon.com. But that's only the start...

A great way of networking people by bringing their blogs all on one page. I recall Malaysian friends saying a similar strategy had actually kickstarted Malaysia's FLOSS movement, after a lull.

.:ext3mist:. » BangPypers Meet : Minutes

2006-03-01T11:29:00.000-08:00

This is a brief but useful blog entry about a recent Bangpipers meet in Bangalore. The group promotes programming in Python.

Simputer: fines... for the cops

2006-02-25T12:25:00.000-08:00

This story from INDIA TODAY, titled "Street Smart: Fine collection doubles to Rs 72 lakh as Simputers make traffic management hassle-free for cops" is about how policemen in Bangalore, South India, are using the GNU/Linux-based Simputer to tighten their fine-collection system.

Sad but true: amidst all the Indian lack of official support, hardward challenges, and delay, the goal of the Simputer (of empowering the common citizen) is taking more time to become a reality (if it does). But meanwhile, the law of unintended consequences is getting into play. Google will tell you a lot about the Simputer's deployment in the military too.

Sanskrit, Samskrita Bharati ... request for help

2005-12-06T13:39:00.000-08:00

Just got this letter from Vaidyanathan Ramachandran vaidyanathan.ram at gmail.com who says, "Hi, I am volunteer with a non-profit organzation called Samskrita Bharathi. It deals with sperading Samskrit education. Now, we are a group of volunteers who want to port the current applications in Samskrita Bharathi to Linux. We are also looking for some applications for Library Management, Inventory Management etc. I need some help and direction for this. Well, its like setting up a small enterprise and we want to use Linux for this. Can you point us in the right direction? Vaidyanathan Ramachandran Tat tvam asi

FLOSS... and NGOs

2005-11-21T21:54:00.000-08:00

On my foss4us.org/blog you'll find this entry on Free/Libre and Open Source Software for NGOs or non-profits. It deals with TacticalTech.org's NGO-in-a-box.

My pleasure to introduce: Yash from Mauritius

2005-10-31T00:04:00.000-08:00

Yash is a Systems Engineer with an entrepreneurial spirit based in Mauritius. He founded the first and only Ruby User Group locally -- Rubidius. It has its homepage here and its could-be-more-activemailing list here. Earlier this year he "predicted that the future of web apps will be based on Ruby on Rails."

Rails sustainable productivity for web-application development is a full-stack, open-source web framework in Ruby for writing real-world applications with joy and less code than most frameworks spend doing XML sit-ups

Says Yash: "My interests lie in Business, Free and Open Source Software, Optimizing Business Processes and Investments, Music and technology in general. Favourite GNU/Linux distro: Yoper. (Your Operating System, Y Operating System, YOS.) Favourite programming language: Ruby (you'd have guessed that). I started programming with an Oric Atmos using self-taught BASIC. Today I'm more interesting in the strategic management issues of I.S. and Business integration."

Check out Yashlabs here.

Booklets on FLOSS... from Bangkok

2005-10-30T22:35:00.000-08:00

Free/Open Source Software: A General Introduction by Kenneth Wong and Phet Sayo is a 60-page booklet, part of the Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme's e-Primers series. What makes it interesting is not just that it is written in a simple and easily-accessible style, but also the fact that it is freely downloadable. (From www.iosn.net)

Its preface calls the Free and Open Source (FOSS) movement one of the "new technologies and ... new opportunities... that is playing out before us today". It also calls it many things at the same time. Including, a "revolutionary development process, disruptive technology, ideological movement, new knowledge and standards, and more".

This primer launched the series which is focussed on the FOSS movement. One would prefer the use of the term FLOSS, since the "libre" concept is obviously a crucial one here. But then, the power of the corporate world is such that they define concepts and one has little choice on whether it should be Linux (rather than GNU/Linux), Open Source rather than Free Software, and FOSS rather than FLOSS.

That apart, this book contains some useful material. It starts off with definitions: about the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the FOSS development method (reduced
duplication of effort, building upon the work of others, better quality control, and reduced maintenance costs), and a brief history of FOSS.

Then we go to the meat of the issue: why FOSS?

Also: Is FOSS free? How large are the savings from FOSS? What are the benefits of using FOSS (security, reliability and stability, open standards and vendor independence, reduced reliance on imports, developing local software capacity, reduced 'piracy', localization possibilities, etc)?

There's the other side of the balance-sheet presented too: what are the shortcomings of FOSS?

This primer admits to the lack of business applications, hassles when it comes to inter-operability with some proprietary systems, and limitations on the availability of documentation and the 'polish' with which products are presented.

From there, we go to FOSS success stories. These are pointers to projects where large governments (or supra-governments like the European Union) took strongly pro-FOSS policies. There are studies from The German Bundestag servers, the city of Munich, the experiences in France, UK's policies on FOSS procurement, and the migration to FOSS in the city of Turku in Finland.

From the Americas success storiasia, es come from California, Texas and Oregon -- even if the pro-FOSS laws were still to be passed at the time of writing. Then, there's Peru, Brazil, and, in Asia, China, India, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan.

Wong and Phet, who obviously have a good overview of the subject they're writing about, shift to some successful FOSS projects. These include Bind (the DNS server, without which internet addresses such as yahoo.com or even microsoft.com would not function), the Apache web server, the Sendmail email server, the secure network administration tool OpenSSH, and the Open Office productivity suite.

Richard M Stallman, the father of the Free Software Movement and a guest of the International Open Source Network, would probably be happy with a section of this book(let) that explains the difference between the "Linux" buzzword, and the concepts like GNU/Linux. Newbies to this entire idea are told about where they can download GNU/Linux from -- don't try unless you have a fat pipe to the internet, it's just easier to very-legally make copies of a distro that someone else has. Issues like download time, installation and compiling time, quality assurance and learning time are also very briefly touched on.

With so much packed in a small book, you might just realise that we've still only reached half-way through the title. Quite rapidly, the authors shift to more complex issues -- licensing
arrangements, the GNU General Public License, BSD-style licenses, and issue like whether FOSS can be combined with proprietary software.

We move on to localisation ("the process of creating or adapting a product to a specific locale, i.e. to the language, cultural context, conventions and market requirements of a specific target 'market'), methods for localizing, and a case-studies of FOSS in government and education.

Having seen how some of this works on the ground, it might be risky to rely solely on the printed word to judge how things work in this field. For instance, a more thorough evaluation of the Goa Schools Computer Project (or, Goa Computers in Schools Project, as it has also been called) stills awaits being done. And it would be best done by someone who has empathy and appreciates the potential, without necessarily being a close observer-participant as this reviewer has been.

Finally, we end with a glossary... much-needed for a subject as geeky as this. There's also a list of interesting URLs of different GPL compatible and incompatible software licenses. As noted above, what makes this book different is not just that you are free to "copy, distribute and display" it, but also make derivative works from it and make commercial use of this work. Further, the authors are generous in crediting all the persons whose work, comments, feedback and copyedits went into creating this work. We are reminded at the end about the agendas of the two UNDP-linked institutions that brought it out (www.apdip.net and www.iosn.net).

Clearly, there's no reason why this needs to be read by both those gung-ho and those skeptical about the potential of FOSS. You can't claim that the costs (there's none) or lack of access (it's just a URL away) kept you from reading it. -- Frederick Noronha

Fighting disaster... FLOSS style

2005-10-29T23:53:00.000-07:00

Chamindra de Silva informs that Sahana phase I is currently being deployed in Pakistan together with the support of NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority) of Pakistan, IBM Crisis Response Team and IBM Pakistan. NADRA has a comprehensive people database as they build and maintain the central system that maintains the registration of people (identity card, passport, etc). In Pakistan, however the system is not web based and under tight security controls. Thus Sahana fills the gap of making the data accessible to the other organizations involved in the relief effort such as the NGOs. Apart from that NADRA does not have the equivalent of the request management system and organization registry which is built into phase 1. This is what the integrated system should look like.

This is the deployment model presented by them, in PDF format.

Chamindra is keeping notes and lessons learned on this deployment at the Reliefsource wiki

* * * * * * * * * *

Shahzad Ahmad writes: "Just sharing this news item. The Tsunami fame, [Free/Libre and] Open Source Software product SAHANA is already almost deployed by Chamindra de Silva with support from the IBM crisis response team and NADRA (National Database Registry of Pakistan). PSEB was also extending support to them I remember. The difference here... SAHANA yet has to hit the media while Microsoft is already getting coverage."

Microsoft offers technological assistance in quake-affected areas
Representative hands over monetary assistance to PM and MKRF By Schezee Zaidi, The News, 21/10/2005 http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2005-daily/21-10-2005/main/main6.htm

* * * * * * * * * *

Irfan Khan says: For updates on the deployment of
Sahana in Pakistan, check recent entries in

Sanjiva Weerawarana's Blog

and

Geek with an attitude (Buddhika Siddhisena's Blog)

Big names for a Bangalore event...

2005-10-28T22:45:00.000-07:00

Atul Chitnis announces that the overseas speakers for the foss.in event to be held in Bangalore in end-November will include: Jonathan Corbet, co-author of "Linux Device Drivers", and editor of LWN.NET, aka "Linux Weekly News"; Andrew Cowie of Linux Australia; Harald Welte, who's chairman of the netfilter/iptables project, and the man behind GPL-violations.org; "Mr.Wizards-of-OS" Volker Grassmuck; the man behind the
Apache project, COLLAB.NET's Brian Behlendorf; "Mr.PHP" Rasmus Lerdorf; the Diva of Open Source, Danese Cooper; Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny; the man behind Linux Sound and Audio Dave Phillips; and the legendary hacker Alan Cox.
----------------------------------------------------------
FOSS.IN/2005 is a major Free/Libre & Open Source Software Event being held from Nov 29 to Dec 2, 2005 Bangalore Palace. See http:// foss.in/2005 and the blogs of techies and others associated with the event.

Battleground of ideas... FLOSS vs proprietary

2005-10-25T00:34:00.000-07:00

APC member BytesForAll's mailing list[1] recently played host to a strong, and at times polemical, debate on proprietary-versus-FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software). In this debate, there were these couple of great posts here [2] and here [3], that put things neatly in perspective -- thanks to David Geilhufe who is co-founder of the SocialSourceFoundation.org [4] and Sunil Abraham of Mahiti.org [5].

This debate threw up a range of issues about the role of FLOSS in the 'developing' countries, its role in localisation, how it competes with proprietorial software, why its benefits haven't yet reached regions like Africa, and how diverse approaches to software could actually make a difference in the real world. BytesForAll is a South Asian voluntary network, founded along the free software principles of volunteering, but focussing on information -- and how information and communication technologies could be more relevant to the common(wo)man, specially in South Asia.

It all started with a rather critical-of-FLOSS post by University of Manchester's Dr Richard Heeks [6] offering a
link to an eDevelopment Briefing titled "Free and Open Source Software: A Blind Alley for Developing Countries?" [7].

It calls the 1980s shareware "FOSS forerunner" to have had "zero" impact, says data from Africa shows only five percent of computers "in developing countries" have any open source software running on them, and notes that proprietorial software dominates "even in Cuba... where the US embargo should make conditions highly propitious".

Besides, the briefing says that "piracy" and the "limited size of initial purchase price within total cost of software
ownership" there is actually no "evidence of FOSS delivering cost savings".

Says the briefing: "In particular, proprietary software may not be open source but it is certainly free for the great
majority of developing country users, thanks to piracy." It points to the lack of awareness of FOSS in Africa, and the lack of international links needed to be part of an "active, global community of like-minded developers".

One early response to this brief text came from BytesForAll co-founder Frederick "FN" Noronha and is here for viewing [8]. Noronha, who goes by the initials of FN, argues, "The "5% of computer systems" overlooks the role played by FLOSS in servers, in keeping the Internet running, in giving unprecedented access to developers of the Third World to take part in a global movement, and more." This study, argues this post, overlooks the potential of FLOSS in large 'developing' countries like India, China, Brazil and South Africa. It points to another study -- from Finland -- which it says is more open to the benefits of FLOSS in the "developing" world. See the report here at this Maailma site.

FN also adds, "By saying 'proprietorial software is free' for the bulk of the 'developing' world, the study is guilty of
both tolerating/encouraging the illegally copying of software ('piracy' is a loaded term, unfortunately accepted by
academia too) and missing the essence of what Free Software is all about (offering the freedom to be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed). We are not fighting just for the right to remain 'pirates'...."

Richard "RMS" Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation joining in the debate with these comments. [9].

There was a longish debate on benchmarking FLOSS. Javier Sola, a Spanish-Chilean working on Khmer language localisation in Cambodia, added some interesting points [10].

Javier, who works with APC member the Open Forum of Cambodia, argues: "Academics should make sure that they look at all factors when they write something like this. In this case the author has not come even close to it. He has, among others, completelly ignored the power of localisation, diminished as "techies and amateurs" some of the people that have clearer ideas of what is needed for real migration and used anectdotal data for his conclusions."

Sunil Abraham argues how proprietorial software could kill -- no exaggeration, due to its delays and restrictions -- in a post-Tsunami situation. He also argues that "because Sahana (a Free/Libre and Open Source Software project to cope with disasters) is FOSS, the earthquake stricken people from Pakistan and India don't have to spend money earmarked for food on software." Then, in an almost tongue-in-cheek Sunish manner, he argues that FLOSS "increases the responsiveness of an organisation. This is important whether it is peoples lives or greater profits." [11 ]

David Geilhufe has this very interesting response to argue that FLOSS offers "viral diffusion" (to enable its uncontrolled spread, of course in a positive way), local control and lower barriers to entry. Well put, and very well argued.

Here's [12] what David argues eloquently: "There is no religious war here, but I think the staunch defenders of
proprietary code get stuck on analyzing the software... this isn't the important part. One needs to analyze the innovation and use of software... that, I believe, is where the real ICT impact lies."

David's Social Source Foundation [13] is here. It is "a nonproft organization that exists to create open source,
mission-focused technology for the nonprofit and NGO sector."

Another link is the OpenNGO.org [14] network. OpenNGO calls itself "an open source project to create a set of web-based tools designed to meet the needs of small U.S. nonprofit organizations and non-governmental organizations across the globe."

Meanwhile, another strong debate continued at the Global Knowledge for Development mailing-list, visible at the archives here [15]. Some supported Heeks views, while others said academia was missing the point on FLOSS.

Said Mark Davies: "As an African business, and as an African software development business, I still don't get it. There's so much enthusiasm for FOSS, there's so much conference mind-share spent on this topic, and yet I don't see an illuminating discussion about the opportunities for risk/reward for people like us." [16 ]

After facing a lot of counterpoints, Heeks responded: "You can read this message in two ways: either that FOSS will never deliver; or that the FOSS community needs to rethink its strategies. Or, of course, if you've devoted months or years to FOSS and don't like the message, you'll try to denigrate the writer, deny the data, and so forth." [17]

Klaus Stoll the president of Fundacion Chasquinet [18] in Quito, Ecuador also swam against the tide. He wrote: "...yes, my organization Chasquinet Foundation works with Microsoft and yes it is the same organization that produced and published the open source tollbox for Telecenters in Latin America [19] and yes we have as a policy in our organization that people should have a right to choose. What counts for us here at the grassroots are real ICT tools for Development, be they open source or otherwise, what counts is if they make a real positive impact in improving peoples lives."

African NGO Kaibassa argued here[20]: "We at Kabissa have a very practical orientation and don't really push open source in our trainings or through our services and Web site unless it's just staring in our faces as just plain better. Open source content management systems and other server-based tools and desktop applications like Firefox and Thunderbird spring straight to mind. In the meantime, I hope you and other software developers in Africa are aware of and considering attending Africa Source II."

But one key perspective came from Richard "RMS" Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation [21]. He commented: "The choice between free (freedom-respecting) and proprietary (user-subjugating) software is not a technical choice. It is an ethical and political issue about people's freedom. To be neutral on issues that merely concern technology is fine. To be neutral on ethical and political issues about freedom is nothing to be proud of."

Colonial cousins... of the Luso sort

2005-03-02T23:16:00.000-08:00

The Portuguese were the first European power to set up base in Asia, and by the 20th century, had just a few pockets of influence left. Goa, where this writer lives and works, was once the headquarters of the strategically-situated but small string of colonies.
So how's FLOSS doing in some of the remnants of this Empire?
If you're Portuguese-speaking, then consider helping with some initiatives in these areas.
Rui Alves from Macau, the former Portuguese colony now again part of mainland China, recently narrated what's happening there on the FLOSS front. MacauLinux like some other smaller volunteer-driven LUGs, lost its website and domain name -- macaulinux.org
Says Alves: "Coordinating efforts is quite hard in such a microscopic place as Macau. Some of my colleagues are working on restoring the site (and related activities), but honestly it has been a while without any news from them. I hope we won't let macaulinux die."
In the meantime, Alves hopes his site could be a temporary stop-gap location at which to announce any developments.
Incidentally, Linux Counter's page for Macau is here. Fourteen Linux users counted. There are some four to five personal site links here too, with some FLOSS-interest embedded in some of them.
From Timor Leste (or East Timor, as more of us would know this young nation) Elizabeth, is doing an intern-ship at the Open Forum of Cambodia, with the KhmerOS (Khmer Open Source) network. The latter is itself localising software to the Khmer-Cambodian language.
Elizabeth is "learning from them while also preparing a localisation document for Tetum". That, one could be excused for not knowing, is one of the national languages in East Timor.
Tetum uses the Latin script with some accents, since many words have been imported from the Portuguese. Says Elizabeth : "As far as I know, there's no centre for promoting FLOSS yet in East Timor. Some people have started using Open Source products.
By the way, Linux Counter shows the number of FLOSS users there as zero!

Road to Damascus

2005-03-02T11:54:00.000-08:00

FOSS2005.org is an announcement of a Free and Open Source Software to be held in Damascus from March 2-4, 2005. Speakers will include Richard 'RMS" Stallman, and participants from Europe and the UNCTAD too.
Organisers also announced that they've completed the translation of the LPI LinuxIT course into Arabic, and the GNU FDL has been translated as well.
This event has the patronage of the Minister of ICT Dr. Mohammad Bashir Al Munajjed, and the involvement of the Network of Syrian Scientists, Technologists and Innovators Abroad (NOSSTIA) in addition to the Syrian GNU/Linux Users Group.
Early announcements listed among the participants Linux Professional Institute Canada vice president Glenn McNight, UNCTAD Switzerland economic affairs officer Dimo Calovski, Bridges.org program manager Philipp Schmidt of South Africa, FSF Europe vice president Jonas Oberg, Saudi Computer Society president Dr. Khaled Al Ghoniem, Saudi Linux president Dr. AbdulRahman AlJadahi, and Freesoft (Jordan) project manager Isam Bayazidi.

Sufyan's update from Pakistan

2005-03-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

From Pakistan come the plans for promoting FLOSS in that part of South Asia. Under their Open Source Resource Centre, the team there plans to start migrating government departments to FLOSS.

Said Sufyan, discussing this issue online: "We have kicked off with one. Following is the action plan. Phase I -- Linux and other OSS for users who don't think their work may get disturb by switching to Linux. Two, Open Source Software on Windows for those who are using any software whose exact replacement is not available with open source (though there is hardly any, but there are people who can't absorb this change at once)."

In Phase II, Pakistan is looking at financing FLOSS replacements for proprietary software, and "migrating all left-overs".

Says Sufyan: "This plan is for client side only. 90% of the server side of the first organization is already on open source (Apache, Squid, sendmail, Samba). Those who are using windows and dont want to shift to Linux at once are provided with Firefox, Openoffice, AMSN and Thunderbird (with the scheduler). We want them to get used to these OSS tools before their systems are migrated. There is a good response. People are inspired by tab based browsing of Mozilla, font control and in-built pdf writer of OpenOffice.

Links in India

2005-02-26T15:41:00.000-08:00

This page on Wikiwikiweb.de has links to FLOSS, i.e. Free/Libre and Open Source Software in India. Also see an earlier version at Pitas.com

Notes from Sri Lanka

2005-02-26T15:27:00.000-08:00

Anuradha Ratnaweera informs that the Linux.Lk and LUG.lk groups have
been advocating GNU/Linux and Free / Open Source Software since 1998. Recently, they have started working closely with the tux group of Narada Center
Says Anuradha: "Check here to see what we have been doing."
Lanka Software Foundation is another organization which is also promoting FOSS development in Sri Lanka. Anuradha informs that right now, they have a dedicated server on which they run the above web site and "many extremely active mailing lists". They would like to contribute news items to the relevent events and localization and news
sections of international networks, like IOSN.net. When broached with the subject of building 'partner uder groups', he replied: "I am sure LK-LUGgers are willing to become a partner LUG. Shall I write to advocacy at lug.lk on this?"
Click Anuradha's page to know more about him.

Check this page... for some links

2005-02-25T06:56:00.000-08:00

Check this page for some links of my work on the Free Software front. In particular, this is a 2003-04 study on FLOSS in Asia called Liberation Technology for the lands of diversity? Free Software in Asia. This report can also be found at this site.

User groups lists

2005-02-21T15:02:00.000-08:00

Not just LUGs but also Free Software User Groups, GNU/Linux user groups, and other links that might be of interest. Mainly from around India and South Asia. But a few beyond. Check what's available.

Santhali, Free Software, language ... and death

2005-02-21T14:54:00.000-08:00

These guys, young friends from West Bengal, are trying to get the tribal Santhali language working with Free Software. Incidentally, L2C2 is the idea of Low Cost Localised Computing which in itself an interesting concept. Being interestingly executed too.

Below is a self-explanatory entry from the Randomink Blogs site . It is from "Weekend Aantel". Sayamindu from Kolkata was mentioning the Santhali project recently.

Wikipedia has this to say about Santhali

Santali is a language in the Munda subfamily of Austro-Asiatic, related to Ho and Mundari. It is spoken by about six million people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan. Most of its speakers live in India, in the states of Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura, and West Bengal. It has its own alphabet, known as Ol Cemet', but literacy is very low, between 10 and 30%. Santali is spoken by the Santhals.

And here is a reproduction of the announcement:

Adieu Mandal Hembrom!

Weekend Aantel wrote on Feb 21: Mandal Hembrom passed away at TMC, Mumbai, today in the early morning. He was under-going treatment at TMC. I don't yet have the details of the exact cause of death, but so far it is known that his condition detoriarated after he underwent Chemotheraphy and lapsed into a severe cardiac arrest.

Mandal-da was the lead linguist (as also being a native speaker) in our Santhali CASTLE Project. His death is not just a great loss to our project, but a loss to all the Santhals struggling to establish their identity in a globalised world that dictates a lop-sided homogeneity at the cost of losing unique cultural traits, language and social structures.

Mandal-da's illness was detected at an advanced stage. He wanted to use the time he had to complete the work on the translation of the strings. Unfortunately, he was taken away from us before that could happen! Perhaps, its a strange co-incidence that today happens to be the International Mother Language Day (21st Feb) that Mandal-da breathed his last.

We need to reaffirm our commitment to the work on bridging the ICT divide. As I wrote in my "A walk across the Digital Divide" experience, its not as un-bridgable as it often sounds. Its only by ensuring the continuance of the Santhali L10N project that we can truly pay our respect to the dreams and efforts of Mandal Hembrom.

END OF QUOTE

On behalf of BytesForAll , let me dip our flag to all these guys trying to make computing work for for forgotten people and the poor... whose languages otherwise barely make for a 'viable market'. FN

Free software and NGOs

2005-02-21T13:00:00.000-08:00

Asia Source blog is my blog of a recently-concluded event, looking at building bridges between Free Software and NGOs (non-government organisations)