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Roblimo Abroad: Pushing Linux' Prospects In Jordan

Posted by timothy on from the jeep-they-drove-in-on dept.

Last week, NewsForge editor and Slashdot poster Robin ("roblimo") Miller traveled to Jordan to observe, talk about and foment the free software scene there, in part by speaking at the Open Source Software Workshop held in Amman. How do you grow a software industry in a country with a 30% poverty rate, where water supplies are a bigger concern than ATX power supplies? At the conference Robin spoke at, clearly a big part of that answer is high-quality free software. He notes that "Two gentlemen from Microsoft also spoke. I was in favor of Linux and Open Source. They weren't." Aside from the software side of things (including another plug for the awesome demo power of Knoppix), the report is worth reading to anyone as ignorant of Jordan as I am just to find out more about the place.

7 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Roblimo Abroad: Pushing Linux' Prospects... by Dunark · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I love it. From the article:

    Indeed, casual conversations I had with several workshop participants lead me to believe that the BSA is one of the greatest forces behind the spread of Open Source Software in the Middle East. The group's representatives in this part of the world may not consider increasing Open Source popularity a primary part of their mission, but it is one of the most visible results of their activities.

  2. This is great by The-Perl-CD-Bookshel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I love to see people go out of their way to pitch Linux to those that will contribute to the project by only being the user base. Rob and the whole Slashdot crew have done a great job of going out of their way to accept linux users as opposed to Linux developers (this talk, TechTV appearances, etc..). In the end, you can only have so many programmers contribute to the project, but you can never have enough users. Perhaps there should be more pages devoted to linux users as opposed to linux programmers.

    For example, if sites like Freshmeat and Sourceforge were set-up more like cnet's download.com we would see more people interested in the prospect of software from these sites. It is very intimidating to some to see project's source code, developers, etc... There is no lack of great programs on Sourceforge and Freshmeat(difference?) but there is a lack of information on how to use these programs. Many open source projects lack an easy to understand information page. Also, I don't think that it would be a bad idea to port some of the more important projects to other operating systems. A great example of this is the PHP and MySQL projects that offer IIRC an older version of the software complied in .exe. However, this was done out of necessity because most people develop php/mysql solutions on Windows machines to run on Apacche.

    What does everyone think of this? Is there a way to make the Linux programs (as opposed to just the operating system) more accessable to non-programmers?

    --
    I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
  3. Jordanian Queen has a degree in IT by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Clearly not a programmer, but she is definitely much closer to the IT world than any other monarch, having working at Apple. She's babelicious too, we need more IT queens like her:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/163 26 14.stm

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    1. Re:Jordanian Queen has a degree in IT by Xoro · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Jordan has even bigger geek creds: King Abdullah had a cameo on Star Trek! Okay, so it was Voyager, but still.

      And some of Indy III was shot there. They're almost guaranteed to switch.

      --
      Kill, Tux, kill!
    2. Re:Jordanian Queen has a degree in IT by Ilgaz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Jordan kingdom family :) His father (Late King Hussein of Jordan) was a amateur radio hobbyist too... His callsign JY1 (http://www.ham-shack.com/amateur_radio.html)

      Now, don't be surprised if King Abdullah has a slashdot account... ;-)

  4. They should do what publishers do in India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    and if they could offer more REASONABLE prices they could probably capture more market share than with their greed-inflated prices

    This is exactly what publishing companies do in India. There is a huge market for technical books but if they were sold at the same prices as in the US, they would sell very few. So they have India-specific prices which are valid only in the subcontinent. The books come in paperback, the paper quality is not superb, and sometimes color illustrations are made black and white instead, but finally they sell it for 10% of the price of the original. Of course they sell more that 10 times of what they would have if they had sold it at the original price. So they get profits while doing something good for the society. The software industry should take a leaf out of their book, though admittedly it would be very difficult to regulate people in the US from buying the software at these reduced prices.

  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion