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Iraq's Open Source Possibilities
An anonymous reader writes "In a Linux Journal article, Iraq's 2 person LUG describes the software consumer market in Iraq today, and their hopes for educating the masses about open-source software: 'Iraq is now a blank, unformatted hard disk and can be loaded with anything. Everything is open in Iraq right now. There are no regimented standards or massive expenditure in a particular monopoly's software'."
As much as I would like to see O/S everywhere in the world, I think that what Iraq needs before anything else at the moment is a stable government.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
be nice to see linux there but m$ will probably make some big ass sponsoring deal...
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Beers and Boobies in a Game?
It's .iq
Impress your friends with http://high.iq
Seriously though, it's a great article and Iraq is SO perfect right now to be the open course society from the get-go.
Adam did a great job writing this.
Ya, we'll give them something for free instead of taking there money/oil for something we tell them they must have. Sure, that will happen.
-Anonymous American.
Given that the US is already excluding foreign nations from lucrative rebuilding contracts in Iraq, I would expect the Bush Administration to frown upon this possible move to open source, and start pushing Microsoft and friends instead.
Bill gates will now invest millions in IRAQ to make sure his monopoly is propagated. NERDS UNITE!
Spyware Cookies, Banners, Popups, and Porn, oh wait thats the United States
People in Iraq need rare and strange things like Food, Water, Medicine, a Government.
Do you honestly think anyone cares about Open Source when the majority of the population is living in squalor?
with the current monopoly situation on reconstruction in Iraq? does Open Source have enough strings to pull there?
Perhaps a Linux vendor will spot free licenses and support and consultants, if the Iraqui provisional government agrees to purchase hardware from them.
Or, free on-site setup or something, if they agree to buy a support package.
Or, free everything, and then they'd get a lucrative governemnt contract.
This mainly depends on which company wins the contract to re-build their IT/Communications systems. If a pro-microsoft company wins, then Iraq will be locked into proprietary software.
I guess it just depends on how large a contribution Linus and friends made to Dubya's campaign...
I bet the just pirate whatever they need like almost everyone else.
Somehow, I think that Iraq will use whatever OS Haliburton uses (and be overcharged for it!) :P
You can help Ashraf and Hasanen. It can be as simple as emailing a few URLs or offering to provide tech support or help in developing their website. Or you can mail them books, periodicals, and CDs. Or you can send them money, so they can fulfill their ambition to create Iraq's first Linux Center to demonstrate and train. The above statement says it all.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Why not OpenBSD? It's about time they had some actual weapons-grade crypto (of mass destruction). We could bring them into the twentieth century and assure a better excuse in advance for our starting the third gulf war.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Lets just hope that whoever is formating the hard disk doesn't doesn't format it using FAT file system.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Anyone have any good Saddam and Michael Jackson jokes yet?
When a people have been oppressed, they usually take full advantage of what they are given when that oppression ends. Sometimes there is even a bit of an overcorrection. I predict that the next generation of ubergeeks will hail from Iraq. Watch out japanese game manufacturers. Look out Korean i-get-paid-to-play-online-soccer-games people.
Esoteric reference.
can wait a bit longer. The kind of stability they need right now isn't in a computer operating system, it's in a governing system. They also need stability in what we consider basic utilities -- electricity, running water, etc. It also helps not to have to worry about car bombs, suicide bombers, and other daily attacks.
If you look through Maslow's heirarchy of needs, a good, cheap, stable, tweakable operating system doesn't make it in the radar quite yet.
Please tell me this was written in jest, please...there are so many things wrong with it in so many ways...This is the ultimate in one-track-mind syndrome.
Unless Haliburton has recently gone into the software buisness, Microsoft will get any "reconstruction contract" involving computer infrastructures.
Then, guess who'll be in charge of "educating" the Iraqis in computer use?
I'm sure Bill's charity will donate a bunch of intel machines and "Trustworthy" OSs...
You can't take the sky from me...
We used to just say, "we're going to turn your country into a parking lot." Now what is it, we're going to load a diagnostic and low level format your ass?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Whichever side of the political divide we stand on over Iraq, I don't think anyone could disagree now that if we can help here then it will do good for them.
We don't have to wait for a stable government, we can work on multiple fronts at the same time.
At least with Open Source we're not asking for anything and we're not just blindly giving, we're sharing. They have an equal right to be able to contribute to open source.
For those in the US, please also lobby your government to remove the restrictions that stop you sending Linux (and presumably *BSD) to Iraq whilst allowing MS, etc, to sell proprietory systems.
Chris down under
EXACTLY what the founding (US) fathers said
All men created equal.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Bill Gate$ has likely already made a $1 million dollar contribution to some republican PAC somewhere to make sure that Microsoft is all they get in Iraq. The distributor probably will be Hallburton!
Iraq doesn't have a stable government, economy or military and it is caught between Islamist/Islamofascist guerrillas and an international occupation force. Iraq needs political and economic stability more than anything else. We need to educate them on the benefits of non-violent and non-coercive political debate and discourse, not open source software. We need to educate them how to become a modern industrial country with an economy that isn't dependent on one industry. We need to train an army that is loyal to the country's constitution, not leaders.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Check it out here.
If Halliburton can get away charging treble the market rate for delivering oil, I seriously doubt there won't be any corporate skullduggery involved in the framing of government contracts for something like computing.
kthx
Wasn't ex-RIAA head Hillary Rosen consulting with the Iraqi Governing Council on how to write the copyright section of the Iraqi constitution?
Why not just write a mandate for Trusted Computing to guarantee the security of any imported US content and guarantee a RIAA-type organization can end up in control of whatever Iraqi culture blooms?
Iraq presents an opportunity for a democracy to form that gains all the advantages of hindsight. It would be the chance to correct all of the mistakes that were made with Amercian democracy (such as ignorance of money's impact on all three branches or the constant war of state vs federal rights). Unfortunately, now that corporate American wields such control, it seems highly unlikely that any new "democracy" we spawn would follow noble, altruistic ideals but instead follow capitalist whatever-makes-trade-for-US-companies ideals.
Futher proof that there is no room for democratic ideals in Iraqi is that the Shiite majority would easily control any democratic system that was implemented, something that I'm sure the US will not tolerate.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I'm just guessing here, but I doubt that trying to bring Open Source tools into a developing technology infrastructure would sap the effort to create a stable government.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Iraq is not a free country. It is owned and operated by PNAC, under the auspices of the Bush Administration, which is in turn owned and operated by a number of large corporations and wealthy individuals.
Microsoft being one of the largest contributors, expect Windows Everywhere. It isn't just a coincidence that Windows is on the "allowed to export" list and Linux isn't.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
On Saturday, I had an Internet chat with Iraq, between a coffeehouse just outside of Washington, DC, and the Baghdad Internet Cafe.
One of their questions went like this:
baghdadic: LATEEF ASKS U HOW MUCH THE LATIST MODEL OF COMPUTER IN US ?
techartvideo: U can get good computer for 350 dollars, very good for 3000 dollars.
baghdadic: IT IS EXPENSIVE
techartvideo: How much for a computer in Baghdad?
baghdadic: 200 USD FOR P4 ( ASIAN ORIGIN ) TO 1300USD FOR LAP TOP
Which goes to show that the world is pretty much the same everywhere, especially for geeks!
It's supposed to go like this:
1. Get everybody food and water
2. Get everybody feeling reasonably secure in their safety.
3. Setup a stable, fair and working government.
4. Decide whether Iraqi cellphones will use GSM or CDMA
5. Decide which operating system to use.
I think we're stuck around #2 or #3, but these people are already jumping up to 5 (and other people to 4).
Read the Letter Silicon Valley Linux USer Group put together to the DOD.
Unbelievable, but apparently true
Help fight continental drift.
Fuck electricty and running water! We want open sores!
It doesn't help your cause to attempt to mislead people. Your statement...
...excluding foreign nations...
...is a lie by omission. The US is excluding specific foreign nations for specific reasons, which is very different from your implication. Also, the exclusion applies to only part of the total available funds.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
While I agree that a stable government would be good, with all the corruption in Washington to institute standards concerning say cell phones, etc. I think others are watching this situation and drooling hoping that American instituted "standard" will hold in Iraq. Nonetheless, Arabeyes is a great place to start. I believe they just released an iso which contains a "working" arabized (Arabeyes -- get it!!!) cdrom image. It is a Knoppix base, if I remember correctly. I have only tried it a few times, but it seems to work well.
http://www.arabeyes.org/
Hadar has also released some material. I believe there was a drive to try and get universities in the Middle East to consider arabic OSS projects, not sure what became of this though...
Best of Luck, because I fear the next five years will be rough.
Patent #333456223: Method for building and/or rebuilding newly-created vassal state's electronic infrastructure using software created in collaboration over the Internet
- undoware.ca
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If all the suicide bombers were busy downloading porn from the internet, wouldn't there be fewer bombings? Think of the children!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
capitalism and open source are not mutually exclusive
Sure there's a lot of work to be done but.. Its diffrent and great to see Iraq, and think of it as an ally.
Of course Iraq is ripe for linux -- the version Haliburton is in the process of patenting.
This all sounds nice and all, but given that Halliburton is selling oil in Iraq for $1.59 per gallon, excluding extra company fees, when they could be doing it locally for about 15 cents per gallon, I somehow doubt that the Iraq is going to be rebuilt on open source. Microsoft's rock bottom software prices are way more capitalist friendly, if you know what I mean.
...uses the same misleading definition of gigabyte as the western drives.
Simple export it from somewhere like france.
...maybe first things first. How about water and electricity first, and then maybe a stable government, and an end to guerilla attacks across the country... THEN planning their software platform.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
Why bother? Nevada has the same attributes, and it's much closer to home.
Top ten things to load into a blank country:
Saddam is a tyrannical dictator, MJ is a gay pedophile, and Michael Sims is both.
Saddam climbing out of that hole is like groundhog day...4 more years of Bush. (not a good thing BTW)
Who's working on the bill to make the use of non-Microsoft software in Iraq a capital crime? Remember a while ago that some congressman from San Diego wanted Iraq to go CMDA?
Just like everywhere else in the middle and far east. People will simply pirate Windows and the regular apps and user them. Linux?? Sounds nice but they can get the 'Standard OS that everyone uses' for almost free. $5 for Windows and Office.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What makes you think iraq even wants to have an IT infrusture like the western world? As many have said before I think food, water, electricity and hospitals (for the civilian casualities) would be a start. I thought the purpose of the war was to "liberate" Iraq? No wait, wasn't it to find WMD? No thats not it, maybe OIL? A family grudge? it all seems to have been forgotton now.
Iraq is not a blank slate for America to mould as its own! When will the USA respect cultural differences and realize the rest of the world doesn't want to become the USA?
US Journalist: So are you going to be running Linux or Windows in this country of yours?
Sherif Ali: I'll tell you that when I *have* a country.
BTW what is the Arabic support in Linux like? That's probably the most important thing. The other thing going for Linux is it is considered less American than Windows and considering the rock bottom opinion most Arabs have of America, that probably works in its favour. There have been boycotts of American goods in Arab countries. And aren't there export restrictions on American goods to some countries like Syria and Iran? And doesn't China do a lot of business with Arab countries? If the Chinese government starts adopting Linux heavily this could spill to the Arab countries.
It's worth noting that many nations who opposed the war in Iraq did take up an increased responsibility in Afghanistan so that American troops could be rotated over to Iraq. They didn't participate directly in Iraq, but without their help sharing part of the burden in other parts of the war on terror, the United States would have had a harder going.
I won't go so far as to call you a jackass in retalliation, but I will say it's worth informing yourself more before resorting to insult.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
M$ has better I8n support than Linux. Remember Iraqis speak and write Arabic which runs from right to left. Haven't seen that on my Gnome terminal lately...
Typical AC tease...not a very original troll, actually :)
Here we have a country that's been bombed to hell and back, with no real government in place; struggling to survive, merely trying to figure out its future with people being killed daily - and the best Slashdot can do is ask whether or not OS will play a part.
How inconsiderate. How about this, let's hope that they're able to bring a semblance of normalcy back into their lives and get to the point where they can think about such luxuries.
Probably going to get insta-modded to Troll but IRAQ has much MUCH bigger problems than what kind of SOFTWARE they are going to use. Grow up! Humanity goes beyond the concept of Open/Closed Source.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
Why was this moderated down but not the grandparent?
Looks like even the moderators have a political agenda. Sad.
First of all, Iraq is, or at least was until years of US/UN sanctions crippled the economy, a fairly sophisticated country. I am sure there are many intellegint, well educated Iraqi geeks and computer scientists and power users who are quite capable of deciding for them selves what Iraq needs. Second, there is this HUGE gulf between what we think and what appears to be thought, based on news accounts, in the Arab world. The clearest example is the widespread anger at the fall of Hussein as a humiliation, a view that I would wager is alien to most americans. People in the Mideast are just as smart as we are, and they are fully entitled to their opinions; if we don't like them, acting like a big bully, and telling people to shutup and do as we think is not going to help. I think there is a tinge of this in the post, we know best and you (children) will do what we want (unspoken or else)...
NTFS or FAT?
The support has been in there since at least 1995 for Arabic languagues. Most people will admit that the multilanguage support for Linux is *NO WHERE FREAKING NEAR* what MS has got right now. Granted that could change in the future, but you have to concede that Windows right now is in a far superior position. You'd be amazed at the thought they've put into their language support, both in programs and the API. Simply amazing. The more I program with MS API's, the more I think the people bashing them have never even used them or tried to.
Perhaps it is controversial, but I like to think of 'open source' in terms of a wider picture, as an aversion to secrecy. Not keeping computer source code is just one aspect of this wider 'open source'.
What could an 'open source' philosophy yield for Iraq? It could lead to transparency in government, reducing corruption and increasing stability. It could buy water and electricity, as shortcomings with utilities will not be hidden and the Iraqui people will demand that something be done about it. It could lead to greater trust in the government, eroding support for terrorism. Closer to the computer field, open source could provide grass roots communication for the country, allowing those without bias and vested interest (eg children) to communicate, cooperate, build understanding and reduce tribal tensions. This is what 'open source' could provide for Iraq.
[bush@iraq /usr/local] rpm -ivh opensourcesoftware-0.1.i386.rpm /usr/local] rpm -ivh democracy-1.0.i386.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
personalcomputers.so.4.1.2 is needed by opensourcesoftware-0.1
electricity.so.0.9.6 is needed by opensourcesoftware-0.1
domesticlawandorder.so.1.0 is needed by opensourcesoftware-0.1
[bush@iraq
Segmentation fault: population not formatted for democracy-1.0
I should buy some cement.
of course microsoft will get the contract. they donate millions to both political parties, no one can oppose them.
Knowingly dodging export controls like that is still a criminal offense.
I will post it again. Hopefully the immature moderators will understand the key to democracy is a free marketplace of ideas, not "censor ideas we dont like" marketplace.
Iraq isn't in the stoneage, jackass. They already have an existing IT infrastructure. The people creating the LUG aren't even americans.. they're IRAQI
Even if you are not American? Sorry, but the US doesn't run the entire planet. Yet.
dumbass
You forget that whatever the Jews do, the Arabs do the opposite.
They need power before they can think about computers.
Take another valium, and go sit in front of the TV...you'll be fine, just stay out of the Jim Beam.
You missed the point. The person doing the initial exporting from the US -> France (presumable either American or on American soil and thus subject to US law) could still be criminally liable if they knew the software was going from France -> Iraq by a third party.
The reconstruction of Iraq has largely been contracted out to anybody who cared to bid as long as they were American and Halliburton. Where does open source anything fit into that picture?
Now wash your hands.
The conflict is value (possibly implemented using open source) vs corruption (probably implemented by lock-in, a.k.a. The Microsoft Legacy).
THe only question is: who donated more money to the Bush campaign in 2000, and will likely donate more in 2004: Microsoft or their competitors? That's how you predict who will win.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
...... water from containers marked "Radio Active", how on Earth would they ever know how to format a hard drive???
In the IT industry, Microsoft was by far the largest corporate donor to political campaigns during the 2002 election cycle, and so far it looks like that trend will continue for the 2004 elections. You can get a breakdown of their various contributions on the same site, but the long and short of it is that they gave a bit more to Republicans than Democrats during the last election cycle, and are so far pretty much even this cycle.
Claiming that corporate involvement in Iraq is going to lead to the destabilization of the country is probably a lot of hand-wringing. However, that doesn't mean it's not worthy of scrutiny.
(Incidentally: if any of you still wonder why Microsoft always seemed to get away with it every time they get slapped with an anti-trust suit, the above links should prove instructive.)
"Iraq is now a blank, unformatted hard disk and can be loaded with anything." It's an interesting comparison, but Irag is hardly blank. There is residue from the old regime all through the country. Some of the old ministers for the state are still in power, being left there by the US because they have the widest knowledge of the system. None of those who are in power now are being charged with war crimes of course. Iraq is unformatted however, and at the moment any attempt to bring formation is met with terrorist activity. Water and power installations are being blown up by small pockets of rebels. Iraq needs to be loaded with some anti-virus software before proper utility programs can be loaded sucessfully.
I couldn't think of a sig.
Computers will be instrumental in the rebuilding of Iraq.
At *some* point the 'new' Iraqi governemnt will need to build infrastructure. On an immediate basis this would include electrical, water, and communications factilities. Most of these systems are in desparate need of repair and upgrades.
Whatever problems will happen with the government. there is no denying that such upgrades are needed. Computers are needed to run these systems (wheter Linux or Windows boxes run the actual systems is debatable) but employees will most likely need computers for day-to-day tasks. If they were to use say OpenOffice on the computers then as the gov't rebuilds it would make 'sense' to use the same software.
The US doesn't own Linux. It doesn't have to be exported from the US at all. It belongs to an international community. Linux cannot be imported or exported from any single country to any other country.
Lets face it - idealism or even practicality isn't going to come in to it. The US Goverment will put out a contract call for IT infrastructure, and Microsoft will get it. Cost doesn't matter because oil will pay for it.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
That use of "specific reasons" seems to suggest that there's a validity in the fact that countries were excluded for their anti-invasion stance.
It's worth noting that many nations who opposed the war in Iraq did take up an increased responsibility in Afghanistan so that American troops could be rotated over to Iraq. They didn't participate directly in Iraq, but without their help sharing part of the burden in other parts of the war on terror, the United States would have had a harder going.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Bunch of stupid, slashdot, idiot children.
n clearinghouse.info/
The Iraqi people are being slaughtered, have no food or electricity and you sorry ass hippies want to get them to use open source?
Stupid assholes.
Take a look here and see what is happening to them...
http://www.infowars.com/
http://www.informatio
Stop getting your "news" from Dan Rather comander turd.
Pitiful idiots.
...of what a public radio employee (read: liberal, just like you) had to say in the article. (You did RTFA before you started up with your anti-Bush, no-blood-for-oil rant, right?)
Life is tough here in Baghdad, no question. But Iraqis have plenty of food and not that many people have been physically injured. What delights many Iraqis most right now is that they can, for the first time in a lifetime, learn about the outside world. They can read whatever books they want, watch satellite TV, and, most exciting of all, get on the Internet and see things they never have: open political criticism, chat rooms, naked people, news from everywhere. There are dozens and dozens of new internet cafes all over Iraq which, with their slow, lousy satellite connections, are filled all the time.
Sana'a Street, the main computer store strip in Baghdad, is overflowing with quite up-to-date computers, cheaper than you'll find in the US, with everything you could ask for.
Oh, the humanity! How could we have done this to them when they were so happy being tortured, raped, and killed? We've subjected them to slow satellite connections and pr0n. We are heartless bastards. Read on...
Certainly, Iraq is a country that needs all sorts of immediate material support. But the US government and countless NGOs are about to pour countless billions to that effort.
Oh, those greedy Americans.
Put up or shut up.
Last weekend, I spent 2 hours talking with a friend, he is a supply Sargeant, USMC - He just got back from several months in Iraq and Kuwait - Mostly down near Kuwait managing supplies and food for all the troops.
Food, water, medicine, electricity, stable government yes...
But 90% of the people there wouldn't know a computer if they fell over it.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
And you're missing the bigger point. Linux isn't American. It started in Finland and is developed all over the world. There doesn't need to be an initial export from the US, it isn't here to be exported.
I would think that most likely the OS that will start being used there in government will be determined by our military or theirs.
Watch out for facts! They might kill your opinion. I know, because it happened to me.
Halliburton was first granted no-bid status by Clinton. They get all the gravy, nobody else can bid.
The Democratic party received more of Halliburton's donations than any other political party.
Iraq reconstruction contract bids are open to anyone.
Iraq reconstruction contracts that are handled via the DoD go exclusively to our allies in the campaign against Saddam, not those who sold Saddam munitions after sanctions were imposed. (What, you expect us to reward them with bids, when their illegal arms-trading cost us American lives? Get a grip.)
teach them that typing with caps is SCREAMING.
sadamguy: I DONT HAVE WAEPONS OF MAS DISTROCTION
There are few points I felt I need to reply to. yesm right now we (Iraqis) have no sovern country, yes we don't have enough electrcity, yes drinking water is hardly good enough for drinking and yes Computer and IT is just about the last on our list of necessities for survival. BUT, as Iraqis, teh ppl. who actully built teh first civilization, and got that wiped out and rebuilt more time than I have time to count in here, and as Iraqis, who were the first to come up with writing, and the first to write a law to govern the aspects of everyday life some 10,000 years ago. I think we are capable of rebuilding, and placing our country back at the level it rightfully deserves. As some guys mentioned above, we may not have enough electrecity, nor a sovern government. but we sure do have brain power. And since I'm speaking to a techincal crowd here, I assume most of you are familiar with "Multi-tasking", while we have ppl. who are capable of rebuilding a government system, law institutes and have the help to rebuild power station and other facilities, we, the "geeks" can at least start to raise our voices in parallel. Raise awarness of what Linux is, and what FLOSS is and most importantly how to benefit from it. So the argument that Iraq needs other stuff that are more important is kinda void, everyone should and must do what he/she can in his or her own field, and our field is Linux/OS. Anotehr point, people ahead of me talked about "Linux is free, the US won't benifit from it!" well, last time I checked, which is not too long ago, RedHat was a US company and the charge money for their solutions, minus Fedora. IBM, HP, Dell and other manfacturers make the hardware that Linux runs on it and it does cost money. I see the benefits for those companies just as good as the benefit of Microsoft and their technologies to the US. So that's another point that's void. Regarding Arabization, the majority of Iraqis are able to communicate in English as teh Iraqi education system teachs teh English language manditory starting at grade 5. University studies, specially for Engineering and Science are at least 85% English language. here is a report on why we have chosen English language on our Linux group web portal it explains how Arabic langauge, even though it's spoken by the majority of Iraqis, is not really a blocking factor in the way of English only technologies (Given that at least we have a browser that renders Arabic fonts and probably few mail and IM clients that does so too). So language also is not a factor. All in all, Iraq right now is *IS* a brand new harddrive, we have the brian power to run anything on it, and that anything better be Linux :P
anyhoo, I hope I made my points, comments are welcomed.
Nabil. (http://www.iraqilinux.org)
p.s.: I'm an Iraqi Living in canada right now, left Iraq some 3 years ago, and kept close contact with Iraq, so my information is up2date)
Won't somebody please think of the Karma!
...the microsoft regime change... :)
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Great chance for big international companies to outsource to Iraq, which can easily underbid India with prices as low as $0.30/hr.
Huh? There aren't any non-American Linux distros? What's this I keep hearing about Mandrake and Red Flag Linux? And I don't know HOW you'd characterize what country a distro like Debian is "from".
Watch out before Apple moves in undetected and it becomes iRaq.
// ville
Something that many people might not understand is that Israel working more and more towards linux, also means that that same works benefits arab users of open source. The two languages are pracically identical in terms of the problems presented in linux.
*) i18n
*) Unicode/UTF-8
*) Descent font rendering of the wierd charecters
*) RTL Text support!!!
*) Consolse support
*) Weird hebrew & arabic encoding support in web browsers/email clients
*) Support for propriatery for the (horrible) Windows type hebrew, and the (non-exsistent, beyond what unix provides) Mac type hebrew.
fags and muslims are evil! avoid them! they are the tools of satan! do not trust them!
There are many 'Blogs' by actual Iraqis. Check out this one by a particularly brilliant and inspiring Iraqi named Alaa: (in English)
http://messopotamian.blogspot.com/
I'm sure the US government will grant Microsoft a no-bid contract like they did some other company. . . . . except this time no one will be surprised when the US is overcharged.
Come on people - mod this up: I had to dig hard to find the only post in here from someone who _really_ knows what they're talking about.
Open Source should have no problem breaking into the market in Iraq... Microsoft's Iraqi representative was captured last Sunday by US Troops. It was all over the news. Anyone else see it??
AFAIK, the contracts awarded to BecTel(sp?) and Halliburton so far are 'cost plus' meaning that the companies will get reimbursed FULLY for all expenditures like software, plus a markup. They have nothing to gain, and all to lose by implementing OSS in Iraq under those conditions, charging an extra 10% on a Windows liscense puts $30 into the contractor's hands, while 10% of $0 is still $0.
Also, I'd be thinking of internationalization in the current Linux offerings, I'm not welll versed, but how is Arabic language support these days? How well does it compare to Windows or Mac OS X?
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
This is the article they wrote and submitted to Linux Journal:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6992
What do you guys think stuff like water and electricity is managed by. Yep, computers. And what do those computers run? Beats me, but I'd sure like to give open source at least a chance here. All those water pumps, electrical power stations, sewage sumps, etc can be managed by open source. Most infrastructure is managed by computer. Anyone bidding on this would most likely win as there is no way to beat free. That is, unless the US writes the contract requests in such a way as to exclude open source.
Umm, I think we should let the Iraqis decide what they want to do when it comes to software/hardware. And I imagine they're already running plenty of Windows boxes in those new Internet cafes popping up over there, just like anywhere else. I think you'll have more success with China, which seems to be trying to become the new Microsoft by defining incompatible standards for everything.
The 2.6.0 kernel is out (within the last 20 or 30 minutes). Go grab it here
Iraq has suffered mightily from ecological disaster during the regime of Saddam Hussein and in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War, Gulf War I, and Gulf War II. However, it was once the garden spot of the Middle East, and there is work already underway in restoring ecosystems in the Tigris/Euphrates River Basin.
Yes, there are a lot more pressing needs for the Iraqi people as a whole. But F/OSS is certainly better for them, as a developing nation, than bondage to Microsoft which is no doubt in Bill Gates' plans.
There's an old Union organizing song which has a line that says "we need bread and roses too." Iraq needs all the things people are saying they need in this thread. But they also need access to technology, both for practical and not-so-practical reasons. A developing nation needs bread, but that doesn't mean roses are out of the question until the bread situation is dealt with. We could do worse than to encourage F/OSS in Iraq. Certainly the Bush Administration, Halliburton and their buddies at Microsoft are hard at work encouraging other things to base Iraq's computer infrastructure on.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Almost everyone is aware of this, and it is that very fact that makes it so silly that Linux is considered a Munition and on the ban list.
Help fight continental drift.
Download the thing and truck it in via turkey.
What do you need the USA for?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
ok so it's probably not _really_ stable.
but anyways 2.6.0 is released so go leech it you filthy leech.
Israel just picked up linux for language support reasons... does Windows/Office support Arabic well? If not, I'm assuming Linux would, and therefore would have a leg to stand on at least.
I'm a native arabic speaker and avid Linux user. Linux's support for Arabic is dismal at best. Besides only a small amount of translations having been done, the Arabic character set is poorly supported (at least as of redhat 8).
The problem stems from the fact that Arabic, as a written language, is written in a flowing script - much like "cursive" english. Unlike cursive english however, there is no "plain text" counterpart in which the letters are seperated. Therein lies the problem. All the menus and documentation for Linux that I've seen in arabic is written such that each letter is seperate from the others, which is entirely unreadable.
c a n y o u r e a d t h i s s e n t e n c e m a y b e y o u c a n b u t i t i s v e r y d i f f i c u l t
This is the best comparison I can think of using english. As you can see, it is entirely unusable and would make for a very unpleasant computing experience.
If anyone has any insight on how to get decent Arabic support under Linux, please let me know!
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
As mentioned in the Linux Journal article, but oddly not in the Slashdot intro is this letter. Helping Iraqi citizens adopt Linux over the products of Bush's friend Gates is illegal and would be a good way to wind up in jail for promoting terrorism. The purpose of invading Iraq is to steal oil and make money for Bush's cronies, not help the people of Iraq. The chances of the Bush administration changing the law to subvert this purpose is nil. Sorry.
does Windows/Office support Arabic well?
After turning my head upside down watching a Saudi enter information in RTL in Word, in Arabic, faster than I could in English, I'd say that's a definate yes.
This is rather ironic, given the story I remember hearing during the first Iraq war. Customer support at the Santa Cruz Operation, which in those days was in the business of selling a version of UNIX rather than FUD, got a call from Iraq. It turned out to be from a soldier in a tank (yes, tanks ran UNIX!) calling on a satellite phone. They downloaded a patch and solved his problem.
Of course, if it had been open-source, he could have fixed the problem himself. I sure wouldn't want to be caught in a tank with a malfunctioning computer without source! :)
/. should send in its forces to bust into a few homes to take their un-Linuxian operating systems and make sure they understand the virtues of an open-source society.
/.
I mean, that sort of think is working well for the Bush administration, isn't it?
No?
Jeez.
I need to read more news and less
Actually, there was a big congressional battle in the US about whether the reconstruction money show be a grant or loan. Congressional Democrats and some moderate Republicans wanted the majority of the money to be in the form of loans, which would need to be paid back. The Bush administration wanted the money to be grants since they were asking other countries to forgive debt, it would be a little nonsensical to make the US money loans. (Even if the other countries loaned it to a fallen dictator) The point was that it wouldn't be kosher to ask others to do something that the US wasn't willing to do. Obviously oil exports would be one way for Iraq to pay of those loans. Now the France and Germany are saying that they are willing to forgive debt, I'm willing to bet that Bush may let them bid on some of these contracts. Basically, he used the capture of Saddam and the contract bids to leverage the forgiveness of Iraqi debt. That's how it looks to me anyways.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
It's because Iraq is controlled by a terrorist, dictatorial, abusive government. Oh wait...
"I think this line is mostly filler"
....I hope that windows makes major inroads to the developing Iraq. If the country gets built upon O/S, there is no money to be made for the US. Whereas, micro$oft with their crappy OS will open a boatload of IT spending in Iraq as well as in any other country. Under the circumstances of IT job/spending shortage in the US, I would welcome any IT investment money flowing into the US, even though I would not touch a windows server with a 10 feet pole.
/. is from the US and they could not care any about what I say, but in the same train of thought I really could not care about others where highly skilled people are going unemployed in my immediate vicinity.
... if one says he/she is not selfish, is the biggest liar.
I know not all the people reading
Am I selfish ? Heck yes
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Hey, pal. We didn't send our soldiers off to get killed for cell phones and railways either.
Or at least we better fucking not have sent them over for cell phones and railways, or to pour money into Halliburton's coffers. But that's what I see them doing, and I'm more than a little bit pissed about it.
The enemies of Democracy are
Remember, Israel is a Jewish state and the Jewish homeland, but has an Arab minority that is 20% of the population. While the government caters to its Jewish majority, there are Arab MPs and Arabs in various positions of local governments.
Even if Israel doesn't officially care about Arabic support, there are many members of the Israeli population (what's left of the Left, Labor has been collapsing faster than the Democrats have in the states) that would love to have support for Arabic in their chosen platform.
Remember, one of the promises of Oslo/Middle East peace process for a regional peace process, where Israel could export it's technology and agricultural goods and import oil from the region.
How nice would it be if programmers in Iraq AND Israel were working on Arabic support in Free Software/Open Source projects? The middle east has 1 democracy, in 7 months, it's supposed to have 2. If the "Palestinians" ever get their act together, there could be a third. Those countries would conceivably stop focusing on holy war and instead focus on commerce, consumerism, and all the lovely western "values" that result in a desire for peace and prosperity.
Besides, if Israel starts adopting Linux/OSS programs regularly, they might want to share documents with the new fellow-democracy a few hundred miles away... assuming that post-Saddam Iraq focuses more on commerce and less on "death to Jews"/"death to Zionists"/"death to Americans".
Alex
So, who wants to translated Tux Paint for me? ;^)
mod parent up. /bots need to see the facts about linux. its not the best it can be at everthing. its incredibly english-centric at this point. ms has made great strides in this area, why can't we?
..true liberation.
The very public rantings of those that would have the US leave Iraq?
Spoken like someone who didn't come in first.
"There are no regimented standards or massive expenditure in a particular monopoly's software'."
.net, Internet Explorer only mess?
Are you brain dead? Iraq's computer infrastructure is being built by the US Government and its contractors. This is same US Government where the biggest donor to both sides in important election is Microsoft. The US Government that standardizes on Microsoft products anywhere it can unless it just has to do otherwise. Do you really think that Iraq won't be turned into one big, nasty, Active-Directory,
Iraq is now a blank, unformatted hard disk
Don't you mean, "Iraq is now a blank, unformatted hard disk whose heads have crashed."?
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Yep, it is a great idea to spend over 100 billion dollars on a war so that a US corporation gets a contract worth a tenth of that. Makes perfect sense.
Where did that 100 billion come from?
Where did the contracts and that 100 billion go?
The enemies of Democracy are
You must be kidding. Iraq is the cradle of civilization. It has a long and rich history and many different and complex cultural/religious/ethnic/political strains going. It is not ripe for the uploading of whatever we might wish to see there. It is not ours to mold however we please. Most of all we should not assume that it is in large part pliable and able to be molded.
As much as I would like to see OS spread far and wide comments like the above are VERY presumptious and ugly American.
Two people working on a common goal constitutes a pair, or duo. A group would be, at the minimum, 3 people. Claiming otherwise would be akin to me claiming that having sex with my wife actually constituted having group sex.
Sure the Arabs (technically just Arab speaking) don't like to see the home team lose - what's so shockingly alien about that? But at the same they were also happy to be rid of him. Everyone knew what a low life he was.
And yeah you can remind everyone that they're "just as smart as we are" - that's why we're living in prosperous Western democracies while the Middle Eastern countries are all poverty stricken (well most of them), rights abusing hell holes.
But does anyone remember when 2.4.0 was released? I'm not going to go looking for quotes, but it basically ended up with a defeated Linus saying "here it is, oh well"... there is SO much more confidence in this release, its unbelievable.
The 2.6 era is the one where we're going to say that it really took over. Everyone is quite pleased, which isn't the case when 2.4.0 hit the streets. It won't take 9 or 10 releases for 2.6 to gain acceptance. We're much closer.
Good job to the lunix kernal team! :)
Berto
If France and Germany had had their way, there wouldn't be ANY contracts to award in Iraq, so I don't know why they think they are entitled to some now.
Entitlement, Shmentitlement, I don't care if Germany lands all the contracts -- if they can do the best job for the bid price. This stuff is being done with public funding -- want that money used efficiently? Then no-bid contracts aren't the way to do it, and logically, by extension, you want the widest competition for. Including foreign firms.
Of course, if this was really about economic stimulus package for our domestic defense sector... well then, why didn't we just say so when we were planning the whole thing?
Tweet, tweet.
... are such diverse elements as:
a stable government
food
running water
shelter
an open source OS
red uniforms
fanatical devotion to the pope
fear
surprise
that is all.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
The astounding thing about the subject line is that this is *exactly* what actually happened.
... ahhh ... flow into a sandpit, IIRC.
Holy shit, nice one.
why the hell are my taxes flowing into that sandpit as fast as they get taken out of my pocket?
Investment, on a kinda global scale. The US needs oil more than anyone else. The Arab world has it. The problem with the Arab world is that the US doesn't control it, and therefore they can do more or less what the fuck they like with the price of oil. And frequently do, making the US their bitches.
Under the circumstances a hundred billion, or two, has got to be a good way to spend some cash.
Your cash, to be exact. The money you could have spent. The resources which could have been under your control, and which could have gone towards whatever it is that you wanted to do with it. Except that it was extracted at a federal level to
Do have fun.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
If (somehow) MS is the best and easiest choice for them to get back on their feet then so be it. The sooner the better for those people.
How about shutting up for a moment (unless you live in Iraq, that is) and letting them decide that for themselves?
If the future Iraqi government is capble of rational decisions (without being bribed or threatened) I think F/OSS stands a good chance of being widely used.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
We're bombing them for economic reasons, not to create the perfect free society. What are you, a *turrurist*?
For what it's worth, there's a growing body of people that think that reading the UK daily paper "The Sun" should disqualify you from voting on the grounds of diminished responsibility. This is the paper whose unique selling point for 35 years has been the tits on Page 3 for any US readers who haven't been polluted by it.
Is anyone else afraid Katz is back and that we're in for a whole string of post-liberation Iraq stories?
<shudder>
Yeah, actually sorry to burst your bubble but it bothers me that you would even think about these things. Venezuela, and particularly Nth. Korea suffer from dictatorships right no, not to mention practically all of Africa has been completely ravaged. Where are you for these people?
Bush senior armed and empowered Saddam to destroy to use him as a puppet to manipulate Iraqi oil prices as needs be, and also to control the channels of Opium from Afghanistan, at the expense of millions, it's not your place to even think of Iraq. If they want another dictator themselves it would be better, as long as he wasn't again armed by America, so Iraq can finally have self determination.
How they choose to rebuild is there business. If they decide they would first like to repair the mosques before the hospitals, that's theie business not Bush's or some big American engineering or telecoms company. Open your eyes!
I wrote the article in LinuxJournal on the Iraqi LUG. I thought I could clarify a few things.
First of all, of course Iraq needs a good and independent government, security, better water supply, a working economy, better healthcare, etc. And of course those have higher priority than software. But it also needs so many other things. I live in Iraq and have for most of the time since the war, I speak to Iraqis every day who are quite eloquent about their needs. One of the needs that many Iraqis have is to catch up on the decades of progress that has occurred in the rest of the world.
There are many, many Iraqis who are well-educated, ambitious, middle-class (by Iraqi standards), whose NUMBER ONE desire is to develop their education and understanding of the world's progress. They are outraged at the suggestion that nobody should help them until there is a free government, clean water, reliable power, etc. They want to catch up and quick.
Linux is just one of the things that these people are asking for. Electrical engineers want books and information about progress in their field. So do doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc. I'm working with a group of Iraqi artists (www.iraqartists.org) whose number one need right now is to know what has happened in the art world in the past few decades. I know of similar efforts among engineers, academics, physicians, attorneys, etc.
I don't know how I can, personally, bring Iraqis democracy, sanitation, power. But I do know that, without much effort, I can give them Linux distributions and a few bucks and a few books. I know that I can, personally, put them in touch with artists.
If you saw the look of unimaginable joy on the faces of the Linux geeks in Baghdad when I told them that I'd try to get some folks outside of Iraq to help them, I don't think you'd argue that we should put this project aside until every other problem is solved.
If you are in a position to transform Iraq into a democracy, or bring it power, or security, than by all means, do those things. But most of us can't do any of that. But we can send some URLs of useful information, or just an encouraging email, we can ship books and magazines about Linux, we can ship some CDs, and we can send them money. It will make life better for some Iraqis and has the potential of helping to ensure that Iraq's new government will be more open-source friendly. And, I believe strongly, open source knowledge and open source friendly laws will make Iraq a more successful country.
Also: to those who think every penny (dinar) spent in Iraq is controlled by the US and M$, you are mistaken. Of course, the US has very publicly shown that it intends most of the big contracts to go to US companies. But those are US construction companies, for the most part, who will build bridges, roads, schools, telecom centers, hospitals, etc. They are not software companies. Most of the actual work will be done by Iraqi subcontractors, who are free to use whatever OS they choose. Also, billions more will be spent by Iraqi government ministries who are not so directly controlled that they can't choose whatever OS they prefer.
And the Iraqi laws are being written by Americans AND Iraqis. The Americans writing them are career civil servants, many of whom are privately critical of Bush and are not beholden to M$ or any other proprietary solution.
There are certainly many profound problems with the way the US is running Iraq and I report on these all the time on Marketplace (www.marketplace.org), but it is not the complete and total corporatist sell-out that many imagine.
To sum up: if there are ways you can help Iraq that meet their most immediate needs, then do so. If you are someone who can offer Linux support--by offering yourself to be on-call for tech questions, suggesting useful URLs, sending books, CDs, and money, then that would be wonderful.
If you've already decided that the whole thing is a done deal and Bush and corporate America have complete c
"Iraq's 2 person LUG"
And they say there are no pioneers or new frontiers left. Those guys must be real troopers.
Chuck Norris: Socialism == a thousand years of darkness.
So, it does not necessarily forfeit their chance at a stable government, but it does risk forfeiting the open access and open communication needed to maintain a democracy or constitutional federal republic. Lastly, any DRM would create problems of sovereignity if internal government documents were freely available via backdoors and other tricks or where even the very file formats lived and died the marketing whim of a single supplier.
However, it would very much forfeit their chance at an independent IT sector.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I'm waiting for XP SP2 and my free AOL 9.0 Optimizer CD! ;-)
Too bad you couldn't address what he said.
you install any Linux there Cowboy.
"If anyone has any insight on how to get decent Arabic support under Linux, please let me know!"
How? You don't have a mail address...
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1 ...the first battalion of the new Iraqi Army has graduated and is on active duty.
...nearly all of Iraq's 400 courts are functioning.
...the Iraqi judiciary is fully independent.
...on Monday, October 6 power generation hit 4,518 megawatts - exceeding
...all 22 universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges are
...95 percent of all pre-war bank customers have service and first-time
...Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1 over 60 000 Iraqis now provide security to their fellow citizens.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1
the pre-war average
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1
open,as are nearly all primary and secondary schools.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...by October 1, Coalition forces had rehabbed over 1,500 schools - 500
more than their target.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...teachers earn from 12 to 25 times their former salaries.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...all 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are open.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...doctors' salaries are at least eight times what they were under
Saddam.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1... pharmaceutical distribution has gone from essentially nothing, to
700 tons in May, and to a current total of 12,000 tons.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...the Coalition has helped administer over 22 million vaccination doses
to Iraq's children.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...a Coalition program has cleared over 14,000 kilometers of Iraq's
27,000 kilometers of weed-choked canals. They now irrigate tens of thousands of
farms. This project has created jobs for more than 100,000 Iraqi men and women.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...we have restored over three-quarters of pre-war telephone services
and over two-thirds of the potable water production.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...the wheels of commerce are turning. From bicycles to satellite dishes
to cars and trucks, businesses are coming to life in all major cities and towns.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1
customers are opening accounts daily.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...the central bank is fully independent.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1... Iraq has one of the world's most growth-oriented investment and banking laws.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1... Iraq has a single, unified currency for the first time in 15 years.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...satellite dishes are legal and one can buy them on what seems like every corner.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...foreign journalists aren't on 10-day visas paying mandatory and extortionate fees to the Ministry of Information for "minders" and other government spies.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1... there is no Ministry of Information.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...there are more than 170 newspapers, printing what they choose to
print.
Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...a nation that
With a few bad sectors ;)
Oh ya. Because rebuilding Iraq will be a lot less work than just buying the fucking oil up front.
That's a good one -- you should make that your sig.
I almost had a serious reply ready, but I realized in the nick of time that IHBT.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
everyone go to Iraq and install Linux (in everything)...
If anybody's still around... can someone explain/give me links about the export restrictions on software with encryption? Why is it illegal to export such code?
See the real results of that survey here.
Not only will you see that the news is generally favorable (and this was before the killing/capture of Saddam and sons), but the result you're quoting is from the question: "Will they [the US] help or hurt Iraq over the next five years?"
And that was a loaded question anyway, as it implies that the US would still be in full-occupation mode five years from now.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Believe it or not, but Linux can not Legally be exported from the US to Iraq.
FreeBSD is compiled in counties without software munitions laws, specifically for reasons like that. Finally, not only is BSD not dead, but may have found an environment to thrive in.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
government's themselves can be unstable without causing amjor problems.
Many European parliament's see several Governments in a year as parliamnetary majorities shift and collapse without a break in the provision of essential services
You are misunderstaing what is meant by "stable government" in this context. Despite the instability of the party in power the goverment that is being controlled is itself quite stable. The rules by which the parties compete are stable; the positions to be filled are stable; the agencies, programs, personel etc. and most importantly the laws are all stable. No matter how sweeping an agenda the new party in power may have, they find themselves the managers of a going concern. THAT is a stable government, it is only the top level (who's power to change the rest is more limited than you imagine) that is "unstable".
In Iraq they don't have any of that, they don't really have anything. They have no existing government for the parties to compete for the control of. They have no rules to govern HOW they compete.
I think your list is OK but I'd put "Agricultural surplus" at the bottom, just above Democracy - at least for the short term. I'd put "rule of law" way at the top, also for the short term. In the medium to long term it is important that the Law that is ruling includes freedoms, accountability, transparency etc. but all those things need to be codified into law and that law has to be adhered to.
C'mon seriously can linux really run in Arabic, displaying arabic characters? And if it can how many programs support this? At least on M$ Unicode is supported fully and basically all commercial applications have different language versions.
OK, so the US gov't has blocked countries that weren't yay-war-let's-join-bush-and-bomb-iraq from contributing to the Iraq rebuild, and you expect them to go for open-source?
In light of everything, I think we can expect the US gov't and allies to flood Iraq with moneymongering corporations in order to gain profit for their own countries for such a "job well done."
..it's better to have an intelligent dictatorship than a stupid democratic government.
the sooner corporations can relocate their tech support operations there.
Can you please send those trainers to the United States when you are done? Our paramilitary police forces could use a good Consitutional refresher; they are loyal to their own institutional power and little else.
==========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Taking control of a country with oil reserves, allowing said reserves to be sold at a lower rate to the US, forcing other countries to compete with a price that is actually just the US selling oil back to itself, lowering the cost of oil from everyone, and allowing the US government to control the price of oil wolrdwide....
Priceless.
There are some things money can't buy. For those, and everything else, there's a US invasion.
Wait.. sorry.. Pre-emptive strike.
I think it is very interesting because the world engineering community has outgrown a local government (US in this case). Like other things the politicians are doing to stop technical progression (anti-support for file sharing, FCC limiting growth of wireless, and omissions from any attempts to grow technology) the irony is the rest of the world will surpass us. Despite what Gates thinks, the rest of the world is ALREADY on Linux and Apache. Just as it is, the Iraqis only use XP because it costs $1. The US laws are a joke because the next big things in technology will not come from the USA due to its patent system, anti-small business tax and legal system, and other anti-innovation laws. Finally Gates and Ballmer will have to start to innovate as well as drop prices unless the US can maintain a legal web keeping its citizens from benefitting from the prosperity of global innovations. The dead wood which is the US government has not realized that their irresponsible laws will be ignored by other countries and only serve to harm America.
:-)
Probably the world model will look alot more like filesharing than the corporate dominated model os the USA. Just as MSFT have made it almost impossible for a software company to compete, the world market will make it impossible to make money purely in software. I don't think any legal stilts can hold this market up. The future market will have to be support and coupling with hard, manufactured products (until 3-D printing/solid modeling gets more mature!
In the USA the software market will be held up by an ever-increasing set of legal requirements. Just take a look at how HIPAA is keeping health insurance companies in business (well eliminated most all small players) though all they are doing is simple forms processing. We are talking something like $2 is spent on healthcare for every $1 elsewhere in the economy.
Is this the kind of system Iraqis want? It's the kind of system their "savior" the USA is probably bringing to them. I suspect the US thinks it can impose a corporate-controlled society (bordering on serfdom as here in the USA) but except by military force the highest benefit/cost solution will succeed. That is, without question, open source.
The US Government is trying to stop the tide - ambitious considering we've only been to the moon once.
Expect Freedom.
As much as I wish for a democratic government in Iraq after the last few oppressive regimes, democracy at this stage can be more harmful than useful.
It has been said "Democracy is like two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner".
Let's look at the facts now:
1. 60% of Iraqis are Shi'a.
2. Shi'a clerics wants an Islamic state, closer to the Iranian style than anything else.
So if we let 'democracy' as it is take place, we're going to have another Iran. The Iraqi people have been indoctrinated by oppressive regimes for more than 30 years, a sudden shift from dictator for Jefforsonian democracy is a grave mistake.
Without an informed public, democracy can be more dangerous than dictatorship.
The best example I can think of comes from my home country: Kuwait. The ruler of Kuwait (The Emir, call him the dictator if you want) formed a suffrage bill back in 1999 that would grant women in Kuwait their right to run for parliment and vote. The bill was passed to the 50-male-only member parliment which is elected by the people (fair elections mostly I must say) and they rejected it by a close marigin. Unfortunately, the Islamists and Tribalists have won many seats in the parliment in the last elections, which make things worse.
In fact, the same parliment which is supposed to defend the civil liberties of the public is the one that formulated bills that call for an implementation of Islamic Shari'a Law and punishments (like Saudi Arabia), the same one that introduced a bill to punish any authors who might critisize Islam in anyway, the same parliment that introduced many medival-type bills.
Thankfully for us, our dictatorship blocked the Islamic Shari's Law and other laws that strip us from any freedom left in our society. So the dictatorship saved us from democracy!.
I know this might sound weird, but in certain societies, democracy can be a very dangerous thing. I don't see how it will be different in Iraq anytime soon.
Rag heads.
for one second that the US Government is going to allow the Iraqis the FREEDOM that Linux permits?
No. Not for one second. They will shove M$ down their throats so they can root every box in the entire country at will from anywhere they want.
Expect to see a BAN on Linux imposed on Iraq, as Linux provides WAY TOO MUCH privacy and security from prying eyes.
Let's get there right away and suggest a law against copyright patents and IP while the slate is clean
A blog I run for the wealth
They will not find the allegedly copied code, but in searching for it they might find a few Saddam-style ratholes with even more unpleasant things in them (or will they find alleged copies of US WMD?)....
Seriously though, Linux and other free or open source software is just the thing to help revive a badly damaged economy. I hope they don't fork the kernel into Shiite and Sunni versions.....
I don't know. They already have lots of killing due to the Shiite/Sunni rift. What if the Shiite's prefer Gnome, and the Sunni's KDE?
As a Halliburton employee, I'm seeing a lot of misinformed opinions being aired here that are no doubt the result of blindly accepting what a group of people with a political agenda are telling them as the truth. If you think that all of the negative publicity regarding our work in Iraq is anything other than people trying to attack Bush and Cheney so that they will benefit in the upcoming election than you're nuts. Of course, this is Slashdot, so who knows...
I've been to Kuwait and Iraq to do some of this work, and if any of y'all think that its some sort of dream assignment than you're wrong. Its such a shit-job I can't imagine any other company wanting to do it. Furthermore, when you hear about a "billion dollars worth of work" being awarded to us, that's just the value of the contract, not our actual profit. The margins are so slim on these jobs it makes me wonder why we're actually trying to do it. We've already had four employees killed over there and numerous others crippled, maimed, burnt or otherwise injured. My guess is because KBR's a construction company and with the downturn in the economy recently and the attention from the asbestos lawsuits (which will take $4 billion off of our bottom line) we're scrambling for anything to make a buck.
I will refer you to our company website where you can read our president and CEO's response to all of the recent allegations of wrong-doing:
http://www.halliburton.com
They'll also be making more television appearances to counter these claims in the near future. Stop believing everything that you read in the papers and try looking at the facts for a change. Between Cheney bringing all of this unwanted attention to us and the class-action lawsuit lawyers who almost toppled our company (KBR filed for bankruptcy yesterday), its amazing that we're actually doing okay.
Yeah, I'd want to be trolling google trying to figure out why my tank wasn't going.....
oh wait i can se you sitting in a tank in the middle of the dessert going through source code, idiot.
Feh, Iraq will go open source for the same reason most other developing countries do - because it's cheaper and will offer them more room to compete with other developers, esp. considering how popular Linux is getting in the Third World.
I'm not looking for world peace. I'm looking for a wedge to break the pan-Arabic nationalism that is the cause of terrorism. A democratic capitalist Bahgdad would likely have much in common with the democratic socialist/capitalist Jerusalem. I don't want world peace, but I see two countries that would have a vested interest in producing an Arabic-friendly open office. If there was collaboration on certain projects, you'd see ties being developed between those countries.
An oil pipeline through Jordan and out Israeli ports hasn't been operational since the Israeli War of Independance, but would potentially be a source of revenue for Jordan, Iraq, and Israel (and maybe a future Palestine, haven't looked at where the pipeline runs).
Mutual economic interests decreases the likelihood of war. I'm not looking for world peace, just something that breaks the garbage in the middle easy, where despotic dictators keep their people in line by blaming everything on "the zionist entity."
Whatever establishes ties between the new Iraqi government and the state of Israel is good for American interests in the region, even if it doesn't create world peace.
Best hope is that a new free Iraq creates an image that freedom is possible and that Israel isn't to blame for all Arab problems... The House of Saud has already decided to institute municipal elections next year, and one of their princes talked about the "chutzpah" (a Yiddish word) of France and Germany wanting reconstruction contracts.
I'm not a pointed headed liberal, but a realist with a belief in real politick that wants to see pan-Arab unity and it's anti-American, anti-Semetic, and anti-Western values crushed.
Alex
You don't think the war was justified, or you are morally opposed to all war, fine. Feel free to disagree, but at least cite some substantive facts rather than just relying on your prejudice against Bush. I don't agree with many of Bush's domestic policies, but I think he was spot on about the character of Saddam. Does the world have the time and resources to do this to every tinhorn crackpot, no. But that doesn't mean that we just throw up our arms and let that kind of behavior run rampant. I suppose you opposed the UN intervention in Kosovo? If so you are at least being logically consistent. If not, you are a flaming hypocite who's hatred for Bush seems to be more important than doing the right thing. Just like the small group of Republicans who were stupid enough to oppose Clinton's involvement in Kosovo, just because they didnt like him.
Furthermore, I have never seen any evidence that the US never sold Saddam mustard gas, sarin, uranium or anything like that, though they did sell him conventional weapons during the Iran Iraq war in the 80s, when he was at war with the religious fundamentalists in Iran (think Bin Laden for those who are too young to remember). And the US certainly wasn't stupid (or greedy) enough to sell him weapons after 1991. All in all I'd say your post is a steaming, emotionally loaded, baseless pile of dung....figuratively speaking.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Hi,
;)
It seems that something is missing here. Did you forgot that IT IS the American Administration who will decide who will take part in the "reconstruction" of Iraq (which they destroy, by the way)?
In terms of computing technologies:
1. SUN is a good provider (USA)
2. IBM is a good provider (USA)
3. Microsoft is a provider (USA)
4. RH is a feeble provider (USA)
What they can supply:
1. Servers, Solaris and StarOffice (don't count with OOo)
2. IBM mainframes, servers and maybe Linux
3. Don't need to say more
4. If they go along with IBM or SUN may have a chance
I'm sorry to say but THAT blank harddisk was already sold...
And it was NOT a blank HD, IT WAS formatted by USArmy
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,
Lopo