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Iraq's Open Source Possibilities

Posted by simoniker on from the penguins-of-mass-enlightenment dept.

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'."

4 of 700 comments (clear)

  1. Halliburton Linux 1.0 by trouser · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  2. The Iraqi people themselves ARE telling us by chrisbord · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/

    1. Re:The Iraqi people themselves ARE telling us by WildBeast · · Score: 5, Informative

      Or you can check it this one, who actually represents what most of the Iraqis feel.

      http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

      And this one by the first Iraqi blogger

      http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/

  3. Re:As much as I would like to see... by Guppy06 · · Score: 4, Informative

    "America has not "conlonized" a country we defeated in war."

    If you don't want to consider the various possessions that fell into our lap after the Spanish-American War (Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, etc.), there's still the whole "northern half of Mexico" bit.

    "I'll accept you as knowlegable about (American) history if you can give me an example of American "colonial expansion", due to war. I can think of one, but it was more than a hundred years ago."

    I'm sure some people living on Okinawa feel as if they were "colonized" after an American victory. There's also the interesting fact that Japan is the only country in the world to have a foreign military base in its capital (we might not "take over," but we certainly don't leave)

    We took the Panama Canal Zone from Panama a few seconds after we "liberated" Panama from Colombia. Sure, that was a while ago, but we only just gave it back. There's also the coup staged in Hawaii, which we only recently apologized for (a little late, I would say...). If you're willing to count covert wars, Iran can fit into that category as well.

    Of course, these can be written off as "little" issues, since most of our expansion was during the Nineteenth Century. But did we stop because we're now nice guys, or simply because we're big enough? From the beginning of the Twentieth Century to July 4, 1946, from St. Thomas to Luzon the sun did not set in the United States. And even today it's still damn close.