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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'."
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.
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
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!
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
I'm gonna call you on that. I don't believe MS is a huge contributor of the Bush campaign, and I don't believe that by using Microsoft software, Iraq forfeits their chance at a stable government.
This seems to be more corporate-demonizing hogwash that gets modded up here at /. Honestly, even if MS did make unusually large contributions to the Bush campaign, I fail (in my shallow understanding of politics) to see how that translates to an unstable government in Iraq. Please enlighten me.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
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.
strong independent intitutions and the rule of law might be what you're looking for.
the point is that a hell of a lot of things are needed to make what we'd view as a decent society.
A starting list for mine would be (in rough order of importance):
Once you have all those then free markets can flourish and people can buy what they want.
But careful who you say that to.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
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)...
This seems to be more corporate-demonizing hogwash that gets modded up here at /. Honestly, even if MS did make unusually large contributions to the Bush campaign, I fail (in my shallow understanding of politics) to see how that translates to an unstable government in Iraq. Please enlighten me.
Directly, you are correct--it does not translate to an unstable government. Indirectly, it could give Microsoft an edge on the building of the technology/information infrastructure. It would be yet another big American corporation sinking its meathooks into the money pot that is being used to rebuild Iraq, leaving the Iraqi brain pool out of the picture.
Consider this example. American firms estimated that it would take many months and millions of dollars to rebuild Iraqi cement factories, which are crucial to the rebuilding effort. Intrepid Iraqis did it in a few months for less than $100k. How? They didn't set lofty goals for state-of-the-art equipment and facilities. They cannibalized parts from remaining production lines to get at at least one production facility operating. This facility can, in turn, generate revenue through the sale of cement for use in the reconstruction (as opposed to expensive imports) and put that revenue into the factory and workers' salaries.
Likewise, why should we as taxpayers spend millions of dollars to import the labor and material into Iraq when there exists local talent to do the same job? If they're not as skilled, fine. TRAIN them to do the job, don't do it for them. Teach a man to fish and all that...
In short--use local resources (material and talent) to do the work as much as possible, and bring in outside talent and material only if needed. Iraq is NOT a feeding frenzy for big corporations looking to get a big government check (even if it looks like it is turning into that); the money should be a resource to help the Iraqi people rebuild their own country.
As a taxpayer, I'd much prefer to see my tax dollars spent to help the IRAQIS rebuild Iraq, not Halliburton, Microsoft, etc. as nauseum.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
For the most part, they aren't attacking us. The attacks are coming from a minority of Saddam loyalists or foreign Islamic terrorists.
You've been watching too much Fox news. There are no Saddam loyalists. The freedom fighters are just that - fighting for control of their own country. You can't dismiss as everyone who is anti-US as an Islamic terrorist, because you'd be branding practically the rest of the world as Islamic terrorists. And remember: one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.
"Given that the US is already excluding foreign nations from lucrative rebuilding contracts in Iraq,"
Ah, the hazards of only getting your news from Slashdot. The DoD more or less backpedalled on that mere hours after that announcement (by putting the bidding on hold for "further review"), and there's been enough of a reverse on that policy that France and Germany are forgiving huge chunks of the Iraqi debt. Most of the media (including the ones who would be the last to believe the administration could be this shrewd or subtle) now seem to believe that the whole thing was a staged event to give James Baker a carrot to offer to the Paris Club, getting a promise to reduce Iraq's debt by giving them back something they never really lost to begin with.
You really should get out of the house every once in a while.