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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'."
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...
Especially considering the relationship between Microsoft and the NSA.
(Remember the "revealing our source code would threaten National Security" line?)
I would be very surprised if Microsoft lose this one.
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.
Read the Letter Silicon Valley Linux USer Group put together to the DOD.
Unbelievable, but apparently true
Help fight continental drift.
I Agree with you ... ...
We should add that it should be an Iraqui Government, not a USA one
And, about that "unformatted blank disk" thing, i think that they are not. They have an interesting, very strong culture, and that's why they have had terrible governments like Saddam's one, and that's why the USA has attacked 'em, and that's why the Big North Empire has been arround for years trying to take their richness (oil) away, and used more direct tecnics (like war) instead of mind domination like they do in Latin America. They can't conquer them with TV, Drugs and Fast Food, so they had to do it directly, with war.
The Primary reason for which this cultures are the permanent center of conflicts, is that they has a very strong, nationalist, and conservative culture, which is obviously harder to dominate.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Wouldn't the American colonists who would later rebel fit into this category?
No. They were democratic first, rebels later. In fact, the very first "rebellious" acts that were more than mere protest were the democratic consideration and then adoption of the Delcaration of Independance, followed by a war, followed by one bad government, and then finally followed by the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in (IIRC) 1789.
They were armed rebels against a foreign occupier (Great Britain), correct?
Again, no. Most colonists considered themselves "Britains" or "Englishmen" as much or moreso than they considered themselves "Americans."
Or perhaps I'm just a history major who knows nothing about history.
You don't, if you think that gureilla fighters with no political base have ever set up a democratic election. Historically, when no government has been in place and the guerillas win, they resort to rule by the warriors--why do you think that from Japan to Europe, the dominant pre-democratic forms of government were essentially rule by the military?
The original poster wasn't specifying the Open Source issue, so neither did my response.
I'm not a fan of Microsoft, either.
I run Linux AND I don't hate America - that is surely a paradox of some sort. I'm waiting to disappear in a puff of irony.
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
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.
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
Ok, I was a little knee-jerk in my last post, and really did take this post out of context (really badly). That said, Democracy in America did not begin with the revolutionary war. All of the states had legislators who were elected by a segment of the population (usually landed men). Many of these legislators were the Founding Fathers. They weren't the typical "armed rebels", but thoughtful, intellegent people who debated the future of this (the US) country.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
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 fact is we know what the iraqis think because there is an interesting poll made by Oxford Research International that somehow hasn't seem to be too much know in US. Wonder why, had to watch CNN :-)
Some quotes:
"50 percent said the United States will hurt Iraq; only 35.3 percent said the United States would help"
"while 42.3 percent of Iraqis say the best thing that happened to them was the demise of the Saddam regime, 35.1 percent said the worst thing that happened was the war, the bombings, and the defeat of the Iraqi army."
"Asked how much confidence they had in U.S. and British forces in Iraq, 56.6 percent of respondents said they had none at all and 22.2 percent said they didn't have very much confidence, while only 7.6 percent had ``a great deal.''"
Guardian article.
Boston article
"I think this line is mostly filler"
Our rebels were fighting for their colonies that wanted to set up fair governments.
american rebels fought because they were real pissed with english royalty treating them like pieces of sh*t. Calling a government that endorsed slavery "fair" is hardly justified. It took nearly 100 years after that to outlaw slavery and another 100 years after that to give equal rights to the erstwhile slaves. You cannot stand up now and say that those rebels had the most idealistic intentions in mind - its what happened a lot of time after that makes them look good. if you read your history right, these colonists were very greedy. Look at what they did to the red indian tribes!
Their rebels are fighting because they hate us, or they want Saddam back. ie, they want a government based on power back, not one that is benificial for the people
Yes - any one with some fair sense of nationhood and love towards one's country would not like his government becoming a puppet in some moronic country's hands - i.e. a government based on power. Besides, if americans think that what america can conjure up for iraq is more important than what iraqis have in mind, then it makes a point that america is just "democratic" on paper and in reality is as ruthless as the power it replaced in iraq.
And how are you so confident that america is capable of setting up governments benificial for the people? We all have vietnam and banana republics as examples to prove this. You can beat your chest all you want about ww2, but tell you what? it was a while ago.... long long time ago. oh yea - afghanistan, complete with your own version of frakenstein monster, the laden guy.
america making the world a safe place? naah. gorging up oil reserves of the world? thats a no brainer.. yeah!
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.
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.
Tell me, who supplied the chemical weapons's to Iraq that were used to kill those 80,000 Kurd's? Russian? French? Chinese? No. American.
Got something to back that up? According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the chemicals came from "Japan, FR Germany and other unspecified European countries..." It even states that US manufacture of the mustard gas has been ruled out: "The absence in the sample analysed in Sweden and Switzerland of polysulphides and of more than a trace of sulphur indicates that it is not of past US-government manufacture, for all US mustard was made by the Levinstein process from ethylene and mixed sulphur chlorides. That process is also said to have been the one used by the USSR. From similar reasoning, British-made mustard, too, can probably be ruled out, even though substantial stocks were once held at British depots in the Middle East."
Maybe you need to check your facts a bit. Here is the entire report for your reading pleasure.
German chemical companies did a lot of business with Iraq.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
Bing, Bing, Bing, opps, your half right. I was going to say more than 150 years (California), but I thought of the Spanish American War) as a gotcha. One of the conquests of that war, the Phillipies could arguably be called a colony. But if you consider colonization to include "importing" population with an eye on keeping the place then Guam or Puerto Rico.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
....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
no, only the maintainers and a selected few actually have access to the CVS and they don't neccesarily have to commit the patches. However anyone is free to fork and there is no such thing as national secrets or classified.
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...
I agree. But: remember that we put Halliburton Oil in charge of fueling our vehicles over there. Haliburton imported their own men, licensed their own contractors, and it ended up costing us $2.65 per gallon, while the locals (from Kuwait) were willing to deliver it for $1.06.
I guarantee the "computing infrastructure" will be the same type of deal. Remember that article from a few months ago? About how American companies were planning to redo Iraqi cell service in CDMA, when the rest of the world including the surrounding area is all GSM? See, American companies bought in to CDMA, now they want a new market for it. Whispers in a few ears get this added as a nondescript rider to some otherwise benign bill...
Hell of a way to break out of a recession. Whatever happened to ingenuity? Oh that's right, takes too long and makes the millionaires nervous. Guess we'll have to rely on good old American GRAFT.
Vote democrat in 2004. It doesn't even matter who.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
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.
It's really interesting to read that thread, mainly because I learn a lot on the US (more than on Irak or OSS).
When asked "give me an example of American colonial expansion this century", people tell about many places/times around WW2 (around Japan, but you can easily add Italy -still American soldiers not really to protect anymore-, Germany -there nearly are American cities-) but you just forget one of the closest colony: Cuba.
Remember that the US has a military base there ?
Remember that the whole country has been under blocus for years with no reasonnable arguments since the USSR are over.
Remembrer that in Cuba, in this Guantanamo base, the US keep some illegal prisoners from several countries with no judgement, no international justice involved ?
Basically, the self-knowledge of a country and its history by its citizen is the first sign of freedom/assumed democracy. May we wish that to Irak... and the US.
ClaudeBBG
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...).
The "apology" came a century after first occupation. Actually it goes a little further and admits that Hawaii has never been part of the US. But that dosn't stop the US Government pretending it is from day to day. Even though the invasion of Hawaii took place at the time of the Spanish-American war Hawaii was an independent constitution Monarcy.
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.
The claiming of Alaska and Hawaii as US states happened after 1946. The plebcite referendums carried out are invalid since a required option was omitted from the ballot. In the case of Hawaii things are also invalid because the rules used were intended for "territories" which had never been self governing.