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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!
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.
Spyware Cookies, Banners, Popups, and Porn, oh wait thats the United States
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.
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.
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
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.
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
.
-- 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
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.
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!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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)...
[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.
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
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!
Watch out before Apple moves in undetected and it becomes iRaq.
// ville
You obviously never lived in a country who got occupied did you? Oh the ignorance. You think money is gonna take away the fact that they're occupied?
You should've seen those anti-occupation demonstrators getting shot at like dogs. You do watch the news don't you?
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/
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.
....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