Slashdot Mirror
UN Supports OSS/Free Software In Developing World
headisdead writes "This BBC report has details of the IOSN's (International Open Source Network) role in yesterday's Software Freedom Day. As the article rightly points out, the economic potential of these new markets for large tech corporations like MS makes this a real battle in the making. Question is, can Free Software really stem the tide when other sustainal development projects are struggling so much?"
When you say "old PCs", do you mean "but new enough to have CD burners"? Otherwise it's a question of whether the people who supply the PCs also supply an install disc (or, perhaps more to the point, what they install before supplying). I wouldn't want to run XP on an old PC either, especially as most people don't have anywhere near as much RAM as they should.
I apologise to our Danish friends for Slashdotting their server, but I just had to share this gallery from the Copenhagen event (It was a world-wide day, not just Asia). Check the penguin and devil suits :)
They write in the SFD wiki:
Update: Our Local event was a huge success!
We handed out 300 CD's in little less than an hour.... We also had 500 balloons promoting the day, and we gave out balloons to every stroller, child and adult who wanted one - in fact people came over to our booth asking for free balloons....
The balloons were red with white text, saying Software Freedom Day 2004 on the front and having penguin footprints on the back.
We had help from about 25 volunteers, a large Tux, a little Tux and a daemon
All the volunteers were wearing red t-shirts with white text, saying Software Freedom Day 2004 on the front and "Free Software er foran" at the back. The text in Danish has two meanings, first "Free Software is at the frontier" (we are ahead), second - you could get your free copy of the CDs, at the front of the person wearing the t-shirt....
It was very fun - and its not the last time we are willing to do this!
The Boston team handed out 450 CD packs in the park, in Goa, India 200 people got together to celebrate, etc. (reports are still coming in)
They want to make sure that more people are ingrained with the "need" for Windows, so that they will keep using it. Almost like a drug addiction. So they came out with Windows XP Starter Edition, in an effort to target the low end markets. However, as a Google News Search shows, XP Starter Edition is a bust... Sure, they are selling it "cheap", but honestly, according to reviews of features, it's worse than crippled shareware that is given away for free.
;)
Overall, I'm happy that people in those countries will not be starting life addicted to the drug Microsoft sells, and start with a clean slate. And when 2 billion users in China are using Linux, maybe we'll get more games that run under it.
@Whee
So the US will simply, in the long term, block or veto stuff like this; at the behest of its own software industry. It also means that the MS and buddies will pony up a little bit of cash to lobby UN people. And if you're really cynical, then you could argue that this is a veiled attempt by the UN to start taxing an industry for its money: 'give us so many lobby dollars or we will promote free software in the developing world.' Not unlike the scare tactics used by some of the (local/national) governments of this world recently.
We had a nice time promoting the localized GNU/Linux (site not upto date with the work) on the Free Software Day. The response was phenominal, and we can see more and more people and commercial organizations are coming forward to help us take the message across.
And we make it clear that FOSS is better not because of the cost, but because of the flexibility, freedom and control that comes with it, and the mindset change from dependence to independence.
Frederick Noronha in Goa writes:
On August 28, 2004 -- the last Saturday in the month -- some 200 students gathered to mark Software Freedom Day at the Rayeshwar Institute of Technology, in Goa.
This three-years young engineering college is seated atop a hilltop at the seemingly remote village of Shiroda, about 40 kilometres from Goa's state-capital Panaji (also called Panjim). Goa has 1.4 million inhabitants, and is a former Portuguese colony along the Indian west coast.
...
Among the speakers was former Goa education minister Subhash Shirodkar, who said: "The idea of freedom needs to be strong in this country of Mahatma Gandhi. I would never tolerate the clutches of bondage -- whether it is economic or educational,"
I'm not sure how the UN was dragged into this. I'm pretty sure you aren't going to ask whether the UN is supporting specific pharmaceutical companies or mainstream medicine over alternative cures when it goes on a vaccination drive in Africa. Mind you, I'm pretty sure they did have arguments over producing generic HIV drugs in developing countries.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Until MS lobbied their government for support of their intellectual property at which point everyone is forced to stop using their computers or forced to pay MS for the privelege of using their computers.
Considering this tactic is already being used in southeast asia by Microsoft as a ploy to get users hooked and then jack up the price, I'd rather these impoverished regions use a Free free system than a proprietary-but-pirated free system and they hopefully agree.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world. It's just a lie you've got to rise above. - John Mayer
The delegate from the government of Mongolia who attended the Free and Open Source Software Asia Pacific (FOSSAP) consultation in February had an interesting tale to relate.
In order to expand the reach of their ICT in schools program some years ago, they put FOSS on 20% of the PCs they installed in the schools there. Microsoft had refused to give them a discount, so to have full reach, they had to resort to this.
Their findings? No surprised to anyone who's used FOSS for a while - kids adapted equally quickly to both FOSS and proprietary software (Windows). For ICT education purposes, there was no drawback with using FOSS.
Other countries, such as Thailand with their successful Schoolnet program, have had the same results.
You can find references to Mongolia's report in the FOSSAP final report.
Yep. The IOSN team has spent the better part of last week contacting reporters, correcting news stories and still, this story won't die. They contacted over 60 news agencies last week. BBC's original version was the standard mistake: "UN organizes software freedom day". Fortunately, BBC is responsive and by the time Slashdot got to it, it's the corrected version. Still, the UN angle is too strong for any of the news agencies to resist.
Sorry Henrik. They're doing the best they can but it's crazy how this story keeps spreading.
as part of the trade agreement to ensure that the sri lankan garment industry gets a good deal in the multi-fiber agreement, SLGOV signed an IP protection treaty with the US.
a friend of my father's when to meet one fo the signers of both 'agreements' and asked "you signed that agreement to save the garment industry, and did you ever stop to think what would happen to the village/smalltown kid who wants to buy a bootleg copy of windows for 100rs (1usd), do you want him to have to pay 100USD for it??"
the response was "i didn't know about that side of it"
morons
anyway as a celebration for FSD (free software day) we didn't do JACK SHIT as far as i know (despite the post on it stating that something was supposed to happen). so in order to maintain the theme, i went and shoplifted myself a free beer
Suchetha
(and i know i know, they should be getting free linux cd's instead of bootlegging windows, but frell it.. they wanna play games, they DON'T want to spend time compiling kernels, they barely speak ENGLISH for fuck's sake)
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
You must have been reading some of those M$ "Get the Facts" publications to think that free software ever costs more than Microsoft based junk. I can't think of anyplace that's true.
Many nations cannot (or do not care enough to) provide their populations with safe drinking water, minimal health care, and sufficient caloric intake. Rather than conjuring visions of besting Microsoft in these markets, the F/OSS community would be of better service if it conjured ways to use its products to enable these nations to tackle those more pressing problems.
Free software provides tools for people to solve their own problems and does so with much leaner hardware. Once a free driver for a piece of hardware is made, that hardware is never obsoleted by an OS version change. Free compilers for working hardware are useful in providing food, water and health care. From administration and records keeping to equipment automation, free software can do anything and more than Microsoft can, but better and cheaper. That's why the UN is starting to push it over commercial software.
Free software use may be another area, like cell phones instead of POTS, where developing markets are more efficient than developed ones.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Salve, ;)
Open Source for the (developing) world would be good. One idee of mine is to broadcast a distribution via the Air (www.drm.org) or Satellite. Digital Radio Mondal allows to stream 16-24 kBit/s and Reciever should get RS232 or IrDA interfaces to receive Data like Programm infos, weather maps or vocabulary for languages.
-IMHO it would be nice to broadcaste once a year a selection of Debian all over the world, and security updates from time to time.
-A free DVB-S broadcast is IMHO realy no problem (e.g. every Sundy mornig 3:00h to 7:00h a.m.) Encrypted confing files and data could refinanciate such a broadcast.
-A sw drm broadcast would be more expensive and would take more time, some weeks/month to broadcast the Debian selection - but it could be an alternative beside burning CDs and sending them with snail-mail all over the world.
-Such a broadcastsystem would it make possible to install new software on manless wetherstations, "surface marker buoys" - scientists would have only to pay for ther config-files and own scripts and programs.
-Beside open source Software the Broacast should include documentations, tutorials, important webpages, mailing-lists, newsgroups and even radio shows about open software
What do you think about this?
rob
I wish I had a mod point for you. I had pretty much the same experience with my now-16-year-old daughter about three years ago. At that time, I was trying out Red Hat on a dual-boot system. The kids' computer, on Win98, wasn't working because of a hard drive problem I hadn't fixed yet.
So the kid needs to use the computer to look up something on the net for school. I let her sit down at my computer. She finds the Mozilla icon on the desktop, and off she goes. Looks up what she needs, and then -- as she'll do -- visits some other web sites she likes, checks Yahoo mail, etc.
Then it's time to write her report. She finds the Open Office icon, clicks on it, writes the report and prints it out with no comment except that this is a different word processor than the one she has on her computer. But she was able to figure out how to use it because she had used word processors before.
The only time I had to intervene was to find her a place on the hard drive to save her file (which I would have had to do in Windows as well). And the whole time, she never had any inkling that she wasn't in Windows.
All three kids have been using Linux since shortly after that, and they love it.
Two of my kids are in the same age group. Each has computer in their room. I installed Mandrake (first 9.1, then 10.0) on it about 9 months ago. They use it for homework, Neopets, games, playing MP3, and chatting with friends (using GAIM). I even introduced them to FreeCiv the other day and they played it for a while (and understood what a server and a client is, ...etc).
Homework and important stuff is stored on a server and directories are shared via NFS.
They complain every now and then that such and such site does not work (Shockwave or MS specific ActiveX perhaps), but they can do most of the Windows stuff on it.
The computers are second hand Pentium II bought on the cheap.
I don't have to deal with spyware, viruses, or spend big money on games, software, ...etc.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
We tried to give publicity as much as possible. But don't forget that we are just a group of individuals and not even a registered organization, and we don't have any budgets for a huge marketing campaign. And we don't want to do it either. We have been helping people on our mailing lists and other events without making much of a noice like many others do. Please check our site for more details.
You have been mistaken. This is not that. Anyone can join LKLUG (just subscribing to the mailing list would do). We don't have those hard and fast `rules and regulations' etc. Specifically, I don't have a digree either. ;-)
Please spend a bit of time on our mailing lists and the web site to see if there is any internal politics or beurocracies in our group. Hope you will find enough to change your mind.
We have created a nice Sinhala Linux interface. And we did it by our own interest. All of us are working for different organizations, and we found time in the night and weekends to do this.
Sorry that we missed you. If you had come, you will be happy to know that there are many goodies happenning in this little paradice. Anyway, please do communicate, and let's work together.
I bought a used laptop with a K6/333 and 64MB of RAM. I spent an extra $40 at CompUsa for a 128MB stick to bump it to 192MB. That little laptop runs Debian/unstable with KDE 3.3 just fine, thanks.
By what arbitrary means did you pick P2/64MB? Why not P1/32MB, or 486/4MB? The Gnome and KDE folks are developing systems that run well on machines made within the last 5 years, and given that commodity PCs aren't expected to last forever, I think that's a perfectly reasonable standard on their part.
You can keep your toy systems running with Slackware or a downscaled Gentoo system if you want to, or you can pay $100 to buy a more recent system and get to play with the current set of available software. Where's the problem?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?