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Sri Lanka Declares an Open Source Week
AnuradhaRatnaweera writes "Sri Lankan Government has declared (Google cache) the week starting from the 5th of September as the National Free and Open Source Software Week. The FOSS Community, Government's ICTA and the industry are working together to organize the week's events including the FOSSSL Conference and Asia Open Source Symposium. The week has been selected to end (well, almost) with the Software Freedom Day."
I mean, making what seems like a holiday for open source...next it will become a religion...
Ummm...Oh yeah. Nevermind. Too late.
I, for one, welcome our new Sri Lankan Open Source Celebrating Overlords.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Maybe "AN Open Source Week" in a country where open source has really had an impact on society? I don't know the situation in Sri Lanka very well, but I can well imagine that it's a place that would welcome (cheap and easy to adapt to the local language) open source software over (expensive, and you're dependent on the developer) proprietary software.
Besides, how many other places you know of have an official open-source week, or even day? It's not like this is the 10,000th repitition of an old theme (unlike some other stories we get to see here).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
``Now that Sri Lanka supports open source, 2005 is sure to be the year of the Linux desktop!''
Maybe in Sri Lanka it is. And frankly, it would be a very welcome development. Westerners may be able to pony up two times the price of the hardware just to get MS Windows and MS Office, but I can imagine Sri Lankans cannot. F/OSS can really change the landscape and provide more people with access to computers.
Plus, if somehow the whole country were running Linux, soon the missing applications would have to be developed. You know, the ones that only 5% of the people use, and therefore don't get the mindshare of things like browsers and office suites, but that are nevertheless critical to businesses?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
``thats a really powerful ally to have in the movement.''
Yes, why not? Can you imagine a better argument for the practicality of open source than a whole country running on it? That could shut up the "I would like to use Linux, but it can't do X" crowd simply and effectively.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Sorry for this obvious observation: why would any small country not want to use open source?
:-) make arguments for my standardizing on Windows Desktops is a good idea - but, for developing countries open source IT infrastructure is the best.
The only possible answer would be to be compatible with the world of all-things-Microsoft, but OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, etc. have good compatibility when you need it.
I am very much of a computer nerd so using Windows, Linux, and OS X all on a dayly basis does not bother me, but for 'normal people', multiple learning curves are too big of a hit on productivity.
Start kids off in grade school with a reasonable Linux distro like (for example) Ubuntu with OpenOffice.org (or a lighter weight word processor on limited computers), and save money and build up local infrastructure and capabilities.
For large companies in the US and Europe, I could (if I wanted to, which I don't
No, "America" has something closer to a billion people. The United States of America has about 300 million people.