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."

Comments

Link City

[kevin_conaway]

See here for why its a bad (and extremely annoying) idea to make every other word in the summary a link.

wow.. editors.. really..

[peculiarmethod]

AN Open Source Week. Seriously.. are we outsourcing editorial work to India, too?

Re:wow.. editors.. really..

[RAMMS EIN]

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).

Re:wow.. editors.. really..

[Coneasfast]

are we outsourcing editorial work to India, too?

uh, since when is Sri Lanka in India

they are 2 seperate countries,
know your geography, read a book.

In other news

[Timesprout]

Slashdot announces a gramer/spelink wek

FOSS Week

[lakiolen]

I suppose this is to lure people away from warez?

This sounds like terrorism.

[Seumas]

If they celebrate open source and free software, they're essentially attacking proprietary and costly software. And if you're not paying for software, you're hurting American business. And if you are hurting American business, you're a terrorist.

Time to attack that piddly nation and that fat lazy western science fiction author!

Wow!

[Musteval]

Now that Sri Lanka supports open source, 2005 is sure to be the year of the Linux desktop!

Re:Wow!

[RAMMS EIN]

``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?

Is this really a good idea?

[thc69]

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.

Re:Is this really a good idea?

[Snoolas]

And we think the Jews and Muslims aren't getting along... Wait till the FSF and OSI duke it out...

How many people in Sri Lanka even have computers?!

[chroot_james]

It's not exactly silicon valley... Do people even care about rights ensure by the GPL when they'd probably be ecstatic to have a magic wonder box that can compute results in seconds!

Facts about Sri Lanka

[Futurepower(R)]

Sri Lanka has a population of 20 million and has 19 political parties.

--
Faith-based lying? Faith-based killing?

cool

[SolusSD]

I work for a company called Interact whose hardware/software runs cell phone networks down there... and yes They DO run Linux! ;)

Re:Sri Lanka?

[RAMMS EIN]

``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.

Re:In other news...

[Mr2cents]

I don't know what your problem is, I use Linux exclusively for over 5 years now and I get everything done without any problems.

Then today the family got called together for a problem with my sister's WinXP pc. When I arrived my father was already running a virus scanner, and it had detected a trojan. So I wanted to open a browser and check it out. Problem: the scanner window was always on top. Great (it soon became clear the software was full of UI bugs).

Then my sister started complaining that some games didn't work, and mentioned something about DirectX versions. I simply told her I don't know and I don't WANT to know. After all these years, DirectX STILL has those problems??

So tell me again why XP would be superior? I think there are gems and horrible apps on both platforms, and if you don't know what you're doing you're screwed anyway whatever platform you run. I mean, as soon as something goes wrong they become dependant on the nearest computer geek they can find. I'm sure 90% of the /. crowd repairs the Windows computers of their family, friends, and neighbours.

Cool

[MarkWatson]

Sorry for this obvious observation: why would any small country not want to use open source?

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 :-) make arguments for my standardizing on Windows Desktops is a good idea - but, for developing countries open source IT infrastructure is the best.

Re:In other news...

[Dolda2000]

It's more about avoiding taking responsibility for writing what is still for the average end-user crappy, hard to use, esoteric, inaccessible software which is what the OSS community would rather do[...]

If code is truly good and important, it doesn't matter if it is open or not. I don't use Xine, FC3, MTR, or a dozen other things because they are open. I'd pay like Windows software and not care if the code was open anyhow. I use them because I want them.

That is you, right, Darl? Didn't you say you were trying to quit Slashdot? Something along the lines of "the long-haired smellies"?

Well, now that you're here: I think you forgot "unamerican".

;-)

Re:Sri Lankan Propaganda

[shadowmas]

SL has been in a civil war for 30 years. and how is this open source movement going to make good press for us? do you think that the goverment hoped that Linus or you slashdotters come and help fight the civil war once they declared the open source week? FYI the week is the result of the local linux and opensource movment which is gather momentum among university students and several IT companies.