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OSS Provides Opportunity, Challenge for Developing World
NewsForge has an interesting article looking at open source in the developing world. From the article: " Open source software and development can push governments of developing nations ahead in the world, but only if they participate as producers of the technology themselves, United Nations University (UNU) researchers say. While they say developing regions such as China, East Asia, India, and South America are among the biggest markets for open source software, UNU officials worry that there may be too few open source developers in those regions."
I thought OSS was Open Sound System.
United Nations University (UNU) researchers say. While they say developing regions such as China, East Asia, India, and South America are among the biggest markets for open source software, UNU officials worry that there may be too few open source developers in those regions.
Also from the article:
Still, Krishna stresses that limiting prospects to only open source solutions and development may deprive these nations of access to other resources, which might include proprietary solutions, companies, and their money. "A lot of people argue there are more opportunities from proprietary solutions, and they might not get it if they are so open source oriented," he says. "The proper course of action is not to be tied to one or get into any religious wars.
The way I see it, open source is an opportunity for everyone. This is just as true of small towns and rural places in the USA and Europe as it is for third world countries. Rather than sending off money to Redmond and Silicon Valley, these countries and cities and towns can hire locals to develop the software. If it is an open source product, they will already have a starting point. I think the biggest advantage of open source, which is constantly over looked, is that it basically combines the best of two worlds: commercial-off-the-shelf and custom development.
Have a problem that can almost be solved by an available commercial app? Tough, it will be close to impossible (unless you are IBM or the U.S. or Eurpean government) to get the developers to change it for you. Have a problem that can almost be solved by an existing oss package? Great bring in some experienced local contractors to modify it to your organization's needs.
Everybody wins: your organization gets something it may not have gotten before; money stays in the local economy; the community around that product benefits (if changes are contributed back); and so on. The only people who lose are the established software companies, because they now have stiffer competition that is more agile than they are.
Wow. I read
"That is a mindset that should be discouraged from being advocated."
And thought I was still not awake. Then I read it again - still didn't make sense. Then I went to the website for Frost & Sullivan to see where they found this bozo...
"Our partnership services provide you with the innovative solutions to maximize your growth opportunities and dominate your competition. Our methodology is designed to empower you with global perspective in four distinct disciplines: technical; econometric; application; and market."
Couldn't they have found somebody else?
Using plain ol' text since 1968
Man, if only someone would come up with a viable way to improve IT education in those regions.... I'm sure that an idea like that would be really well received by us concerned Slashdotters.
I travel and I travel a lot: 40 countries so far and the one thing that frustrates me to no end are American swho think that bringing technology to the world is a bad thing. They suffer from a mentality that the grass is greener...
Not doing what we can to empower folks in impoverished countries only serves to keep them down. Maybe, just maybe they can (no closed sourced pun intended) excel and achieve great things if they just had the tools. Before the technology boom the concept of outsourcing anything to India was unheard of for example. It's not empowering EVERYONE but India is definitely becoming a powerhouse. I know small businesses who outsource to Ukraine and Azerbaijan now.
Closed source by it's very expensive nature only serves to keep people down.
From the article:
Krishna blames the lack of software developers from these developing nations on lack of time, as most people have to work other jobs to support themselves and their families.
Riiiight. Becuase every single open source developer in the US and Europse is paid by his or her employer to work exclusively on a pet open source project. Please. While I know that there are examples of people getting paid as their primary job to work on open source software (Torvalds, Tridge, Cox, de Icaza, the other Ximian people, some Debian folks at HP and Nokia, Red Hat, etc), I believe that the vast majority still work other jobs. That majority of people still must support their own families as well, which means that they are stuck doing something as a primary source of income and working on open source projects in their spare time. Nothing new here.
How is it possible that "Open source software and development can push governments of developing nations ahead in the world"? How many American Open Source Projects make money? Do their participants have Political Influence? Is Torvalds running for president? What opportunities does this bring governments?
Funnypics
If some company uses open source solutions and these solutions prove to be scalable and flexible that company will feel reluctant to stop using a winning formula. There are a lot of regular newbe users who start to use open source products and when they have used them for some time start to contribute to it. I think that it takes a while before people start contributing. I rather see all poorer countries with emerging markets using open source like hell without paying any contribution, than seeing MicroSoft gaing foothold there. Sooner or later countries like China and India will contribute lots of code, is my firm belief.
as much of 90 percent of the proprietary software in use in these developing countries consists of pirated copies.
;)
Problem solved!
There should be a "-1:Groupthink"
I think that OSS developers in these countries will pop up only after the wide-spread use of OSS. What we need are current open source groups to get together with university language programs and create free, easy-to-use open source software with well-translated documentation along with some pre-set up forum space or somesuch... I don't really see it happening any other way.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
From the article:
Still, the analyst says software is an area of technology where the barriers to entry are "minuscule."
That's until certain proprietary software companies manage to persuade their governments to raise them, such as by enacting laws enabling software to be patented. Or just persuading their patent offices to grant software patents, saving the government persuasion until enough patents have been collected.
Having the source code available to study, modify, fix etc., can only be helpful in education. Unless someone can explain how closed source provides such an opportunity. There is no conflict here regarding licensing, even the GPL only states that those who have access to the application must have access to the source code, and since most software is not accessed by the public at large it really only make since that those using the software be able to maintain it.
But there is more happening here. Software itself, the way it is produced, is changing and at some point it will be as common for the general user to produce code or instruct the machine to, as general use math is today common place, and the use of a calculator.
Eventually the code base for the automation of application creation and integration will happen/evolve, but by the time it does the world economy will hopefully be more balanced.
Such Automation comes down to Abstraction Physics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_physics
There are current issues bringing all this to an apex, most namely that of the falseness of software patents, or from another perspective, the attempt to deny human rights to think and do productively.
I would not worry about China. With nearly 200 millon students, say 1% goes to I/T and technology. Then say pesemistically say that 1% of that become open source developers. This would be 20,000 additional open source developers.
As these other countries emerge into volume commerce and are more economically developed they will produce open source developers in numbers far larger than we see today. And they do not need to fight for the source code. A world view of OSS is inevitable.
WinTel will have a time of it too, remember in this article they consider this a "start". In China's Linux market, enter the V-Dragon
I can give the view from Pakistan: Open Source software has NO CHANCE HERE!!!! Pirated software is abundantly available here. Heck talking about open source, Linux is not even bought in the markets as it IS MORE EXPENSIVE than windows, because it comes in 2-3 CDs and windows in one(the dealers charge per CD) The linux distributions available in the market are two versions old. Like Fedora C3 hit the market recently. Downloading distros is no option for people here, as the majority are behind 56kps dialup modems. It is extremely rare to find people who are expert at Open Source. However major universities have started to incoorperate open source software into their curriculum, and many undergraduates to their degree projects on open source software. The Pakistan government, had launched, something called the Open Source Research Center, which's aim was to promote open source usage in the country, however it is defunct now! Software companies in Pakistan exclusively offer services on proprietory software, and hence all universities try to produce programmers/developers/SW engineers who are adept at them. I'm sure the same scenario is being played out in India. I dont see open source succeeding here for the next decade or so.
While they say developing regions such as China, East Asia, India, and South America are among the biggest markets for open source software, UNU officials worry that there may be too few open source developers in those regions.
Not only that but they also have low respect for Intellectual Property. They are more likely to not adhere to the license governing Open Source Software (especially GPL). End result is that the community doe not benefit from improvements. We've seen this with a few Chinese companies and their lack of will for releasing the source code to their Linux forks.
I think it's often overlooked that open source is actually a free market force. The forces that are pushing open source, is not that it's free, but that as society enters the information age the service value of information becomes worth more than the content value. That's why it's biggest influences have been, and will continue to be in free market countries like the USA. It is actually sort if ironic that the countrys that are most able to afford proprietary software are actually the ones that are going to be under the most pressure to move to and use free software.
A large middle class with significant 'spare time' is a particularly recent, western, first-world phenomenom. In third world countries, most people - except for the aristocracy - just don't have much spare time.
Forty hours per week? Until the US became industrialized in the late 1800s, most people worked 10-12 per day 6+ days per week.
Who came up with this stuff??? Did I just catch Stallman laugh?
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
FOSS means that work, whether localisation or support, can be done in the local region at local prices. It therefore levels the playing field, helping to achieve the (supposed) objectives of the WTO. And, in reality, it doesn't reduce Microsoft's profits as much as you might think because, in many cases, the alternative is actually piracy.
On the other hand, it creates middle class jobs (jobs relying on literacy, professional skills etc.). The biggest problem of many Third World countries is the lack of a middle class. Between the very poor (exploited) and the very rick (exploiters) there is no buffer of people to create a civil society. In China the very concept of civil society is still alien while it has emerged rapidly in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. India has a rapidly increasing middle class and is the world's biggest democracy.
So, I know this may seem over the top: but FOSS provides support to fair trade, emerging democracy and free markets. And it does it while expending very little energy, so it contributes little to climate change.
Pining for the fjords
"Not only that but they also have low respect for Intellectual Property. They are more likely to not adhere to the license governing Open Source Software (especially GPL). End result is that the community doe not benefit from improvements. We've seen this with a few Chinese companies and their lack of will for releasing the source code to their Linux forks."
You mean people are suppose to respect IP? And why should they respect OSS IP more than proprietary IP? I guess that old saying "what goes around, comes around". Granted a lot of OSS projects do respect IP, even if they don't like it. But I find it humerous that the Slashdot attitude towards IP can manifest itself in a way that's negative towards everyones pet favourite.
Open Source Software means nothing other than the source is open. But that doesn't mean anything other that you can view the source code. It may still be under a completely unusable licence incompatible with free software (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html) .
) on the other hand states that your software is free (as in freedom and free speech) and that the source code is available.
Free software (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html
Stop using the "open source" term, it means absolutely nothing.
There are several real issues with Open Source in Emerging Economies
1) Limited broadband capabilities, even in a country like Saudi Arabia the typical University/Research Center/ISP will have a limited international connectivity, and downloading a Linux Distrib is not easy, having a large number of people doing this is even harder.
On the bonus side the same applies to Windows upgrade with the result that most installations are hopelessly unsafe, and the typical Windows box a flea ridden disaster.
2) Limited value given to Freedom, although the "G8" countries are trying to limit the citizens freedoms to fight T. D.D. and P. you can promote "Freedom" without sounding "too" suspicious, in a dictatorship where Free Speech is defined as a foreign conspiracy against national values only "Free as in Free beer/(or in some country apple juice)" stays as an argument.
And of course if you have a lot of conterfeiting happenning you are in a situation where Ubuntu cost 4$ and Windows Vista also 4$ (two DVD you see).
3) Limited access to large projects
Large projects are "paid for" by foreign government through various "AID" schemes, wich actually means that "G8" tax payers carry the risk of large loans, that are eventually repaid by the emerging countries tax payers to various insurance funds.
And since it is an "AID" it actually means that the lender country decides what will be used, and in the case of the US it means
That the great philantropist Bill Gates will be contacted to provide his marvellous products.
4) Limited access to "reseller bonus",
Basically the way corruption works in emerging countries is that since the "G8" countries decided to "fight corruption" what they
really did is "outsource it" to local reseller, since "service bills" will be paid on delivery, and since the people who are
expecting a kick back are in a hurry the best place to pad fees are in the licences fees.
So basically you sell a lot of licences for 10 time the real price and the local distributor is giving the cash "as needed"
And you have plausible deniebility.
Of course if you use Open Source solutions 10 time 0 is 0, not very attractive.
5) Little respect for creative work, the most admired people are "warriors" of some kind and "big merchant", and those people are
the one that get the best revenue, actual "work" is paid a minimum. And since Open Source is all about squezzing out the
"merchant" and trying to give the power back to the "creator" it does not fit.
Why will it ultimatelly succeed
a) Telcos are greedy, so they will ultimatelly improve the infrastructure to attract more customers.
b) Public discourse and private discourse are very different, so ultimatelly the grass roots effect of Open Source should do the trick
c) The governments are starting to be scared of the cost of "aid", so some critical infrastructure are self funded (so have to be affordable)
d) Corruption has a tendency toward reduction, and anyway where it cannot be reduced the "corrupt elite" will see in their interest to find ways to squezze cash out of "sustainable solutions".
e) People in the emerging country will eventually start to find their own creative role models, you might keep in mind that one of the things the precipitated the first world war (less that 100 years ago) was the desire of the German Imperial government to stop local opponents by calling on a common enemy.
And one of the gripes of the local opponents was the "c
You're saying that Open Source Software (OSS) has no chance in Pakistan (and, presumably, other places) because pirated software is also Zero Cost Software (0$S). That's why there needs to be a recognition that Open Source is more than just Zero Cost (OSS > 0$S). Right now the main advantage of Proprietary Illicit Non-Free Software (PI$S) is its availability and widespread mindshare. OSS has some advantages, such as being able to modify the program, and faster feedback from developers (not necessarily relevant in an area like Pakistan where, as you describe, people aren't on high-speed connections). And PI$S continues to have disadvantages like lack of backward compatibility (referring to Word97, Word2003, and other exponentially increasing Word(integer)'s).
I admit that OSS does have a struggle worldwide, but I wouldn't write it off just yet simply because of piracy.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
"The way I see it, open source is an opportunity for everyone. This is just as true of small towns and rural places in the USA and Europe as it is for third world countries. Rather than sending off money to Redmond and Silicon Valley, these countries and cities and towns can hire locals to develop the software."
I agree, an opportunity for everybody. But a little reality check/ pragmatism is required. You need to be able to afford to hire enough open source programmers to develop the alternative. Does every Smalltown USA with population 5000 *have* a significant population of local open software developers? You need a sustainabile project management structure to cope if your small team falls apart or moves on. I'm all for this approach, I think it's possible, but I think its got complex sustainability issues and this I think is one of the major challenges to address. Smalltown USA wants a software package that will be supported in 5, 10, 20 years time. They currently purchase large company products in the belief that this will offer them security. Whether or not this is true, how can local open source programmers offer this security? I think this is the major challenge.
Not to point out the really obvious, but developers in those countries are may be too busy working to make money 16 hours a day, and just have no time to write open source. The conditions really are horrible.
You know, the developers we outsourced all the jobs to because they are cheaper, leaving plenty of free time for western developers to write Open Source.
India is starting to join the open source world in great numbers... because their jobs are being outsourced to China.
Yes, I expect this will be modded -1 Unpleasant Reality.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
I'm going to Ethiopia in June with an organisation called Camara to give refurbished computers to schools. 12 of us are going over there to help set up the computers and to teach the teachers and student how to use computers. Lots of them won't have seen a computer before. Obviously, we use Linux on all our machines. Information technology is incredibly empowering to a society and to schools. Access to Wikipedia alone almost makes it worth it. If you'd like to help us, we need money for flights and vaccinations. You can PayPal us some money at http://camara.ie/help.htm
Come on, its funny how the UN hasn't figured this one out yet... Forget Software, which required most ppl to have access to computers and electricity which is not abundant in "rural areas" or third world countries.
A lot of ppl can't afford medicine in 1'st world countries itself, I live in Canada, and my Dad's medicines cost about 4G's a year. Imagine how bad it is in all these other countries.
Yes I know medicine takes up a lot of investment on the part of drug companies, but so does software.
If a lot of these nations can have affordable drugs, that would go a long ways than having open source software.
"Volunteer Jobs Represent Big Opportunity for Developing World"
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
First of all, let's stop the stereotyping. The "developing world" is huge and extremely diverse, containing countries as comparatively wealthy and advanced as South Africa as well as underdeveloped and poor countries like Mozambique. To suggest, as some have here, that "nobody in the developing world has free time", or "few people have access to electricity" or my personal favourite of "people in the developing world have more pressing needs, such as food and water", is of course ludicrous. To those making such arguments, please do us all a favour and educate yourselves.
Programming is essentially a product of enthusiasm, as many of those reading Slashdot will probably know. In this, it is similar to becoming a pilot. Every single programmer I know began programming purely out of interest, and a desire to do more with their computers and explore the boundaries of what was possible. Not all programmers go on to make it their careers though, just as not all of those who dream of flying as kids end up as pilots. However, when the demand is there, people become encouraged to turn their hobby or interest into a career, and do so. The thing to remember here is that programmers are not created, and you cannot shove out some govt program that will result in a couple hundred programmers emerging by the end of the year. Instead, it's about giving youths access to computers (say at school) and teaching them the healthy curiousity and ambition that results in them trying to do more than the usual.
Currently, the emergence of programmers in the developing world is hampered by a lack of widespread access to quick and cheap internet, and a lack of access to computers. Yet this is slowly changing, and it really can only get better as both internet access and computing become irrevocably cheaper every year. Indeed, if there are already enough skilled software programmers in India to throw half of Slashdot's contributors into a protectionist rage every so often, then you know things are looking up in the developing world.
This article, and others like it, is interesting but ultimately misguided. The choice here is not an absolutist one between open source and proprietary software, as both have their place, and nor is there any way to magically create programmers. Instead, the attention that is being focused on the supposed lack of programmers such instead be focused on pressuring the governments of the developing world to liberalise their markets, drop tariffs, and generally increases the level of freedom available to their people, so that those with the curiousity to try new things will be able to do so without hindrance.
- existing bandwidth: to download software, check documentation and contact developers and users. By just improving that part of the infrastructure, interested parties would do a lot.
- brick and mortar libraries, with decent computer book collections. You would be surprised at how often computer books get requested at libraries.
- colleges and technical schools, on the one hand, and private bussiness and government, on the other, have to improve their ties. Very often, colleges are just a bit more than social clubs where the new generations of local oligarchies get acquainted, and begin their deals. Those deals are not succesful by their technological/bussiness merits, but by the fact that their previous family ties secure them oligopolistic rents and corrupt advantages. So, systematic research and development is less important; there is no incentive for private firms or government to invest in university research, or to do in-house research.
- Paradoxically, bringing new technologies is an excellent opportunity for shady deals with government. Well connected people -- and well connected international companies -- can make millions, at taxpayers expense, greasing the hand of government officials. The companies that builds bridges to nowhere, that happens all the time in those countries. And there is less oversight than in first world countries.
- The Global Desktop page forgets to mention a very important actor: non governmental organizations, who could be very good adopters of OSS.
- different economic sectors have different needs. Opportunities for the use of OSS computing in medium size farms are different than for local telcom firms. "Developing countries" is a misleading tag.
- The computer people at the UNU have a research program, on software engineering. I wonder how relevant is that for their interest in third world development.
If that's the case why doesn't someone at the UNU come up with an idea where people who have the skillsets(certified and non-certified) can be given a trip/food/lodgings in exchange for getting enthusiasts up-to-speed with the skills necessary to contribute to OSS. I am sure many would jump on that chance. The same goes for teaching English in those countries, as it stands there are many government/political obstacles for those who don't have university degrees to participate to such programs. I sincerely think both OSS development and English teaching should be open to anyone who has the desire to do so. Everyone has something to contribute regardless of having a degree or not.
In Australia, at least, many remote & isolated indigenous communities
could conceivably add some more ways to beat poverty & exclusion from
the world of work (to a small list that's pretty short, for many; eg:
artist, athlete, cultural dancer, tour-guide (if remoteness doesn't
affect supply of tourists), sheep/cattle hand, and a few others
OSS could open the door to web maker, programmer, etc.
I can say from my experience as a OSSD (d as in developer) in Brazil that the problem is not with the quantity of developers, but with the companies and investors that are always paying better to professionals that work with Microsoft solutions like Visual Studio, now the market is getting too intensive in Java, and when you go only to one direction then ofcourse you are going to have too many jobs and less qualified workers. Companies need to know that if they choose a tecnology, they need to see the health of that language and how can they find a similar solution to pay less. The problem is that third world countries need OMI (open minded investors), people that know what thye are putting their money into, not just someone who heard about Java or Visual Studio and decided to go for that. Companies need solutions and optimizations, saving on consulting might say you 10 bucks now and make you waste 50 thousand along the line, where you could of spent 10 thousand. Third world countries needs investors that know how to analyse the market before trying to be the expert and do the job of a IT Manager.
You partly make my case. On the one hand, propaganda from the Chinese embassy, parroted by the BBC and mostly anecdotal. On the other, detailed criticism of Indian government and business affairs from within India. Autocracy versus civil society, I think.
Pining for the fjords