On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 03:24:30PM +0800, Prem Vilas Fortran Rara wrote: > part of our org (UnPLUG) activities is to write regularly articles > related to FOSS and the community. I would appreciate if you can > review (or correct) this article I wrote about the looming economic > crisis and FOSS. > > please be gentle on me, i am an engineering student, not journ. (you > can include grammar corrections.) thank you.
English teacher mode on... :) Paragraph 1: "Last year as early as February..." Maybe you should say "Early last year, in February..." Never say "softwares". Software is a mass noun. Change it everywhere you use it. "Now UP Diliman is almost Linux..." Maybe you should say "Now UP Diliman has almost totally migrated to Linux..." Perhaps you should use PhP 9000 instead of P9000. In the absence of a Unicode character for the peso sign (there should be one in the new version of Unicode, if I'm not mistaken, but nobody supports that yet), I think this is the accepted currency symbol for the Philippine Peso. Join the last two sentences: "Through this model UP has saved thousands of pesos, almost recovering from the severe budget cut, and it is urging other public universities to follow the same model." I think UP Diliman's savings in this regard do not amount to a mere piddly thousands of pesos, but up to the millions. A hundred licenses of XP alone comes up to PhP 900,000, and a hundred licenses of Office XP would cost PhP 1.7 million, using your own figures, and given that UP Diliman has thousands of machines used by staff, faculty, and students, a more accurate figure would be in the millions to tens of millions. Paragraph 3: "For one, free and open source..." Change this to "Firstly, Free and Open Source Software..." because you later say "secondly". Also, capitalize Free Software and Open Source software, but lowercase "free" when you mean gratis o libre in Tagalog. That's one way of avoiding the confusion inherent in the English word "free". I think you should also join the first two sentences to read: "For one, while Free and Open Source Software are often free as in 'gratis', the "Free" in Free Software actually refers to the freedom to modify the program according to the needs of the user." "Secondly, this will not only... contributing for the imporvement of a certain software." Change this to read: "Secondly, this will not only... contributing to the improvement and customization for the Philippine setting of many important bits of software." Again, software is a mass noun, and I think you should stress that Free Software can and will be customized to suit local needs. I don't know if you should stress the fact that "teachers and students" do this work. While at the moment I'm a (graduate) student, my primary role is in the private sector, and I have been doing a lot of this kind of customization you mention throughout my professional career. I imagine this is also what many people here at PLUG also do. Last sentence: "The revolutionary software technologies..." I don't know if this is true. Unix as one example, was not developed within the academe, but by Bell Labs R&D in the early 1970's. People around here can give many other examples besides. This is a debatable issue and one that I think your article would be better off not mentioning. Paragraph 4: "Now UP is announcing..." I think it was the national government that announced this, not the University. "But amidst this drive to save (the?) Philippines from becoming another Argentina, some departments of the department (sic) are pushing the agenda on the wrong side." Hmmm... "departments of the department"? I think you mean "departments of the government"? Paragraph 5: "While this act is noble... that have not even touched computers but this is not a long-term solution." Remove the 'but'. "Instead of creating a creative atmosphere..." Too many uses of the word 'create' in very close succession. Maybe it should say "Instead of fostering a creative atmosphere..." to remove the redundancy. Last sentence. I think you should further emphasize that such schools will be forced to *continuously* update their systems in the future. The dreadful upgrade treadmill. Paragraph 6: Ok, except that I think you should put some punctuation in the paragraph to make it easier to read: "At this hour, when we desperately need a means to cut expenditures, government agencies should opt for FOSS. As an example, the State of California is reviewing all of its software procurements and has advised agencies to use FOSS when possible. In Germany, the city of Munich dumped Microsoft software and opted to use Linux instead. This prompted one executive of Microsoft to directly intervene, afraid this would set a trend, in the very hour when Microsoft was heavily fined by the EU Commission for violation of antitrust laws. They were not wrong: lately, the President of India, who is himself a technologist, is pushing to implement the FOSS model in government agencies." Commas, colons, and word order. Otherwise the paragraph is ok. Paragraph 7: Again, commas: "Not only can the government...., but it would help..." Say rather "...but it could help..." and say "some of whom" instead of "some of which" because you're referring to people, not things. "FOSS model.." is missing an article: "The FOSS model..." Other general comments: Overall, very good, well-written article, but I think there are a number of points that you further need to emphasize. This battle is not just about money and the ICT development of our country, although money is certainly an important part of this equation, as is giving our nation's people the skills needed to thrive in this new century. I think you should read Peruvian Congressman Edgar Villanueva Nunez's letter to Microsoft's country manager for Peru after he sponsored a bill encouraging the use of Free Software in their government wherever applicable: http://www.gnu.org.pe/resmseng.html This transcript of a speech by Argentinian Senator Alberto Conde, who has done a similar thing in Argentina may also be helpful: http://proposicion.org.ar/doc/gob/Conde-281102/index.html.en They both give many other arguments for the desirability of Free Software in government, besides the fiscal reasons and educational reasons you stress. Permanence of data is one (ever try to read a WordStar document from 20 years ago lately?). Security is another (do you want "software that phones home" to report your tax records to someone else?). There are many more reasons that these lawmakers of Latin American countries (whose plight so resembles our own) elucidate in the letters I have mentioned. -- dido Te capiam, cuniculus sceleste! -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
