Re: [GKD] Open-Source Software for Development

[Frederick Noronha]

"Don Cameron" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Paul Swider wrote:
> > neither I in Washington, DC, nor someone in a village in Africa has to
> > merely take what is given in terms of software function, we can make
> > what we need. This not only translates into better IT, it can also
> > translate into real jobs
> 
> This would be wonderful, but I do wonder how the person located in this
> African village, with everything involved in terms of literacy, economy
> etc., would determine exactly what is needed from the latest version of
> Red Hat or Debian, let alone build it? - To begin with, who is compiling
> these systems into African village dialects? Also, it's perhaps a sad
> reality, but reality nonetheless that commercial software is that which
> creates jobs - business culture drives commercial purchases, which in

Dear Don, Where are you writing this from? I myself live in a village,
Saligao, which I welcome you to visit anytime to see what is possible
from there.

Please also check out  to see what others
are doing from a country like India. It's not implausible to think that,
if India can do it today, other areas of the Third World can do it
tomorrow.

Anyway, I feel we should not get too much caught up in the "villages or
urban areas" debate. The question is whether at all software can play a
role in a way that makes it accessible and affordable to the Third World
(or the Two-Thirds World), call it what you choose. GNU/Linux, Open
Source and Free Software definitely has immense potential.

Lastly, should we be unduly concerned if companies and corporations show
a disinclination to enter the GNU/Linux-FreeSoftware-OpenSource world?
Is it our assumption that all change, development and growth will flow
from what corporations do? In any case, the whole of GNU/Linux was built
almost wholly with volunteer support and involvement.

It would appear that we who are talking of development have a useful
lesson to learn from this approach.

In fact, our bytesforall.org project has been inspired in large measure
by the GNU/Linux approach. Two years old, 15 volunteers from six South
Asian countries, an ezine sent out via listservs that reaches
decisionmakers/IT professionals and the commonman,  a whole lot of
enthusiasm generated about the potential of IT-for-development
(including a monthly column in one of India's most prestigious and
mainstream IT magazines)... all done without a single rupee or taka or
dollar spent, but through volunteer work.

A lot is possible... if only there's an open mind. FN
--
Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.409490 / 409783
BYTESFORALL www.bytesforall.org  * GNU-LINUX http://linuxinindia.pitas.com
Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] * SMS [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Saligao Goa India




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[GKD] TIC et egalite de genre: forum virtuel et publication en

[Marie-Helene]

ligne
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Bonjour / Greetings

Le resume du forum virtuel  : "Les TIC pour l'egalitede genre
en Afrique francophone" est disponible en francais :
http://www.famafrique.org/parenteconjointe/forum/resumefinal.html

The summary of the  e-forum : "ICTs for gender equality in
francophone Africa" is available in English :
http://www.famafrique.org/parenteconjointe/forum/summary.html

"Parente conjointe, plaidoyer au Senegal", est disponible en format PDF
(592K) (enda, Dakar, 92 pages, en francais seulement) :
http://www.famafrique.org/parenteconjointe/documentsecrits/plaidoyer-parent
e-conjointe.pdf

*
Forum virtuel  : "Les TIC pour l'egalite de genre en Afrique",
anime par ENDA (Dakar) en partenariat strategique avec UNIFEM-Dakar, et
avec l'appui de Oxfam America (Dakar), dans le cadre du Projet "Parente
conjointe : Les TIC a l'appui du programme des femmes pour l'egalite de
genre", mene par ENDA  (Dakar) avec le soutien du Centre de Recherches
pour le Developpement International, Initiative Acacia (Ottawa).
***




***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member***
To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Re: [GKD] Small Towns Build Their Own High-Speed Internet Systems

[Profitinafrica]

Dear Colleagues,

The posting by Alan Levy regarding small towns building their own high
speed internet system is also the justification for the rural strategy
being implemented by ATCnet in Africa. The technology is powerful
enough and low cost enough for service to be universal and sustainable
 but not at the high cost of capital and high cost of fees and
taxation that are recommended by many international development
advisors and institutions.

__
T. Peter Burgess
VP and CFO ATCnet
New York USA
Tel 212 772 6918 Fax 707 371 7805
website: www.atcnet.org 
email:   [EMAIL PROTECTED] / [EMAIL PROTECTED]

ATCnet Project for Universal Accountability
ATCnet Community Cyber EduCenter Networks
ATCnet Database on African Development and Enterprise
ATCnet Database on the African Health and HIV-AIDS Crisis
ATCnet Trade Networks
ATCnet Consultancy and Management Services 




***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member***
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Re: [GKD] Open-Source Software for Development

[John West]

Don Cameron wrote:

> As another regular user and sometimes OS developer, I don't wish to
> throw a wet-blanket over your vision of an OS driven utopia, but I do
> wonder if the vision fits reality...
>
> This would be wonderful, but I do wonder how the person located in this
> African village, with everything involved in terms of literacy, economy
> etc., would determine exactly what is needed from the latest version of
> Red Hat or Debian, let alone build it? - To begin with, who is compiling
> these systems into African village dialects? Also, it's perhaps a sad

If I can say so politely, Don, I think this is missing the point ;-)))
The advantage of OS is mainly in the Business-to-Business arena, not in
Business-to-Consumer. Software writing and adaptation will happen at a
far higher level than a user in a village - let's call it the super
regional level - , be implemented by more local companies - let's call
the national level - , and _used_ by people who quite possibly do not
even know what operating system they are running. Think of an analogy
with website building: when you visit a website, you don't know whether
the OS the web server is running on is Windows NT, Unix or Linux,
whether the web server is Apache, whether the HTML pages have been coded
by hand, or in Dreamweaver or Front Page. And so on. You certainly don't
have to write any software. You just _use_ the site. The image of the
person in the village trying to figure this out is therefore
inappropriate...

Paul Swider's point about the advantage of OS works at the B2B level.
Consider the opposite and current situation: software development is and
will remain impeded in a lot of LDC countries because they don't
represent enough of a market for anyone to develop software for them.
The situation is better in areas like South America, or francophone
Africa, which happen to use world languages with large footprints but in
other parts of Africa and places with smaller languages - particularly
using non-Latin alphabets - it's pretty dire. If you think, well it's OK
because all the people who need to use computers can speak or write one
of these world languages anyway, then you're predefining the debate by
saying only the top 1% in these countries will ever need computers.
Having said that, it seems to me a lot of the really small languages in
Africa and elsewhere will not be viable - 2,000 of the world's
approximately 6,000 languages have combined speakers of less than 50
million people - 33% of languages spoken by less than 1% of world
population . But OS could dramatically lower what might be a viable
'software language unit' down to say 10 million people in an LDC, which
would include a lot of African languages, certainly all major ones...
kiSwahili, Wollof, Zulu...

Here's the OS growth scenario: there are already regional software
companies who can undertake the software writing: Infosys in India has
6,000 programmers and there are strong companies in Latin America. In
Africa, too, South Africa, Ghana and Kenya to my knowledge have software
companies which currently write complex applications. They will grow
bigger and there will be more of them. The bigger gap is perhaps the
implementers: the smaller companies who take software written by others
and install it. As Don has pointed out, despite all their best efforts
Linux is still not an easy end user environment. But keep focused on the
fact that we're not talking about the home- or office- computing model
we've had in the North for the last decade - which is already subtly
changing month by month in any case. It's much more likely to be a
scenario where, for example, a government ministry, let's say health,
orders a drugs tracking system for it's X hundred hospitals and Y
thousand primary health care clinics. Super regional company writes it,
local companies install it. Many of these applications will be 'thin',
where a central system sits pulling in information from data processed
by thousand of client pieces of software - and that means the OS may run
on Windows systems at the user point of view (most major OS programs
have decent functioning versions for Windows). The hospital or client
does its work offline, then sends the data, either on disk or in an
online burst depending on connectivity.

The advantage of OS is then that the health ministry in the country next
door can adapt the system - either for free or buying it since OS
software does not _have_ to be free. Another ministry might want to
adapt it to track another commodity instead of drugs. And so on. As the
number of working applications grows, the value grows hugely because
we're into Metcalfe's law here which says the value of a network
increases exponentially with the growth in number of users. In this
case, the 'network' is the population of useable and comprehensible
software applications adapted to the LDC context.

> Paul also commented on the way by which OS can turn an old computer into
> something perhaps 'larger'