OSS in Developing Countries Bulletin, 1999

Linux Today BW Merge Technologies Ships Second Generation of Medical Information Server for Linux

 Posted by Roblimo on Saturday December 18, @05:38PM
from the another-step-forward-for-Open-Source-software dept.
Kaufmann writes "More news from Brazil... this time it seems to be good news, though; this page describes a law project, already on Congress, which, if approved, will obligate all sectors of the Brazilian Government - agencies, public corporations, et cetera - to use only free (as in speech) software (unless there is none that provides the required functionality). This is rather surprising news, considering the incredible power wielded by Big Software Companies in Brazil (their puppet, the Brazilian Association of Software Corporations, is conducting a massive anti-"piracy" witch hunt, with some success). Email the author of the bill, congressman Walter Pinheiro, and show him your support! (Most links are in Portuguese; you might want to use your favourite text translation tool.) "

"The 50 machine Linux lab inside King Saud University has been up and running for three years, where it was introduced by an enthusiastic Dr. Khaled Al Ghoneim on his return from the US. Now King Saud's Linux environment is the initial computer-programming lab encountered by students and everything is done to encourage students to make the most of the freeware in their studies."

Open Source and These United States

Over the past 40 years a collaborative form of systems development has evolved on the electronic networks of the world. In the wake of the information technology revolution has come a proven method for developing, deploying and maintaining these systems. This method, developed under the auspices of Department of Defense research grants, has resulted in the most successful and reliable software in existence.

This method, based on collaborative intelligence, peer review and functional evolution, has rippled through the world of Information Technology. It depends on the uninhibited distribution of the currency of this realm: the source code, documentation and data which are the building blocks of these complex systems. The release of source code is commonly called open source licensing. The release of electronic information is known as open content licensing. Together, they comprise Open Licensing.

There are significant gains to be realized through the formal adoption, support and use of open licensed systems by the Department of Defense. Secondary gains may be made in the morale and retention of Airmen involved in information technology. This adoption can take place at any point in the acquisition cycle and can even benefit deployed and operational systems. The benefits include reduced acquisition, development, maintenance and support costs and increased interoperability among our own systems and those of our Allies.

THE WIRED REPUBLIC

"Freeware and other new initiatives to re-launch the Italian information technology and industry" CNR conference hall Tuesday, 23rd February 1999 On Tuesday, the 23rd of February, the meeting on "Freeware and other new initiatives to re-launch the Italian information technology and industry" took place in the conference hall of the National Research Council (CNR), promoted by the Presidence of the CNR. The day, centered round the revolutionary Open Source developing model, which gave life to the Linux operating system, was full of high level speeches of the scientific, political and industrial world. The CNR president, Bianco, in the opening of the day, giving the numbers of the italian deficit in the Information Technology world and of the subjection to the imports, sees in the Free Software a worthwhile re-launch idea for the italian software industry. Bianco says "The comments, the hopes, the proposals, the targets of Freeware increase. Everyone underlines the impressive result of a common worldwide action, which is very cheap and above all is open to the contribution of the fiercest groups of the technologically advanced countries, but also to the one of isolated scholars in modestly developed countries, i.e. open and available to the rich but also to the poor."

... The re-launch of a big Italian firm in the sector which would make the exports grow is utterly impassable because of the necessary financial effort. The possibility, Meo explains, to use the Free Software is the only practicable way to decrease imports. With a tiny financial effort we could have tangible results on condition that the public corporations activate themselves in the following fields: - certification: companies do not install Open Source software becuase it does not prove to be certified - documentation: the Free Software is often poorly documented or it's not nationalized in our language - education: the use of Free Software must have the same opportunity to be enjoyed that the proprietary software has among secondary school and university - favouring Open Source products in the tenders of public administration, so that the realized solution could be effectively reused by other corporations.

[Nov. 21, 1999] Development Ethical Trading and Free Software

This paper makes the political and ethical case for the adoption of free software by Community Aid Abroad and other members of Oxfam International. It should be applicable to development agencies generally and to other organisations with similar values.

Free software has obvious pragmatic advantages for community development processes, most notably in its empowerment of users. But the ideological foundations and social structure of the free software movement are also consistent with community development at a theoretical level.

Feedback on this document would be appreciated: additional case studies would be particularly useful. A Community Aid Abroad appropriate information technology group has been set up, including a mailing list for discussions in this area. (This paper is also a subject of debate on Slashdot.)

[Oct. 25, 1999] E-Commerce Times Viewpoint Will Linux Skyrocket In Developing Countries?
By Chet Dembeck E-Commerce Times Columnist July 16, 1999

Nick Thompson, Penguin's director of marketing and the author of a book comparing development in Ghana and Thailand, said Linux makes economic sense in countries where the per-capita income is less than $5,000 a year.

"Using an operating system that is free is more desirable than paying hundreds of dollars for Windows," Thompson added.

[Oct.12, 1999] Extremely interesting discussion of Microsoft strategy in Korea

Linux Today Free Software in Korea Part One -- The Microsoft Connection -- very interesting discussion of Microsoft strategy. Recommended...

When the Korean government's Ministry of Information and Communication announced in late July that it would "provide government support for the development and proliferation of Linux," it was not only one of the first official endorsements by a national government of the free operating system but one of the largest defeats ever for Microsoft.

Linux Today Free Software in Korea Part Two -- The Linux Side (Conclusion)

A most promising development for the free software movement in Korea is the government's Ministry of Information and Communication announcement in late July that it will "provide government support for the development and proliferation of Linux." The Korea Herald, among others, reported that the ministry "will establish a Linux consultative body composed of software experts from the government, academic and industry sectors to standardize Korean versions of Linux and develop a variety of programs based on the operating system."

At the forefront of the Korean government's support for Linux is the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). According to Kim Hae-jin (family names are first in Korean), who is heading the ETRI Linux project, ETRI's plan is to "provide a highly scalable, highly available, single system server image cluster [technology]... adaptable from Internet [servers] to [the] mission critical enterprise."

A non-profit organization called the "Linux Council" has been established. Four committees within the Council have been designated:

1. Standardization -- standardize Linux's Hangul terminology and 
       documentation 

2. R & D -- promote research in and development of Linux software 

3. Supply and Support -- support Linux in end-user markets, schools and 
       government offices 

4. Education and Training -- promote Linux education and training

[Oct.11, 1999] http://www.performancecomputing.com/columns/currents/9910cur.shtml -- Unix and OSS in India

[Aug 11, 1999] Home Page Freemed.org -- The Free Practice Management Project has been launched. 
FreePM seeks to create an open source system to handle most of the information system needs of medical offices and clinics: appointment scheduling, medical records management, insurance claims, etc. If it is successful, this project
could well be the biggest one of its kind: a deeply domain-specific system for the needs of a particular
industry. For details, see the FreePM announcement. Whether the project will be successful remains to be seen, however. This project appears to have broken one if the cardinal rules of free software endeavors by
starting out with no code base whatsoever. Getting their desired "100 to 1000" volunteers could be hard given that there is very little for them to start hacking on.

We wish FreePM luck. It is, in any case, likely to be the first of many such projects. As free software gains "respectability," players in many industries will see the advantages of having an industry-specific base of free code. It is certainly a question of "when," and not "if" free software will move into this realm.

[July 2, 1999] HotSource - What's Happening in Learning and Technology in Australian Schools

• HotSource - Feature Story -- a somewhat questionable idea that laptops are better than desktops in education. I disagree. With desktops in sub $200 range they are much more affordable that laptops and more upgradeable too. 

[June 23, 1999]  The Brazilian magazine Veja has published a brief note claiming that the Brazilian Science and Technology Ministry will be funding a "technology center" to work on Linux development. Many details, including where the center will be, how big it will be, or just what it will work on, are missing. The note (in Portuguese) may be found on the Linux in Brazil site

[June 23, 1999]  A Case for Government Promotion of Open Source Software

Computers and the Internet have changed the way we work, 
  study, and interact, yet there are many things about computers and software 
  which we find dissatisfying. Proprietary software is increasingly expensive 
  and memory-hungry. Bugs, security flaws, and other errors appear in even the 
  most trusted programs. Microsoft's monopoly control of the operating system 
  market stifles innovation. Many computer systems are not equipped to handle 
  the upcoming turn of the century, creating a multi billion-dollar problem and 
  dire predictions of a global electronics breakdown.
  

An alternative method of software development exists, called open source software, which offers a very low cost solution to all of these problems. Open source is not a technology, but rather a different way of thinking about and organizing the software development process. Whereas traditional proprietary software development (which created most of the programs we use daily) adheres to the principle of strict protection of intellectual property found in the publishing industry, open source software (OSS) development is more of a collaborative process that has evolved along with the Internet.

Open source software is growing its market share in a few key areas because of its natural strengths of reliability, security, and low cost. However, open source has advantages on a broader level as well: it eliminates economic waste caused by the duplication of work, and it presents a challenge to harmful monopoly power in the software industry, such as the anticompetitive practices which are under scrutiny now in the Justice Department's antitrust case against Microsoft. It also provides a cost-effective solution to the Year 2000 problem. For these reasons, increased use of open source software serves more than private economic gain -- it serves a public good as well.

This paper will describe open source software, including a brief history of the idea, discuss its inherent strengths as both a private and a public good, explain why the government should be involved in promoting open source software development, and offer some recommendations for government action.

[June 14, 1999] Project Computer Bank -- a very interesting Australian project for giving 386 to poor people.

[June 8, 1999] Libre Contra Gratis -- The need for free software in poorer countries.

Many in the Open Source and free software communities are quick to point out that the important definition of "free" is "free as in free speech", as opposed to "free as in no monetary cost". While this distinction is very important in North America and Europe, especially to those of us who are developers, we should not lose sight of the importance of no-cost software to the rest of the world.

In particular, the Spanish-speaking nations of the Western Hemisphere come to mind. The $80 sticker price for Red Hat 6.0 and the $90 price for MS Windows 98 are both prohibitive to the average user in many poorer nations. Yet citizens of those countries need software ... and they are a goldmine of untapped future talent for Open Source development.

Africa Connected by Mark Deuze

Power to the People The Role of Electronic Media in Promoting Democracy in Africa

Intellectual Property and Economic Development: Opportunities for China in the Information Age
This paper was prepared for the ▓98 International Symposium on the Protection of Intellectual Property for the 21st Century, October 28-30, 1998, in Beijing, PRC.

Paying attention to the infrastructure necessary to support economic development in information industry sectors is important because it avoids over-simplistic thinking. Adopting intellectual property laws and making certain commitments about enforcement will not inevitably induce growth of local information industries nor will it automatically attract foreign investment into a developing country.¹⁷ Other infrastructure elements must be present to support investments in information industries. For some developing countries, the lack of other infrastructure elements may make the social costs of strengthened intellectual property protection higher than the benefits to be reaped.¹⁸

Does this mean that the ideas and methods in non-software works of authorship can be protected under Chinese copyright law? The answer to this question is surely no, as Chinese sources clearly reveal. A review of Chinese caselaw reveals that courts have denied copyright claims in some instances because the second author had only taken facts or ideas from the first author’s work, not his expression.³⁸ Commentary by Chinese authorities also states that China’s copyright law only protects the expression of authors, not their ideas.³⁹ Moreover, China participated in the deliberations leading up to the adoption of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty in Geneva in 1996 that included a provision endorsing the principle that "[c]opyright protection extends to expressions, and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such."⁴⁰ The Berne Convention, which has long been the most significant international treaty on copyright protection, may have previously been silent about the idea-expression distinction, but this distinction has long been a part of the mature copyright systems governed by that Convention.⁴¹

Unfortunately, the idea-expression distinction is sometimes easier to articulate than to apply. When the most valuable aspects of a copyrighted work are its ideas, facts, or processes,⁴² copyright owners will sometimes assert that an aspect of a work is expressive in order to get protection for it. Adopting this stratagem may be tempting partly because the distinction between ideas and expressions, while clear in the abstract, does not always shimmer with clarity in the context of any particular dispute.

Among the other limitations or exceptions to copyright that can promote innovation are the fair quotation and fair use doctrines of Chinese and other national copyright laws.⁵² New ideas emerge as subsequent authors make transformative uses of portions of pre-existing works in the course of commenting on earlier works.⁵³ Recent Chinese interpretations of its fair quotation rule are consistent with international standards. For example, the author of a book about the last emperor of China successfully invoked China’s fair quotation rule in defending against a copyright claim in an unpublished diary because it satisfied the three criteria used in judging fair quotations under Chinese law.⁵⁴ Those criteria were not, however, satisfied in another case in which a playwright reproduced the menu of a famous Peking duck recipe in a dramatic play.⁵⁵

Although China does not presently have a general fair use provision akin to that in U.S. copyright law, it might want to consider adopting such a rule. In times of rapid technological change, a general fair use doctrine gives the courts some flexibility in applying copyright law to respond to situations not foreseen by lawmakers in a balanced way.⁵⁶ In the United States, for example, the fair use doctrine helped the U.S. Supreme Court decide how to deal with a new technology issue that the U.S. Congress had not considered in enacting copyright law, namely, whether home videotaping of movies from broadcast television was fair use. After weighing various factors and balancing the competing interests, the U.S. Supreme Court in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios decided that such taping was fair use.⁵⁷ Even though the motion picture industry initially tried to stop the sale of videotape machines, the widespread availability of these machines opened up vast new markets for videocassettes. This brought substantial benefits to the motion picture industry whose fears of this new technology turned out to be unfounded.

Etc

Society

Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers :   Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism  : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy

Quotes

War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda  : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes :  Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce :  Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes

Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS :  Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development :  Scripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month :  How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D

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