OSS in Developing Countries Bulletin, 2001

Better Living Through Software - Sunday, September 16, 2001

So I wonder when Miguel is going to pick up his blog again? It is a nice read. Vincente Fox is here in the U.S. today, and demonstrating again how much he cares about creating opportunity for the Mexican people. Some have suggested that Fox mandate the use of Linux within Mexico, presumably to save on up-front software licensing fees that might go to Microsoft. Fox has a background in business, though, so he has a great deal of experience taking care not to be "a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing." This is not to say that price is unimportant, but considering that Windows without any volume discounts is still only about 10% of the price of the hardware it runs on, it's not so likely that price would be such a issue. I seem to recall this very same issue coming up with regards to Brazil's "Volkscomputer". When it comes to giving things to the "volks", politics and pragmatism seem often incompatible. If Brazil is any indication, it would be wise to stick to pragmatism and put the politics on hold. Packed with memory, the most advanced graphics processor, Intel microprocessor, Microsoft software, and a hard drive -- all for less that $300, I suggest that the world's governments turn to the XBox as humanity's Volkscomputer.

[Jul 7, 2001] Slashdot Playstation, Dreamcast And The 3rd World

"CNN has an "theater of absurd"  article on using Playstations running Linux to give people in developing nations access to information on health issues such as AIDS, clean water, etc.  that might make sense to universities but even in this case there are way better, traditional alternatives out there. A barebone Duron 700-based PC can made for about $150 bucks (motherboard+cpu $80, case($15), floppy($10) and 128M RAM ($24), keyboard+mouse($15)). Like a Playstation, it will need all the peripherals to be added. However, it's half the cost, and it runs all x86 software, and it can use cheap, standard components. Even after adding a hard disk you can still squeak in under $300, which is cheaper than the PS2 before the necessary additional components.

This story is wildly out of whack with reality (filters are probably more important that Internet connectivity about clean water ;-). The most absurd thesis is that playstation II's are cheaper than computers. A complete PSX2 'computer' would come out to something like $700 US after you add hard drive and globalstar modem connectivity, plus a TV set...

Isn't this a bit too optimistic? (Score:1) by Florian Weimer on Friday July 06, @04:30PM EST (#59) (User #88405 Info)

It seems to me that the initiators of the projects are overly optimistic regarding the availability of electricity. I've heard of some of the troubles of running computers in developing countries: electrical power is only available in the evenings, if at all, and it's not very reliable. A few additional problems: You have got a hard time to get any supplies (for example, laser printer toner; some university is asking visiting professors to bring some toner with them for their one and only laser printer) and replacements for broken parts, high-tech devices are usually not designed to be repaired, and it's unlikely that they can be repaired in the same country. Furthermore, a lot of developing countries have quite an extreme climate, which doesn't increase the lifetime of electronic equipment either. No, I don't think game consoles are a silver bullet in the struggle of educating people in the developing countries.

Teaching people about UNIX to learn about AIDS? (Score:2, Insightful) by GMOL on Friday July 06, @04:07PM EST (#16) (User #122258 Info)

That's the dumbest thing I've heard. The cite the fact that these machines are easier to use than PC's (designed for 12 year olds blah blah blah)...but unix is unix (you'll still have to learn it)....$300 console plus TV/monitor isn't much cheaper than a PC....not to mention the fact there will be a number of apps you can't run....all so you can educate them about AIDS? Give me a break... These are the kind of articles that are insulting 'solutions' to real 3rd world problems....what they really are are free advertising for companies like Sun.... I'm sorry IT is important, but no one has shown it being a factor in reducing AIDS transmission...nor do think it makes sense to talk about it right now....

Sheesh... (Score:3, Informative) by Diomedes01 (wbriggs.zoo@uvm@edu) on Friday July 06, @04:02PM EST (#6) (User #173241 Info) http://www.uvm.edu/~wbriggs

While I understand that these systems may help to educate the citizens of Third World Countries, does anyone else feel that perhaps there are more important things to focus on before addressing the "digital divide?" Things like clean water, stricter environmental regulations and general health and sanitation? A Playstion running Linux is a great toy, but it won't do you much good if you have no food because your farmland has extremely high levels of toxic chemicals in the soil, or if easily curable diseases (in First World countries, anyway) are killing off most of the population.

Not this bullshit again...[African's Response] (Score:5, Insightful) by Carnage4Life on Friday July 06, @04:52PM EST (#78) (User #106069 Info)

Everytime slashdot posts an article about computers and Africa there always has to be some +4 or +5 insightful post that restates this misguided opinion. Here's my response (some of it a repost from a Geekcorps article). Disclaimer: I'm African and the last time I was back home was 2 months ago. It is true that most African's live in the kind of abject poverty that most Westerners can't even imagine let alone endure. It is also true that basic infrastructure like regular power supply, potable water, health care services, etc. but this doesn't mean that this should somehow preclude African's from the fruits of the 21st century. Instead of being like most Westerners whose only thoughts of Africa occur when they guiltily switch the channel whenever one of those commercials asking for money to feed starving children who can be fed for less than $1 a day shows up, thesre are people who are trying to help out in some way or the other. It is in extremely poor taste for you to bash them for donating their time and resources to a society desperately in need. Frankly I'm glad they're doing this, with the advent of the Net I've kept in touch with friends I left behind via ICQ and email whom I thought I'd never talk to again due to the prohibitive costs of calling or locating them after they moved. Anyone who is helping with the proliferation of technology and the Net in Africa has my thanks and undying appreciation. Oh by the way, for all the other people who are bashing them for sending "toys" to Africa. What the fuck are you doing for the poor and starving of the Earth? PS: The last time I went home I asked my friends what they wanted and one of them asked for Java programming books. I am constantly in touch with another friend who just switched jobs and does ADO and Access database programming who used to write VBA applications in the past. My mom just bought a PC and complains about how she always ends up browsing for hours when all she wanted to do was spend 5 minutes checking her email. Hope that makes some you guys think before you rate this kind of jingoistic claptrap up. -- The above post is my opinion and does not reflect the policies or views of my employer.

• Re:Not this bullshit again...[African's Response] by Diomedes01 (Score:1) Friday July 06, @05:02PM EST

  Did you read my post? (Score:4, Insightful) by Carnage4Life on Friday July 06, @05:30PM EST (#106) (User #106069 Info)

  If you really feel that this will be helpful, then that's great. However, some of your points just don't make sense. First, you say things aren't as bad as we make them out to be. Where did I say things aren't as bad as people make them out to be? I said It is true that most African's live in the kind of abject poverty that most Westerners can't even imagine let alone endure. It is also true that [we lack] basic infrastructure like regular power supply, potable water, health care services, etc. but this doesn't mean that this should somehow preclude African's from the fruits of the 21st century. which in my opinion clearly states that things are bad but doesn't mean that we shouldn't be allowed to use the Internet and computers until we are as advanced as the Western world was in the 20th century. You then say that it's in "poor taste" because the society is desparately in need. I said It is in extremely poor taste for you to bash them for donating their time and resources to a society desperately in need. meaning that it is in poor taste to bash the people who are trying to find cheaper alternatives to getting Africans access to PCs. Since when does having access to the Web count as "desparately in need"? Lacking access to information does count as desperately in need. For instance, ignorance has caused AIDS in Africa to reach epidemic proportions. If a lot of these people had access to information just a few years earlier the devastation would not be as widespread as it is today. The same goes for a large number of diseases as well. -- The above post is my opinion and does not reflect the policies or views of my employer.

Loss Leader... can't work forever. (Score:3, Insightful) by rkent (rkent(at)acm.org) on Friday July 06, @04:09PM EST (#17) (User #73434 Info) http://max.cs.kzoo.edu/~rkent/

Playstations are cheap compared with PCs And why is this exactly? It's because the PS2 hardware device is a loss-leader, or at least a very-thin-profit-margin leader. They are basically sold only so that people will go out and buy Sony Playstation games, which, at $50+ for a DVDROM, are certainly sold at quite a profit. So, I'm certainly not saying it's morally wrong to take PS2s, install linux, and ship 'em to the big bad "third world" (which is also getting a lot of solar cells, what's with that place these days?). What I'm saying is, the parade can't go on forever. If sony sells 10M of these things and only 2M people are using them for gaming, the price could increase significantly. Then, at the very least, the low-cost benefit would be gone. Worst case, Sony would discontinue the platform altogether. What I'd rather see is some stripped-down hardware (like P2's with 64M and 4G) shipped over for this kind of use. This kind of thing could probably be gotten as donations from corporations that are surplussing it (ie, throwing it away), and they could even claim it as a tax write-off. Everyone wins.

[Jun  24. 2001] The ArsDigita Foundation -- a very interesting initiative

The ArsDigita Foundation's mission is to foster the development of web services that work better for society. With a commitment to outstanding education, training and technical assistance, the Foundation's programs include, ArsDigita University, ArsDigita Prize (1999 & 2000), ArfDigita, and others. Formed in 1998, the foundation received its 501 (c) 3 status in 1999. We are supported by a generous commitment from the ArsDigita Corporation and its employees.

ArsDigita University

• We operate our own one-year, tuition-free, post-baccalaureate program in computer science. Our goal is to offer the world's best computer science education, at an undergraduate level, to people who are currently unable to obtain it. Visit ArsDigita University to look at the courses offered and to check out distance learning possibilities.
• Our first class is a diverse group of 36 students.

ArsDigita Prize:  The goal of the ArsDigita Prize has been to foster the development of interesting, innovative, non-commercial web services. The ArsDigita Prize, awarded annually in June, recognizes achievement by young people who have built and maintained web services. Web programmers 18 and younger are rewarded for creating non-commercial sites that are useful, educational, and collaborative.  The 2001 ArsDigita Prize is sponsored by ArsDigita Corporation.

ArsDigita Site contains several e-books including

• Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing

• SQL for Web Nerds

• Tcl for Web Nerds

• Building an Online Community

[May 23. 2001] LJ 86 Algorithms in Africa

Eleven years ago I installed a computer system at a vocational training and development center in Tutume, Botswana. Tutume is a rural village on the northeastern edge of the Kgalagadi desert in southern Africa. The computer was intended to help this organization, known as Tutume Brigades, catch up on its bookkeeping for several business units crucial to the local economy. Businesses included a brick-making unit, carpentry workshop, auto repair garage, sorghum mill, school uniform production unit, tractor hire and vegetable garden. For the local village and the surrounding catchment era, the Brigades were literally the only game in the bush for commodities, trade skills, training and employment opportunities.

When I arrived in Tutume, I was a pure novice in the field of foreign assistance. I was also a mid-career financial professional, with several years of experience in nonprofit and health-care management in the United States. And like most aid workers new on the ground in Africa, I knew what was best. In my assessment of the center, I believed a computer was essential to get a handle on the Brigades' financial position, which otherwise consisted of eight separate sets of badly maintained manual ledgers, over nine months in arrears. Except for the bank statements of eight separate checking accounts (and even the bank statements proved unreliable), we had no way of knowing if the center had any money. Every time we had to make payroll or buy another truckload of cement, we were in the heart of fiscal darkness.

Over the course of the next several months, I proceeded to computerize the records and train local staff in basic operation of the system. By the end of the first year, the financial records of the center were timely and accurate. Moreover, other staff members were beginning to use the computer for tasks such as word processing and spreadsheets. Many of these employees had never even used a typewriter before.

If I were to tell no more of this story and fade here to one of the glorious Kgalagadi sunsets, this might be called a win. Although set in the predawn (and pre-Linux) history of the Internet era, today this would be described as a small success story of ``bridging the digital divide'' in Africa--like I was a regular Albert Schweitzer of the Information Age or something.

But the truth is not so simple, and the issues of foreign assistance are not so trivial. The fact is, I am not proud of this story. Because as my time in Tutume went on, I realized I had blundered badly, to the point of putting the Brigades in serious jeopardy. I began to ask myself such basic questions as: What would happen to the computer after I left? Was the staff fully capable of operating the system independently? Would backups be maintained and performed rigorously? Were skills sufficient to troubleshoot problems and reinstall the system if necessary? If the equipment failed or was stolen, could the center afford to replace it? And what would the center do when the staff I had trained for so long were lured away by more lucrative jobs in the big city?

These questions all led to the same answer: the Brigades would be left in even worse shape than I found them. Rather than gaining empowerment, independence and enablement, they would more than likely be left powerless, dependent and possibly ruined. And all because of my own cultural myopia, despite my good intentions.

It is axiomatic in the field of foreign assistance that the aid program will take credit for the successes, while failures are blamed on the host country. The psychology of failure can then be even more severe and long-lasting than the loss of the project. While I was working in Tutume, for example, a friend of mine was working in the village of Lobatse in southern Botswana. Seven years earlier, an aid organization from northern Europe had decided a wool sweater factory would be just the ticket for the economic development of the village. Of course, northern Europeans are fond of nice wool sweaters and very likely have great need for them, particularly in the colder climes of northern Europe. The market for wool sweaters is less extensive in the sweltering and sparsely populated Kgalagadi desert, however. After seven years of subsidizing the losses of the operation, the aid organization finally decided it was never going to be sustainable, and they pulled the plug on the effort. My friend's unenviable assignment was to put all the women out of work, sell the facility and liquidate the equipment. It was hard for many of the women not to feel that the fault was somehow their own.

Fortunately for Brigades in Tutume, such failure was averted. As the story there continues, once I realized the risks, I spent the next several months converting the accounting system back to manual ledgers, hiring and training additional staff in bookkeeping procedures and enabling them to use the computer primarily as a support system, rather than as the central financial database.

But what do these stories from Tutume and Lobatse have to do with Linux and emerging markets? The rest of this article will consider that question.

[ Apr 30, 2001] Yahoo - Forbes:Alternative Software by By John C. Dvorak

Today's small business should seriously consider alternatives to large commercial software packages, such as Microsoft Office, as one way to save money. If an information technology department can't find ways to incorporate some of the outstanding freeware and shareware into the corporate IT infrastructure, they should be replaced with more cost conscious personnel.

Shareware, freely distributed software, is paid for voluntarily when it is used. It tends to be less expensive than shrink-wrapped software and can often be better.

... ... ... 

Finding any competition for PowerPoint is difficult. This product has become the de facto standard for all presentations. Microsoft did an excellent job of getting everyone to use it. The best free alternative to PowerPoint seems to be StarOffice Impress, which is contained within the StarOffice Suite from Sun Microsystems . For $39, Sun will send you a complete CD with documentation, or you can download it for free from the Web site. The product runs on Windows, Solaris and Linux systems. Various filters allow you to exchange data from StarOffice applications to and from Microsoft applications.

StarOffice is very popular at many universities where compatibility between Windows machines and Unix-based machines is necessary. A new version, 5.2, has just been released, which includes language support for Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

But many individuals and companies are turning more and more towards white box computers, which can be quite inexpensive. In the upcoming releases of Windows XP and the newest versions of Office, Microsoft will be requiring that users register with the company or the software will be disabled. The serial numbers will be checked and duplicate copies will simply not work except under specific circumstances. You will be allowed, for example, to make a copy for your laptop, but that's all.

Microsoft can change any of these policies in the months ahead, but its doubtful. The company is tired of struggling against illegal software sharing. Exactly how big of a problem it is for Microsoft is unknown. But cracking down on sharing may force users to look towards alternatives and actually hurt sales in the long term as users realize that free or inexpensive alternatives are outstanding.

This has been the Catch-22 of piracy. There is anecdotal evidence that piracy is actually a positive marketing tool. People will make an illegal copy of a friend's favorite program and find they like it enough to eventually buy it. Or maybe the person doesn't buy it, but they don't buy a competitor's product either. This is largely how PowerPoint became the standard. All the other presentations programs dried up.

By forcing registration, Microsoft risks losing market share and mind share to cheap, more-than-adequate alternatives. Since it's been difficult for Microsoft to continually add new features to its suite, the competitors have had time to catch up in the race to offer features. StarOffice is particularly threatening because it allows a user to take a second step and maybe run the program on the efficient Linux OS. The savings a large corporation would make if it bought 10,000 white box machines running StarOffice on Linux could easily be $200 a machine or more, depending on the license agreements.

For any IT department on a tight budget, the alternatives to the Microsoft Office Suite are worth a look. These are also perfect programs for small offices and individuals.

Slashdot Free Software Law in Argentina

Re: No value to software in Argentina (Score:5, Insightful)
by orco on Saturday April 28, @03:07PM EST (#109)
(User #62816 Info) 
(hope my english won't give this a 0 score ;)
This is true. Since a couple of years Argentina and other latin countries (ie Bolivia) are being pressured to legalize all
their software.

But I'm really confused: 

1.1st of all, as an argentinian, ex .gov IT and linux user (LRU #120947) I'm gladly impressed and, of course, I
dream some day I'd be able to call my country GNUar :) But,
2.By tradition this is a pro-M$ and anti-Un*x country, mostly because in the 80's we had a prohibition to import
anything 
3.IT/IS level of knowledge at the universities is (IMHO) bad. Most students only master Winblows and VB. 
4.IT/IS salaries are too low to get people interested in studying how to run Linux properly ($700 a month for a linux
admin with a year of experience - at least at Mendoza). Most of them have 2 jobs 

In the meantime, I can see 3 advantages: huge gov. savings and legalization, GNU everywhere and a lot of people will
have to study GNU tools...

and 2 big troubles: this kind of imposition can generate huge resistances on people used to M$ tools and also big
pressures from monopol... tut-tut-tut

Re:We will see more and more of this (Score:4, Insightful)
by donutello on Saturday April 28, @02:30PM EST (#83)
(User #88309 Info) 

Very insightful. Congratulations on discovering what socialist countries suffered through for the last 50 years. 

In India, for example, the government decided that in order to encourage local industry, etc. they would ban or at least make it very expensive by imposing duties, the importing of foreign goods. Great idea, in principle - except if you lived there during the time. Indian cars sucked. There was no incentive to improve, of course, because there was no competition. Until the early 90s, most cars sold in India were essentially the same as a 1950's Fiat. Small, boxy, made-of-cast-iron tank-like pieces of crap that had no air-conditioning or even fans in them! This is just an example - it was common to expect to wait in line for more than an hour to deposit a check - there were no ATMs etc. Banks were nationalized and had no reason to improve. 

There's a lesson there that the wise will learn. Others are condemned to have it happen to them. 

Mmmm.. donuts

really stupid idea (Score:5, Insightful)
by Proud Geek ([email protected]) on Saturday April 28, @02:12PM EST (#71)
(User #260376 Info) 
What would really be useful would be to use the best software tool for the job, considering issues like efficiency, ease of use, cost, maintainability, etc.. Obviously, it will sometimes be free software, and other times not be. 

But I guess that would be too much work for a government. That would put too much responsibility in the hands of people with a chance of knowing what they are doing. Better to adopt a policy of all free software, or all Microsoft, or all Ada, and remove all freedom of choice. That way no one is able to make a good decision, err, I meant, no one is able to screw up. 

I do have a question, though. Suppose (say for interoperability, because of evil closed document formats) the only possible word processor is MS Word. Now, Linux is a viable alternative to MS Windows, and hence mandated. Does the choice of MS Word mean they have to run MS Windows (pretend that there is no way to run Word from Linux), or will they run Linux and give up Word? 

I've seen this situation before. A company standardizes on WordPerfect, but the secretaries have Word as well so they can deal with outside documents. They just change word processors based on what they're working on (actually, they only use Word, because they like it better, but don't tell anyone, that's their secret). I'm not sure how it would work if they had to reboot to switch word processors. Anyway, for a company this works great. They might lose business if they couldn't send or receive Word documents. For governments this isn't a concern; they can just serve their citizens less efficiently. It's not like the citizens
have another choice.

Open Format not Open Software (Score:3, Insightful)
by Delor on Saturday April 28, @11:08PM EST (#228)
(User #302500 Info) 
While I like the idea of free software and open source, I think this argument is heading off at a tangent. Its not the client that matters, Its the file format. If you have an open file format that can be read by any client, and can be supported by future versions, open or closed, then you have a lot more value. You are not dependant on any one company. You have no problems with version inconsistancy, and any time you dont like the current client, you can make or acuire another. Without haveing to convert your records and archives. The second point about open file formats is in archiving. The whole digital darkage argument is based on closed file formats that go out of fashion and thus doom the data held in them to death. If the whole of argentinias data is in open formats that stand the needs of time, they will have a much more reliable historical record than contries that depend on data in closed formats. So my argument is that argentinas govenment should standardise and open the file formats first and worry about the software to handle it second. Everyone knows how fast software changes... open software has alot of benefits. But open storage formats and especialy open exchange formats will be the most valuable gifts that anyone can give to future generations. Think XML, or any of the other open exchange formats. If they are not good enough
then make them so... Delor 

broked country (3th is the one) (Score:2, Informative)
by germania (ser at perio dot unlp dot edu dot ar) on Sunday April 29, @11:10AM EST (#268)
(User #447770 Info) http://kessler.com.ar
hi, I'm from argentina, some things: 

- this seems like a dream come true, but I will not hold my breath (more below) 

- in a country so broken economically, I always wondered why the governament spend millions of dollars in microsoft software (specially in the server arena), and *I know* they spend millions dollars, because I worked in gov.ar for two years. 

- this country is economically so f* broked, that we had to ask the FMI money every week, and more money we ask, the double more money we debt, the triple we had to pay taxes (the geometrical increment is due to corruptions in gov). 

- you simply cannot believe how low is the IT knowledge in gov.ar, in my work I had to demostrate how linux can work flawlessly meanwhile they have tryed *for one year* to make NT work without hitchs, and they still use DOS clipper for their enterprise datawarehouse, togheter with win95 file sharing so the data is "at your fingertips", enabling a new era in the network productivity environment. 

- I sincerely hope this law passed his way, but I fear ms will play "tentation island" with a lot of people that this law may never see the ligth. 

- I'm currently unemployed (well, I'm not alone, 20% people here are unemployed), so if the governament want to train some monkey staff, "billy, don't loose my number" :-) 

/sergio

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