International Organisations Take a Close Look at Linux

For India, it appears that good news is
around the corner. International organisations and prominent
networks worldwide are waking up to the rich potential that free
and open-source software can offer to third-world countries. But
can this potential be tapped speedily and effectively?Global organisations, from UNESCO to the World Bank, are all
catching up on the possibility of using GNU/Linux as a potent tool
in working towards development. This is especially true in
countries where the cost of a proprietary office suite could eat up
six months or more of the average citizen's earnings.Radhika Lal,
an information and communication technology policy advisor for the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), recently drew
attention to a conference titled
"Open Source for
E-Government", to be held in Washington, DC on October
17-18. InfoDev, the Cyberspace Policy Institute of The George
Washington University, and the UNDP are jointly behind this event.
The conference hopes to draw participants from local, national and
international organizations in both the public and private
sectors.The conference intends to present cases of best practices, as
well as raise awareness about the potential of open source and free
software for e-governance. More importantly, it will be sharing
experiences among policy makers, donors, users and consumers,
universities, and industry specialists in open-source, e-government
and related fields.ICT-for-development is a campaign to use more of the Internet
for global development and for fighting problems such as poverty
and illiteracy. Despite some shared goals and concerns with the
GNU/Linux world, so far little networking has been done between
these two separate circles.Other Arms of the UNBesides the UNDP, other arms of the United Nations also are
showing increasing interest in the potential of free
software/open-source tools. Paris-headquartered UNESCO (United
Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) recently
launched
its own
free software portal.UNESCO's
Jean-Claude
Dauphin, of the Information Society Division, also
announced that this international organisation is looking out for
contributors with extensive knowledge of the Free Software movement
in correlation to UNESCO's fields of expertise--education, science
and culture.UNESCO is particularly focused on those people coming from
the third world (also called the "South" countries) who could make
propositions for "revising, updating and extending the UNESCO Free
Software Portal", as well as for including new basic documents.
"This work could be done using a fee or consultant contract, and
the fee can be discussed depending on the amount of work described
in the contract", Dauphin said.Check out these sites for more information:UNESCO
Libraries
PortalUNESCO
Archives
PortalUNESCO
Free Software
PortalUNESCO
Observatory on the Information SocietyNew Tools for CDS/ISISRecently,
UNESCO
also announced the launch of two new tools--ImpExp2709 and
IsisAscii v 0.92--for data exchange from and to its CDS/ISIS
software. CDS/ISIS is a generalized information storage and
retrieval system that is freely distributed. It has attracted users
in places like libraries within the third world. The new utilities
have been released with their source code under the GPL
license.Meanwhile, UNDP's APDIP (Asia-Pacific Development Information
Programme), based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, also is learning to
think seriously about organizing some kind of a consultation on
open source, GNU/Linux and related issues. "We want to see how we
can further this cause in the region", said APDIP's Shahid
Akhtar.Niranjan
Rajani, of Pakistani origin and based in Finland, currently
is working on a research project titled, "Significance of
Free/Open-Source Software for Developing Countries". Financed by
the Finnish Foreign Ministry, Niranjan has undertaken to write the
paper by the end of November 2002 for Maailma.Net, a local division
of OneWorld.Net.This project's goal is to discover, evaluate and analyze the
extent to which free and open-source software, especially some of
their most significant and popular projects--GNU/Linux, Apache,
Mozilla, OpenOffice--are being used in developing or third-world
countries. It will also look at their possible impact on the
economies, societies and lives in these countries.Convincing Governments"Shift over boldly to the world of open source and free
software": that's the message being sent to governments across
India, as official computerisation efforts get bogged down due to
spiraling software costs and speedy, software-fueled hardware
obsolescence. Senior IT and e-government officials from across the
country tuned in attentively during a recent seminar held in Goa,
as executives from computing giant IBM and leading Linux systems
supplier Red Hat India narrated long lists of benefits that
governments could receive by going to Linux. Pointing to examples
from across the globe, Red Hat India explained that the US
Department of Energy has built supercomputers on GNU/Linux and that
the Chinese are making Linux the official server operating system.
Overall, GNU/Linux is being widely used within universities,
military installations and governments.In addition, some months back an organisation under India's
Ministry of Information Technology, the ER&DCI (Electronics
Research and Development Centre of India), entered into a strategic
alliance with leading Linux systems supplier Red Hat India to
popularize the open-source solution in the government
sector.GNU/Linux is a suitable tool for organising too, as it was
recently pointed out by
LINC. "The Low Income Networking and Communication (LINC)
Project of the Welfare Law Center has helped many low-income led
organizing groups acquire access to the Internet and use technology
more effectively," says
Dirk Slater, senior
circuit rider for LINC at the Welfare Law Center.Although these groups have increased their abilities to
communicate with one another and their allies by using the
Internet, one communication hurdle remains--communicating with
their leadership via the Internet. Despite many digital divide
initiatives addressing access to the Internet in low-income
communities, it is still an issue.Public Internet access points, such as libraries and schools,
are not sufficient. Many low-income leaders do not have access to
the Internet where it would make the most impact--in their homes.
LINC argues that the need for Internet communication is
particularly great for rural groups whose members live far apart
and cannot have frequent face-to-face meetings because of distance,
time and money constraints."We began to explore the idea of using Linux, a free
operating system that works well on older computers, when we
learned of Microsoft's decision to discontinue support of its older
operating systems like Windows 95", said Slater. LINC supporters
also say they had been troubled by the frequent problems that occur
for Windows users simply by having Windows run on its own. "Giving
a person who lives in a rural area an older computer with Windows
seemed like we were just asking for trouble", says Slater.Therefore, LINC wanted to increase its ability to provide
stable desktop systems using donated computers for board members
and leaders of low-income led organizations that LINC serves. "Our
goal is to increase the ability of LINC Project partner groups to
use open-source software to support their organizing work. We also
wanted to document the project as much as we possibly could, so we
could provide details of our experiences for others doing similar
projects," LINC explains.To help in their goals, LINC identified a partner in Grass
Roots Organizing (GRO), based in Mexico. GNU/Linux was installed on
10 computers used as standalone workstations in people's homes.
GNU/Linux also was installed on a brand new standalone computer to
work as the main computer in the GRO office. Links were built with
the Mizzou Linux Users Group for ongoing local support. "We still
have a long way to go before we can call this a completely
successful project. After a period of a few months we will assess
whether the board members are actually using the computers to
communicate more effectively", said Slater.To view the daily journals on the project with GRO,
visit the
LINC Project Linux pages.Need to NetworkBala Pillai, who
was previously based in Malaysia and now lives in Sydney,
Australia, is founder of Tamil
Innaiyam, an organisation that promotes the Tamil language
worldwide. He points to the impact GNU/Linux is making in some
distant areas of the third world. Pillai says:The most interactive Open Source/Linux community
in our time zone (Asia) springs out of the Philippines., primarily
because the Filipino psyche is a more secure psyche, a more
self-confident psyche. Folks who are self-confident worry about the
future less and allocate more time diagnosing and solving problems
rather than echoing and re-echoing it. Filipinos are also more into
sharing and on-line sharing--we should look to more symbiosis with
them.Pillai also notes that the Manila-based Miguel Paraz, whom he
has interacted with since 1996, is a key catalyst in the Filipino
Linux community.
"Q-Linux.com is a good
starting point to get a feel for the key open-source catalysts in
the Philippines", he says.Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-based Dinesh, who runs
Alphaque.net is
another leading open-source catalyst from the region, explains
Pillai. "Do look for symbiosis opportunities there too", he
suggests."I see lots of room for us to [work] together. For example,
there is likely to be areas of diagnosing, documenting, analyzing,
coding or publicizing where there is over-duplication. If we
coordinated ourselves and found out where our circles and
priorities intersect, we could share this work and get [results]
faster", he adds.Frederick Noronha is a
freelance journalist in Goa, India.

email: fred@bytesforall.org