Researching Open Source 84
philippInAfrica writes "bridges.org just released the software comparison study that looks at free/open source software and proprietary software in community computer labs in Africa. The announcement is on bridges, or you can download the full report in PDF form. To our knowledge, this is the largest field study of its kind in developing countries - we visited 121 computer labs in Namibia, Uganda and South Africa - and we are making all data available to other researchers. Feedback from the international ./ community would be great."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Largest of it's kind? (Score:2)
Car companies do this all the time.. "Best in its class!" or "Rated top in this category". The reason is because they've defined their own "class", and their vehicle is the only one in it.
Re:Largest of it's kind? (Score:2)
Key observations from the study (cut n paste) (Score:5, Informative)
technology solutions appropriate for African public-access computer labs.
for public-access computer labs in Africa.
in practice they are not borne by many of the public-access computer labs in
Africa.
FOSS depends on many factors.
software -- are low overall, and experience with proprietary software is more
pervasive.
is not exploited by the vast majority of public-access lab staff or users in
Africa because they lack the necessary skills. However, it does offers an
opportunity for local service providers to create customised applications.
free/open source and proprietary software) is reasonably high overall,
although FOSS support tends to rely on free services.
African languages, these localised versions are not yet widely used in publicaccess
labs and there is some disagreement about the value of local language
software.
enthusiastic implementing organisations, so the success of FOSS labs relies
heavily on their efforts.
experience can be identified among labs that use the same type of software.
Re:Key observations from the study (cut n paste) (Score:2)
nice, I found the same thing for much of my youth, only in my home lab with now public access. Sadly I grew up and started paying for the apps I use.
Re:Key observations from the study (cut n paste) (Score:2)
Re:Key observations from the study (cut n paste) (Score:2)
In Sweden there is a simmilar problem.
The ? community (Score:5, Funny)
The dotslash community? Are we a bunch of shell scripts now?
Re:The ? community (Score:1)
Re:The ? community (Score:2)
I guess we've been replaced.
I for one welcome our new African Root Overlords.
wbs.
Re:The ? community (Score:2)
The dotslash community? Are we a bunch of shell scripts now?
We're talking about African countries. Egypt is in Africa, and the national language is Arabic which is written write to left. Therefore
Re:The ? community (Score:2)
arrogance of free software developers (Score:3, Interesting)
in 1997, i did a talk on samba. when the question asked was "why should we bother to interoperate with proprietary protocols when we are [clever enough] to write our own and we don't _need_ to interoperate [with microsoft]", everybody clapped.
that was a _very_ interesting and defining moment, because it told me that everyone in that room lacked any sense of responsibility associated with their intelligence, capabilities, and the opportunities that their education and environment had presented them.
now, there's someone here at bridges.org pointing out that Free Software is pretty much useless to people who need it the most.
i hope that this article will bring that home more clearly - that the ignorance and ego [definition of arrogance] of free software developers needs to go.
if you HAVE the ability, ACCEPT the responsibility.
Arrogance? (Score:3, Interesting)
Umm...
From the Samba home page [samba.org]:
Samba is an Open Source/Free Software suite that has, since 1992, provided file and print services to all manner of SMB/CIFS clients, including the numerous versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems. Samba is freely available under the GNU General Public License.
Am I missing something? Samba was developed by a bunch of (ignorant? arrogant?) free software developers.
Re:Arrogance? (Score:2)
yes, you are missing something [which has nothing to do with my original post].
see http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/
Someone doesn't know what they're talking about (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and one more thing. I don't know if you don't know what you're talking about or the people at your meeting didn't know, but neither Samba nor SMB/CIFS, the protocol on which it is based, is a proprietary protocol. It's implementation within Windows is, but the protocol itself isn't. From an article [microsoft.com] about CIFS posted at Microsoft:
CIFS is an open, cross-platform technology based on the native file-sharing protocols built into Microsoft Windows and other popular PC operating systems, and supported on
Re:Someone doesn't know what they're talking about (Score:1, Flamebait)
"lkcl samba" on google.com provides sixteen THOUSAND hits.
teehee
i'm _famous_ for causing trouble, dude *ROTFL*.
i even had the samba team making a fascist censorship decision to classify any posts i make to samba.org as "net abuse".
that takes some doing - especially as i was working up to donating the copyright of all my samba-related code.
you want to talk about ignorance and ego?
how about the samba team being sufficiently willing to be egoistical and to remain ignorant by cuttin
Re:Someone doesn't know what they're talking about (Score:2)
presumably one could do that simply by being a chronic douchebag. maybe you could elaborate to convince us otherwise?
how about the samba team being sufficiently willing to be egoistical and to remain ignorant by cutting off opinions of people that privately they agree with but are so arrogant that they cannot publicly admit that that person might be right?
again, it would help your
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:2)
Or perhaps just that they didn't want to be sharecroppers. Plenty of good software has been written because people didn't feel the need to co-operate with Microsoft.
if you HAVE the ability, ACCEPT the responsibility.
Responsibility to whom?
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:2)
responsibility to those people who do _not_ have the same level of technical ability as you, nor the knowledge that you have, opportunities that you have, or even enough food to keep their strength up enough _to_ learn.
responsibility to those people for whom it's a day-to-day struggle to _live_ let alone focus on how to switch on a computer or worry about where the electricity is going to come from, even bef
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:3, Insightful)
Sucks the way the glass tends to be half empty, doesn't it?
Free software is useless, because it appears there isn't a statistical difference in the success rate between people who choose free software vs. people who choose proprietary. Let's assume by the way that there is no difference between those populations.
Free software developers are irresponsible because they have greate
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:2)
okay. i made sure that i included some words that would sting, because it tends to get the point across: the back-lash at least gets people talking
hey, if i went on about how wonderful free software developers _all_ are, would you believe me? and the gun-toting thing has been done already...
http://science.slashdot. [slashdot.org]
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:2)
Oh, I think it would be better not to. At least if you want to be clear. And personally, I wouldn't go through the bother of shocking people into paying attention without driving my point home precisely.
We all know smart people defend dumb ideas, but it's not the case that every idea defended by smart people is necessarily dumb.
So, if you like, we can both arch our eyebrows and agree that some ideas are just dumb no matter who champions them, but we're only endorsing common
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:2)
e.g. word, excel, powerpoint as particular examples.
since that time, of course, we have been donated a piece-of-overbloated-shit called openoffice (which came out two years after the talk).
but we _still_ don't know how exchange really works, and cannot interoperate with that.
we _still_ don't have an interoperability alternative / way-to-get-out-of-the-trap that is "Active Directory".
i wasn't dismis
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:2)
I would say it's a stretch to say that the article is about OSS
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:2)
thank you for replying because there will be so many people who will look at this thread and _not_ reply and _still_ think what you thought [but actually wrote it down].
so i'll iterate it again, explicitly: my replies to this article are NOTHING to do per se with the bridges article.
my re
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:2)
You are definitely being pompous. Here's what we're hearing: "You should do what I tell you to do even though I'm not employing you! ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!"
You're absolutely right in the above: your replies have NOTHING to do with the article, and everything to do with your twisted world view. Open source developers write software to "scratch an itch", not to be altruistic (although releasing that scratched itch to the world helps reduce reinventing the fingernail, which is a
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:2)
"Because I can" versus "Because I should".
Somehow I think I'd rather trust the "Because I can" crowd rather than the "Because I should" crowd.
"Because I should" seems to get muddled with implications going from I should to YOU should.
Also any useful criteria for "should" need to come from outside the technical arena rather than from inside.
Actually, I think a lot of Open Source software is better, and is improving, precisely because the developers are sufficiently arrogant to believe that software
Re:You forget that FOSS is emergent (Score:2)
i wonder if it would be possible to utilise outsourced skills in say india etc. to develop such programs?
sounds ironic, doesn't it?
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:1)
Go read the study, that's one of the main points.
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:2)
Free as in Keygened, serialzed, or plain jane copied software is good for NOW, but prepare when you have to pay the piper. You dont know when the software nazi's are gonna come get you, or when the "Government wants to make an example out of you".
How much would it cost to convert your business from 'Astalavista software model' to 'mostly GPL model'? Factor that in if you
Re:arrogance of free software developers (Score:3, Insightful)
that was a _very_ interesting and defining moment, because it told me that
everyone in that room...[snip]
Everyone? Come on now, a few people clapped. You are arrogantly assuming no
one else is as "enlightened" as you.
if you HAVE the ability, ACCEPT the responsibility.
I have the ability to do about 50% of the jobs in the world, if not
more. Should I accept the responsibility for them? Obviously not. Even
if I were Superman and could do half of them, I would force half of the
wo
Unlicensed copies of proprietary software? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the "Key ground-level findings":
Donations, fine, but unlicensed copies? So they're saying that one consideration in the FOSS versus proprietary software situation is the willingness of the public labs to break international copyright laws?
Okay, maybe I can accept that from an informational standpoint, but are decisions on how to proceed and what software is going to be used going to be made based on this information?
[This study] was published this week to provide needed background information and advice to people who want to make sound software choices that are right for their local environments...
Oh, I guess indeed they are.
Re:Unlicensed copies of proprietary software? (Score:2)
Absolutely. In Africa, your life isn't worth 50c and crime is rampant. People steal to stay alive. How much do think those same people will care about copyrights from other rich countries?
Africans are used to scrounging for anything that they can use to get by, so if they can install one copy of Windows 1000 times, they'll do that and frankly, I don't blame them.
Re:Unlicensed copies of proprietary software? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not saying it is, but maybe, in some of those places/environments, it is acceptable, even by the government, to use pirated software, or at least to turn a blind eye to that fact.
In a similar but more "official" case, the Brazi
Re:Unlicensed copies of proprietary software? (Score:3, Insightful)
To the repliers of this post, I wanted to make a couple of points.
First of all, I know that not everyone thinks like me and that copyright laws are not exactly a determining factor in many of these government's decisions. That's why I stated that I can accept this from an informational standpoint. However, the self-stated purpose of the study is not just to provide information, but also advice. As such, I am worried that people reading the study may make the decision to go with commercial software beca
Re:Unlicensed copies of proprietary software? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Unlicensed copies of proprietary software? (Score:2)
no one - not even Microsoft - is going to go after a community computer lab
True, but if they use pirated software as a perfectly viable option and the practice becomes widespread, it could seriously hinder any future economic dealings with countries (not just the U.S.) that do strictly enforce copyright laws.
As for the U.S., remember who you're talking about. I wouldn't be surprised if big corporations started lobbying Congress to make financial aid to impoverished and/or developing countries depende
Re:Africa? (Score:2)
What does the distaste for information about a worthless part of the world have anything to do with American out-sourcing?
Besides, its sort of hard to be out-sourced when you own the place.
Ahhh (Score:1)
Re:Can't afford to download free apps? Yikes! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Probably can't do that. AOL most likely has this distribution method patented.
We could translate the instructions into bar codes and fax the resultant pages to the development community over there... Bar code software was the next big thing back in..oh..1977 or so..
Back in the late 70's some software was published this way, on paper, using bar codes. To program the machine, one used a bar code reader to scan the instructions into memory. I can't f
Re:Can't afford to download free apps? Yikes! (Score:2)
It's called a CD. Hello... we're talking Africa here, not all have internet access...
Re:Can't afford to download free apps? Yikes! (Score:2)
But what does access mean in this context:
"In 2001 there was more international IP bandwidth (1.3Gbit/s) available to the 450 000 citizens of Luxembourg than the 820 million citizens of the African continent (1.2Gbit/s). Although available bandwidth is now slowly increasing, as new satellite providers enter the market a lack of bandwidth s
No, Freedom matters (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, the answer is A LOT, and all to oftern I see that attitude about the 3rd world express itself in ways like "well free software doesn't really do you much good when you're starving" and I find that attitude arrogant and condesending. Because what that is really saying is well "you poor souls are too stupid
Re:No, Freedom matters (Score:2)
If it starves to death.
Seriously, take a look at what you just wrote. You called starving people arrogant and condescending because they prefer to be alive and less free to being dead and more free.
I quote your quote: "what good does it do to have freedom to say waht you want and worship the religion you want when noone guarantees you will have food on the table"
and your response "A LOT"
and from that I draw the point that you'd rather b
Oh we got some feedback alright... (Score:1)
We now have a choice...Point of TFA. (Score:1)
WSIS related symposium (Score:3, Informative)
In particular there are maps of African connectivity (Dr. Dzvimbo's) and mentions of use in education (like Dr. Miyagawa from MIT's OpenCourseware).
The U.S. in 2003 (at the first part of this conference) apparently was against the final draft saying anything about open source or choosing open source over commercial software. However this time it seems open source is being explicitly covered.
One interesting person there was Mike Reed, Director of United Nations University's International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST [unu.edu]). He talked about their hiring 10 open source developers to develop a standardized desktop distro for learning in the third world. He's a famous mathematician and computer scientist, in particular he wants to mathematically prove that a distro and its programs will "just work" which sounds pretty interesting. Anybody wanting to go to Macau should contact him!
I converted all the pdfs to text and grepped "open source" below FYI.
It doesn't work properly. (Score:2)
Because this is what I hate the most: Some company is looking into spending a lot of IT dollars on something that will hopefully help their business in some way. A representative from Microso
My Kenya experience (Score:2)
The key is training. I hope to bring some people up to speed on FOSS and let it spread a little. When cost doesn't matter, what you are familiar with does.
hey, I RTFR (Score:2)
--we want it simpler to learn, use and modify.--
who doesn't, besides the software industry itself in general?
threads of arrogance regarding FOSS and we all know of marketing deceptions from the proprietary side.
sorta a stuck between a rock and a hardplace.
Overall it seems to me that the number one priority is figuring out what uses computers can genuinely be to the Africian people, as a whole, a group, and individuals..
Once you figure that out, then perhaps you'll then have more control