Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Announcements Software Linux

Researching Open Source 84

Posted by Hemos from the learning-what's-best dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Researching Open Source More

Researching Open Source

Comments Filter:

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday May 30, 2005 @10:27AM (#12676292)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • "The largest field study of its kind? Or the only study of its kind?"

      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.

      • Sneaky, sure, but they're technically not lying. If something is the only one of it's kind, then it technically is also the best of it's kind (and the worst, too, but they wouldn't advertise that)...

  • Key observations from the study (cut n paste) (Score:5, Informative)

    by emj ( 15659 ) on Monday May 30, 2005 @10:33AM (#12676319) Journal
    • Both free/open source software and proprietary software can be used to offer
      technology solutions appropriate for African public-access computer labs.
    • The thin-client model provides a reliable, cost-effective and popular solution
      for public-access computer labs in Africa.
    • Software license costs for proprietary software are significant in principle, but
      in practice they are not borne by many of the public-access computer labs in
      Africa.
    • At ground level in Africa, the potential for cost savings gained from the use of
      FOSS depends on many factors.
    • General ICT skills levels -- especially for installation and maintenance of
      software -- are low overall, and experience with proprietary software is more
      pervasive.
    • Training courses for PS are more widely available than for FOSS.
    • The fact that FOSS makes source code available and encourages modifications
      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.
    • The availability and quality of local technical support in Africa (for both
      free/open source and proprietary software) is reasonably high overall,
      although FOSS support tends to rely on free services.
    • While there are a number of projects underway to translate software into
      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.
    • Most FOSS labs in Africa are set up and supported by a small group of
      enthusiastic implementing organisations, so the success of FOSS labs relies
      heavily on their efforts.
    • General trends with regard to economic situation, age of the lab, and staff
      experience can be identified among labs that use the same type of software.
    • # Software license costs for proprietary software are significant in principle, but in practice they are not borne by many of the public-access computer labs in Africa.

      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.
    • Aside from the language stuff, I don't think these conclusions are unique to Africa. If you remove the phrase "in Africa" from each bullet point, you could have a very believable set of statements about lots of places. (this is also a bit of a blueprint to show where FOSS has holes that need to be filled.)

  • The ? community (Score:5, Funny)

    by tquinlan ( 868483 ) <tom@thomasquinla[ ]om ['n.c' in gap]> on Monday May 30, 2005 @10:34AM (#12676326) Homepage
    Feedback from the international ./ community would be great."

    The dotslash community? Are we a bunch of shell scripts now? ;)

  • arrogance of free software developers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lkcl ( 517947 ) <lkcl@lkcl.net> on Monday May 30, 2005 @10:41AM (#12676357) Homepage
    got your attention? good.

    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)

      by KingSkippus ( 799657 )

      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.

      • Am I missing something? Samba was developed by a bunch of (ignorant? arrogant?) free software developers.

        yes, you are missing something [which has nothing to do with my original post].

        see http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/2 8/2058251&tid=146&tid=14 for hints.

    • 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

      • look me up, dude :)

        "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
        • i even had the samba team making a fascist censorship decision to classify any posts i make to samba.org as "net abuse".

          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

    • 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.

      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?
      • responsibility to whom? interesting question that invites clarification, as it may not be obvious.

        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
    • now, there's someone here at bridges.org pointing out that Free Software is pretty much useless to people who need it the most.

      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
      • Sucks the way the glass tends to be half empty, doesn't it? ... tell me about it :)

        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... :) ... i think it sensible (like i did in one of my other replies to this thread) to refer you here:

        http://science.slashdot. [slashdot.org]
        • and perhaps leave it at that

          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
    • They also point out that properietary software is similarly useless since it doesn't solve Africa's specific problems in a useful way either. The areas of computing that could be of benefit to Africans in their day-to-day lives are also the weakest ones in the western world -- education and small business management tools. Those are neither lucrative nor particularly interesting areas so they get ignored by both proprietary and OSS developers.

      I would say it's a stretch to say that the article is about OSS

      • i read the article thoroughly. you are right: the article is not about OSS developer arrogance. however, its timely occurrence here on slashdot gave me an opportunity to raise something that i believe needs to be said.

        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
        • You should listen to your wife.

          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

        • Hmmmm.
          "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
    • So what you're saying is Free as in Freedom can't compete monitarily with Free as in Stolen. Congratulations, you're right.

      Go read the study, that's one of the main points.
      • Free as in GPL or similar licenses provide lowest cost over time. It may cost more now to convert but you can 'stay there' without worry.

        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
    • Who's the arrogant one here?

      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)

    by KingSkippus ( 799657 ) on Monday May 30, 2005 @10:47AM (#12676373) Homepage Journal

    From the "Key ground-level findings":

    ...the fact that FOSS is available free of license costs has little financial benefits for African labs, which almost never pay for the software they use because of donations and unlicensed copies.

    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.

    • "willingness of the public labs to break international copyright laws?"

      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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Life is very different in other parts of the world/cultures. Do not think your way of thinking applies to them. I'm not bashing you, it just seems that a lot of people tend to forget that -- especially when they are more or less isolated from other cultures / parts of the world.

      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

    • 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

    • I agree that the willingness of the labs to use unlicensed non-free software is probably not a good fact upon which to base decisions about software. However, it is important to remember that no one - not even Microsoft - is going to go after a community computer lab in developing Africa for using pirated software. It would be a public relations nightmare, and not worth their time and money since they can't afford to pay for the software anyway. For these labs, pirated software is a perfectly viable opti

      • 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

  • Ahhh (Score:1)

    by HG2 ( 878937 )
    ./././././././././././ still gets you to slashdot.

  • No, Freedom matters (Score:2, Interesting)

    by argoff ( 142580 )
    In the old USSR, it was common for people to gripe "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"

    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
    • How can a social culture like that not lead to long term success!

      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
  • "Feedback from the international ./ community would be great."
    Even if that "feedback" turns out to be a slashdotting?
  • The FOSS movement as a whole seems to be experiencing growing pains. This article basically points to the existence of a software multiverse...meaning there are alternatives. FOSS is a reaction to Microsoft desktop dominance (ignoring UNIX for now) and we now or will soon have exactly what we wanted: a choice. It doesn't mean that Microsoft will now die or go away. I believe it's very telling that people using unlicensed MS software made it into the report at all...

  • WSIS related symposium (Score:3, Informative)

    by mattr ( 78516 ) <mattr&telebody,com> on Monday May 30, 2005 @12:03PM (#12676811) Homepage Journal
    I recently participated in the Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Conference [wsis-japan.jp], part of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which was intended to develop a draft constitution on development of IT-enhanced society for the 21st century, with attention to north-south and social development issues. Anyway, it included a lot of people who are into open source and a lot of people interested in rural connectivity so you might be interested in some of the documents.

    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.

    D-22ChairmansReport.txt: Be development-oriented, ensuring equitable and sustainable distribution of resources Recognize the goal of accessibility for all, emphasizing the needs of people with disabilities and the poor Respect the Internet end-to-end principles and open source, open content, open courseware, and open standards Uphold human rights, rights to self-determination, and particularly the risks to privacy and leakage of personal information

    D-23chairmans_report.txt: Be development-oriented, ensuring equitable and sustainable distribution of resources Recognize the goal of accessibility for all, emphasizing the needs of people with disabilities and the poor Respect the Internet end-to-end principles and open source, open content, open courseware, and open standards Uphold human rights, rights to self-determination, and particularly the risks to privacy, for example from the leakage of personal information

    S2-3DrDZVIMBO.txt:The possibilities Click to edit Master title style ClickA majorto editinitiativeMasterthattexthasstylesnow emerged is the development of Free Open Source institutions. (e.g. Nairobi, Agadir, Cape African institutions are also developing initiatives to foster the development of Learning Object Repositories by university academics and Research Networks.

    S2-5ProfOkamura.txt:Regional Support PEACESAT U.S. establishing Pacific ICT Academy in American Samoa MOODLE implemented in American Samoa, CNMI and Guam Open Source Squid, Apache, others

    S2-5ProfOkamura.txt:Regional Support Activities PEACESAT U.S. establishing Pacific ICT Academy in American Samoa Open Source Software

    S2-5ProfOkamura.txt:Suggestion #3c ICT Infrastructure 3 Suggestion Open source and other inexpensive technologies should be encouraged. Rationale The cost of software and applications are potential problems. e.g. American Samoa implemented VA Clinical Information System.

    S4-1BANKS.txt: Perspectives of marginilised groups, excluded communities, grassroots activists Expertise, skills, experience & knowledge human rights, sustainable development, privacy & security, education, women's empowerment & gender equality, affordable universal access, open standards & interoperability, open source, open content & universal design for all

    s4-2FRAU-MEIGSDivinaRev1.txt:Tools for Open Access: An open source backbone An education exemption to IP rights A Universal Service Fund Interoperabil

  • It is of critical importance that all software shall be free software, open source, with lots of documentation, also available for free, and that all computer systems in the world utilize this software instead of proprietary garbage, because just because something is proprietary does mean that is does not work properly.

    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

  • The article is pretty much right on the money. If it is government, they accept donated MS software. If it private, they use pirated. Cost takes a back seat to practicality. Everyone knows MS, why introduce something different?

    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.
  • simple summary:

    --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

Slashdot Top Deals

The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin

Close