The Codebreakers Post-Productions Script
© UNDP-APDIP, IOSN, IDRC, UNESCO, 2006, 40 minutes
Released under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
http://www.apdip.net/news/fossdoc
Introduction
In Thailand, you can get an endless supply of the latest computer software...
...nearly all of it pirated...
Half way across the world, in Brazil - different market place, same story, street vendors openly selling pirated DVDs and software from makeshift tarpaulin stalls.
Software piracy is so common that the vendors barely take any notice of the police patrols; as soon as they’ve turned the corner they set their stalls up again.
Supply meets demand in countries where the average office worker would have to work for more than a month to be able to legally afford basic software.
The World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia, a global meeting of key decision-makers in IT or Information Technology from around the globe, promoting their wares, exchanging ideas and trying to change the world. They have one thing in common with the software pirates: for just as the pirates are illegally making software affordable, the UN Secretary General and many of the delegates here also want to make the software affordable for the digitally deprived...but legally!
Technological visionary, Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop aims to put affordable computing technology in the hands of millions of schoolchildren in the most needed parts of the world, and the software that’s going to be used on this...?
Dr. Nicholas Negroponte, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
“We’ve chosen Free and Open Software because it’s better, and because it means that the children can actually participate in making the software even better over time, we believe completely in community developed software as well as content.”
Narration: Free and Open Source Software or FOSS is the latest phenomena in computing and is causing turbulence in the proprietary or commercial software world. Widely used software such as Thunderbird and OpenOffice can be downloaded legally and used by anyone without having to pay for it.
Over 90 percent of all the world’s desktop and laptop computers run on proprietary software such as Apple or Microsoft sells. Do they see Open Source as a threat?
Jonathan Murray, Microsoft Europe:
“I think the challenge it presents to Microsoft is just that it reminds customers do have choice, when you’re reminded that customers have choice and we always need to be reminded of that. It reminds that you have to go back to work, you have to listen to your customers you have to invest the six billion dollars of R&D that we’ll invest this year in ways that are going to meet the needs of those customers.”
Narration: So is Open Source the bridge for the now famous digital divide? Will innovations such as the 100 dollar computer working on free, unlicensed software bring a billion extra users on line?
In The Codebreakers, we find out if Open Source is all its cracked up to be and can it be the bridge for the Digital Divide?
Kenneth Cukier, The Economist:
“One can consider Open Source Software a lot like generic drugs, the analogy fits. In the case of Open Source Software it’s a lot less expensive and for that reason, it’s essentially the same product it does the same thing on a computer but it costs less.”
Narration: There are estimated to be over a hundred thousand open source projects being developed. Not one cent was paid by the computer users who have downloaded 50 million copies of the Firefox browser from the Internet. It was developed from Netscape by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. It now has a 20 percent share of the European and a 14 percent share of the US market. Apache - the Open Source Web-Server software is used by more than 60 percent of all websites on the Internet including web giants Google and Amazon.
So is a revolution underway? Are the days of proprietary software numbered, and now that software has become free and open will the digital chasm between the poor and rich be closed?
CHAPTER 1: THE FOUR FREEDOMS
Narration: Only middle-aged academics will remember that more than two decades ago when computers first reached universities software source code was freely passed around and programmers expected to be paid for programming and not for the programs themselves. Then things changed as computers reached the business world and companies began to develop and license software on a commercial basis, restricting access to the source code.
In1984 Richard Stallman, one of the original computer whiz kids, questioned the commercial software companies actions and started what he called the Free Software Movement.
Richard Stallman, Free Software Movement:
- “What could I do? I had no political party behind me, I couldn’t expect governments or organizations to change any of their policies, but I did know how to write software...so I said – I’m going to develop another operating system, with the help of whoever will join in and together we will make it free software. We will respect your freedom.”
Narration: Richard Stallman came up with his own licence for Free Software, which incorporated what he described as the four freedoms...
Richard Stallman, Free Software Movement:
“Freedom zero – the freedom to run the program as you wish. Freedom one – freedom to help yourself, that’s the freedom to study the source code and change it to do what you wish. Then there’s Freedom two – the freedom to help your neighbour – that’s the freedom to make copies and distribute to others when you wish, and Freedom three - is the freedom to help your community – that’s the freedom to publish or distribute a modified version when you wish. If you have all four freedoms, the programme is free software.”
Narration: The next development came in 1991. A twenty one year old, Finnish computer programmer Linus Torvalds developed what is known as the kernel – the core of the operating system - and called it Linux. Its proponents boast it can operate as well on a mobile phone as well as on a super-computer. And Torvalds invention can be downloaded without paying anyone anything. According to “The Linux Counter” a pro-Open Source website there are estimated to be up to 29 million computers using Linux, but since it is not sold, there are no sales figures on which to base data.
VOX POPS
“No, I’ve never heard of FOSS.” “I’m afraid I’ve no idea what FOSS is.” “I’ve heard of Free and Open.... Software.” “No, never heard of FOSS.” “No, I’ve never heard of FOSS. I don’t know what it is.” “I’ve never heard of FOSS.” “I don’t know what it is. What is it?” “Yes, I have heard of Free and Open Source Software and I have some of those on my computer at the moment.”
Narration: Free Open Source Software may not be known by name but indirectly, anyone who sends an email or uses the Web is using Open Source all the time as the ‘gears’ of the Internet – web servers, mail transports and FTP servers – are nearly all open source.
Although Richard Stallman meant “Free as in freedom”, not free as in no costs involved, it was misleading. Not everyone understood the concept. Especially as we will discover, Open Source can significant costs down the line.
In 1998 The Open Source Initiative - an organization dedicated to promoting free and open source software was founded by computer programmers Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens - who felt that the word “free” could be replaced by “open” and that that would avoid the confusion.
Bruce Perens, Open Source Initiative:
“Open Source takes free software and promotes it to business people... when we say free it doesn’t mean free it means freedom and that didn’t play too well to business people.”
Narration: So by re-branding FREE software as OPEN Bruce Perens and his colleagues hoped that a new business model would emerge. And companies like Fortune 500 computer hardware and software developer Sun Microsystems are now making money by selling services instead of software.
Simon Phipps, Sun Microsystems:
“What we are actually doing we are selling our skill in producing a software that people have installed. So actually what we are doing is still selling exactly the same thing when we used to sell glossy boxes what people paid for at the point of selection.”
Narration: But the proprietary software companies argue that customers want simpler solutions out of the box.
Jonathan Murray, Microsoft Europe:
“Most of the customers that I talk to are looking to reduce the amount of money they spend on services they want software to be automated to become more simple to become less complex to run.”
Narration: So does that mean free open source software is being hyped unjustifiably?
Not necessarily, because if you live in a country with a huge potential pool of software engineers whose charges are modest the lure of software that does not incur the cost of servicing is less obvious.
Kenneth Cukier, The Economist:
“It’s not 100 percent certain that Open Source Software is truly less expensive than proprietary software, but certainly initially it is. And a quick scan of the pricing of, say, Microsoft products versus Linux products, it’s simple, there’s no contest – Open Source is much less expensive. For that reason if we are going to bring the world online, the next one billion people, clearly it’s going to take Open Source Software or certainly a different pricing strategy, by the proprietary software vendors.”
CHAPTER 2: THE NET SPREADS... A LITTLE
Narration: There are 500 million people on the African continent under 25. In sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa, 98 percent of African schoolchildren go through their whole school education without ever seeing or touching a computer in the classroom. SchoolNet Namibia– set up in 1999 by a partnership of NGOs and the Ministry of Education is a non-profit provider of Internet, hardware and software to the nations’ schools. It has a mission to ensure Namibians do not suffer from the handicap of being on the wrong side of the digital divide. SchoolNet is furnishing schools with specially designed computer labs and equipped with donated computers. Often the local arms of the proprietary companies will provide their software unlicensed or at reduced cost for good causes such as SchooINet. Yet it chose Open Source Software, for the computers now in over 400 schools, why?
Joris Komen, SchoolNet Namibia:
“In having an Open Source solution, in the way we’ve put it into play at schools in Namibia, as part of a very standardized system, uniformly spread out across the country. We don’t have viruses, we don’t have people vandalizing or stealing software or whatever it is that is probably faced in quite a few first world environments.”
Narration: SchoolNet claims that the accessibility of Open Source also means that trainees are able to learn how to refurbish computers often with little or no knowledge of computing.
Bornface Musweu, SchoolNet Namibia:
“Most of the people here are not certified; when we get them many are totally illiterate from computers. Open Source helped us, because we are not certified, helped us to make sure that we develop ourselves.”
Narration: Courtesy of wireless networking, schools are getting linked to the web. In the remote areas solar provides the power. At the computing centre at HQ in the capital Windhoek, schoolchildren queue up for up to an hour after school to use the free access to computers and the Internet.
CHAPTER 3: SOFTWARE LIBRE
Narration: In Brazil the pattern of usage in the home and in the private sector is little different from anywhere else in the globe– but the switch in the governmental sector is on an altogether bigger scale.
A major company such as Intel, has begun to adjust its strategy.
Shane Wall, Intel:
“Intel has been very active in Free and Open Source Software, mainly driven by what our customer demand has been. We see this predominantly in the emerging geographies in areas like India, China, Brazil – each of these has chosen positions around Open Source around education, and we’ve been working hard to optimize our platforms for specific solutions based on Open Source.”
Gilberto Gil, Ministry of Culture, Brazil:
“The Brazilian position on software, on Free Software is very positive, the Brazilian Government has created a programme to support free software both inside the government as an application for governmental procedures ... and also supporting free software as a tool as an instrument for the society.”
Narration: By adopting Open Source or Software Libre as it’s known in Brazil, the National Institute for Information Technology claims it has made a saving of around $150 million a year in licence fees, and according to Gilberto Gil this saving has been translated into more hardware reaching many previously technologically impoverished areas. There is even a government mandate now in Brazil that states that Free Open Source Software must be the software of preference by all administrative bodies.
Microsoft announced the launch recently in Brazil of a simpler to operate and cheaper version of Windows XP. Is this because it is fearful that Brazil will set a very costly –for Microsoft – trend?
Jonathan Murray, Microsoft:
“Brazil is a very important country in the world we actually have a very focused strategy within our company, around what we call the BRICK countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China and all of those are countries that have a wide diversity of needs. There’s a very poor population in Brazil that needs access to technology, that needs skills training to become part of the growing economy, to get to that first rung of the ladder. And we’re very active in Brazil working the education sector partnering with government, partnering with the NGO community to make sure that that access is available. We’ve invested 13 million dollars in the last few years to provide access to technology in Brazil.”
Narration: But this hasn’t stopped FOSS gaining a significant presence in Brazil. Projects include Paraná State’s $200m World Bank supported project that aims to provide computing infrastructure as well as delivering software content and support tools to 2,100 public schools.
40,000 computers have recently been delivered to distribution centres destined for the new school computer labs that will be running a specially-developed web portal, which gives access to learning tools, through a two-way gateway where teachers to login and contribute to the pool of educational resources, so software isn’t the only thing that’s being shared...
Glauco Gomes de Menezes. Education Secretariat of the State of Paraná:
“I think the freedom is the most important thing, because you can use [the software], you can make some modifications and any person can use these modifications. So we live today in a kind of society where the knowledge is for everybody, not just for little groups who have money to pay for information.”
Narration: In other parts of the globe the doors to the world of information technology are being opened in a different way....
CHAPTER 4: A DIGITAL DOORWAY
Narration: South Africa’s President Mbeki is famous for his addiction to the Internet. He wants the country to follow suit with the government pushing the adoption of the digital revolution. Even an entire television series has been devoted to Open Software and the government-funded, Meraka Institute, has spawned many open source projects including the Digital Doorway – what its proponents say is a virtually indestructible computing hub which follows the “if you build it they will come” philosophy.
Nhanhla Mabaso, Meraka Institute:
“ In India there was the idea of a hole-in-the-wall project, where a computer could be put where people could access it, off the wall, it’s just sitting there and it peeps through the wall, and the idea is to promote the concept of minimally invasive education, that has inspired South Africa’s Digital Doorway project. It’s a way of making it easy for people to teach themselves at their own pace at their own style, how to use and innovate the role of information and communication technologies.”
Narration: The Digital Doorway is loaded with open source software, learning resources, an open source encyclopaedia, digital books, graphic packages and educational games. This computing kiosk equipped with four protected screens and waterproof keyboards, not only provides access, but its supporters say quickly demystifies and makes accessible technology.
Kim Gush, Meraka Institute:
“In many of the communities you’ll find that, most of the community hasn’t even discovered how a computer works, very few in the poorer areas have access even to an ATM, let alone a computer that they can use, so for some of these places, this is actually the first experience that some of these people, especially the children, have had with a computer so it’s both an exciting opportunity for them to discover something new and also we found that in the long run, they are learning about something that they are going be using in jobs and in the workplace and in the future, so it’s of real benefit to them.”
Narration: Projects like the Digital Doorway may be a step forward for the technologically impoverished communities but on the job front especially in developed countries commercial software is still much more prevalent in people’s minds.
VOX POPS:
“I think we should have knowledge of ...” “Word, Excel...” “Word, Outlook...” “Microsoft Word and Excel.” “Explorer seems to be the most common.” “” “I use Microsoft Word for everything else.” “Definitely useful to have knowledge of Word and Excel.” “It’s really important to have an understanding of that software because it is like the de-facto software in the workplace.” “Frankly, that’s the only one I know.”
Narration: But that doesn’t mean that some of the big hitters are dismissing FOSS a software for the geeks.
Srinivasan Ramani., Hewlett Packard Labs:
“HP’s position is very simple in that we give the customer a choice, if the customer wants to use proprietary software we are very happy to give him that and if the customer wants to use open software we give him that, and we work with the open source community in a very big way.”
Narration: In February 2005 Computer giant IBM announced plans to invest 100 million US dollars in its support of Open Source Software.
Adam Jollans. IBM:
“Our commitment has increased to Open Source Software, we’re involved in over 150 Open Source projects. In our Linux technology centre we’ve got over 700 programmers and engineers working on Open Source projects as part of the Open Source community, but I think the main reason that our commitment to Open Source has increased is that our customers have been asking for it because they see the value in it.”
Narration: And even though the majority of computers in the United Nations aren’t running FOSS, the UN Joint Inspection Unit, highly recommends it’s use:
Louis-Dominique Ouédraogo, UN Joint Inspection Unit:
“One of the recommendations we are making precisely is to ensure that all organizations in the UN system will come up with an organization-wide policy on using Open Source Software.”
CHAPTER 5: COMPUTER BUSES
Narration: This is no ordinary school bus, in India. This bus’ seats are equipped with a computer terminal and the ticket collector has been replaced by a technologically-literate teacher. This is the Mobile Bus project in the Baramati district of central India, where scarce resources are being made to go further than ever before. The scheme is funded by the World Bank and the Vidya Pratishtan’s Institute of Information Technology located in Baramati.
The schoolchildren wait eagerly for the buses arrival.
The fleet of five buses travel to around thirty five villages each week, are fully equipped with 24 computer terminals running Free/Open Source Software which the Institute says was chosen because of initial cost savings:
Dr Amol Goje, Vidya Pratishtan Institute of Information Technology:
“In India basically when we want to run the projects like mobile computer lab or giving computer education for rural schoolchildren, the basic constraint is the finance in order to get this definitely we should find out how to reduce the cost of the project and as the Open Source was the best solution to reduce the cost of the software so we decided to go for the Open Source platform.”
Narration: The mobile teachers are able to teach computing skills to 6,000 ten to fourteen year old pupils. The mobile bus curriculum teaches everything from the basics of computing to how to use various kinds of software, and even programming skills and it appears that this access is having even wider benefits...
Dr Amol Goje, Vidya Pratishtan Institute of Information Technology:
“Apart from this computer education their general knowledge has increased, their subject knowledge has increased, interest gets generated, so that they have started coming to schools.”
Narration: By being used in programmes like these proponents of FOSS say this is how it will help bridge the digital divide. Advocates of open source software, as a boon to developing countries, also contends that it’s highly flexible and sometimes best suited to help with large-scale issues like disasters.
CHAPTER 6: DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Narration: Natural disasters like the Tsunami leave a massive scale of devastation in a very short space of time, swiftly wiping out transport, communications and emergency services infrastructures and even the richest nations are surprisingly left in a state of chaos.
Over 30,000 people died and nearly a million people were affected by the Tsunami in Sri Lanka; and help and aid poured in from around the globe in the form of donations, food, clothes, money and people.
All of this had to be coordinated in order that help effectively reached those who needed it most and this needed to be done in an infrastructure that had received very little in terms of investment prior to the disaster.
A vital part of disaster management is information: who has been affected...where the people are... who needs help... and by accurately managing information using Information Technology, data can be processed, enabling families and next of kin to find each other and resources to be distributed to those who need them most.
Professor VK Samaranayaka, Colombo University, Sri Lanka
“The morning of the 26th of December was a terrible day for us, because all of a sudden we faced, the whole of Sri Lanka faced, something that had never been a situation in Sri Lanka, we had losses of people, people who were not traceable, people who were injured and of course, for every person there was a whole family at home looking for them and trying to find information.”
Narration: Looking at the urgent needs that had been created following the Tsunami, the Sahana disaster management system was developed by a team of over 80 Sri Lankan programmers using Free and Open Source Software.
Chamindra da Silva, Lanka Software Foundation:
“After the Tsunami a group of volunteers from the IT industry, really the Free and Open Source community got together and built a solution, a suite of web-based disaster management applications, they looked at the problems affecting their fellow countrymen and all the chaos and then identified those problems and built solution around them.”
Narration: FOSS worked for the improvised Sahana because the volunteer computer programmers needed the software urgently. It could sidestep red-tape and download the products from the Internet instantly without paying for anything. So Sahana claims that FOSS increases the agility of institutions working in disaster management.
Professor VK Samaranayaka, Colombo University:
“When we started on Sahana we had no money to go and purchase off-the-shelf software, we also had a problem that we needed to tailor make it and we had to get at something more than a commercial product, we needed to go into it, with open source those problems were not there.”
Narration: So a locally-adapted, disaster management system using Free and Open Source Software was built without needing to pay for licence fees. The key advantage was having instant access to the source code.
Narration: Could Free and Open Source Software connecting farmers and food producers with buyers through the world wide web, be another step towards bridging the digital divide?
CHAPTER 7: WEB BEARS FRUIT
Narration: Throughout the world small and medium scale farmers have to get their goods to market via middlemen. In Malaysia, Free and Open Source Software is helping them to avoid the intermediaries.
Agribazaar - an online marketing tool for small to medium enterprises to market their products locally as well as globally- was created using Open Source Software. It is made by a government research and development organization called MIMOS that is supported by the Agriculture Ministry who claims that by using FOSS it saved money on the total cost of ownership, in other words all the costs associated with the project.
Norlidza Mohd Yassin, MIMOS
“We could have used proprietary software to develop Agribazaar but it would cost us higher to own the total cost of ownership if you are using proprietary would be higher than if you are using Free Open Source Software.”
Narration: MIMOS says the equivalent of 25,000 US dollars was saved in software licences and by using My SEQUEL FOSS server software instead of the proprietary alternatives. MIMOS claims that in the long term further savings are expected by not having to pay for software upgrades in the future.
Agribazaar also helps small-scale food producers like these women, they cook and package these snacks all day Through Agribazaar they are directly now connected to the buyers enabling them to negotiate their own prices.
Malaysia’s digital divide is between the poor and rich but this applies regardless of where you live. The point that has never satisfactorily been answered is the digital chicken and egg – does being connected create wealth or is connectivity a sign of it? The provincial government of Extremadura in South West Spain is in no doubt...
CHAPTER 8: REGIONAL CONNECTIONS
Narration: Badajoz, is the ancient capital of the Extremadura region.. This Spanish province, the size of Belgium used to be one of the most economically backward parts of Western Europe. Its telephone grid was only just completed in 1980. Now it has leapfrogged the rest of Spain, with an Intranet connecting the entire region.
The twin challenges to connecting a scattered population of just one million were distance and money.
Carlos Castro, Information Society, Extremadura:
“If we could get all the schools connected, we could get the whole of the region connected. Because every village has a school. We also had another goal to have one computer for every two pupils. The estimates were pretty frightening because we were talking of around 100,000 computers, more or less a hundred thousand, and of course the first thing was to boot up the computers, we were going to have pay 18-20 million euros, just to boot them up. And from there began the possibility to start using free software. The thought process was if we manage to get this stuff on the web, that’s free software and if we can use it on those computers, we will save ourselves in the region of 20 million euros when the whole system is up and running.”
Narration: All the new computers are running LinEx, a Spanish version of Linux developed locally.
According to figures released by the Regional Minister of Infrastructures and Technological Development the use of Free Software cost nearly two hundred thousand euros in 2002-2003, the period of installation. 40,000 copies went to schools.
The authorities claim that if they’d bought proprietary software it would have cost then about 30 million euros.
The LinEx team also claims that Free and Open Source Software will actually save Extremadura money by extending the useful life of its computers...
Antonio Ullan, Linex:
“On one side there’s a saving made on software but on the other side there’s been a enormous investment in hardware...Now this cost is expected to be amortized over time but these computers will be able to be used for longer because the operating system and software that is being used on them is one that we can modify and change to match our hardware. Because one of the interesting things about Free Software is that we can adapt the software tools to suit our needs in many instances.”
Narration: Extremadura is also providing free training in computer literacy courses using FOSS funded by the local authorities. Various websites have evolved from the computer courses, including one with the recordings of hundreds of village church bells from around Extremadura. Apparently by accessing the site and playing their local church bells, expats and migrant villagers, some who’ve moved as far away as Latin America, feel less homesick!
As yet only three of Spain’s 17 other provinces have plans to follow suit, but Extremadura claims it is the only region in Europe with one computer between two students in secondary schools and says that this is in large-part thanks to the use of Free an Open Source Software. Microsoft is not yet asking for whom the bell tolls...
Jonathan Murray, Microsoft Europe:
“The size of the challenge in providing access to information technology particularly in the developing world in the education sector is so large that I think there is room for both models, and we all have a role to play in making sure that kids have access to the tools they need for the 21st century.”
Narration: Our final look at FOSS in action takes us to the far corners of the globe.
CHAPTER 9: MANAGING EVOLUTION
Narration: The Galápagos are a set of islands off the coast of Ecuador, where once the only outside visitors were intrepid scientists, including Charles Darwin. They’ve not been spared the invasion of tourists who with the advent of cheaper air travel have access to greater parts of the globe...
But tourists mean money to the local economy. The Galápagos National Park authority is in charge of tourism on the Islands. It registered around 122,000 tourists or visitors in 2005, of those the majority were eco-tourists drawn to the Galápagos for its incredible pristine environment. It is this precious untouched quality that the national Park is trying to preserve.
Javier Villa, Galápagos National Park:
“Galápagos is becoming saturated by visitors. The need to have a controlled method of monitoring the visitor sites is of the highest priority because of our policy of conservation. Without a structured way to manage our conservation areas we would never be able to look after, let alone preserve, this area for future generations.”
Narration: The National Park said it recently chose FOSS because of its geographical remoteness they felt they would be better served by their local software developers who were already familiar with PHP - Open Source database software and could develop a database management system tailored to suit their needs as well as saving initial costs in licence fees.
It is now used by every National Park department, including a giant tortoise breeding programme, one of the biggest attractions for visitors to the Galápagos. Information which in the not so distant uncomputerized past would have taken months to process is now at their disposal, and considering that the number of tourists increased by about 20 percent between 2004 and 2005 to over 120,000, it’s vital that this information is closely monitored to ensure the survival of the area.
CHAPTER 10: THE DIGITAL FUTURE
Narration: At the 2005 UN Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia – delegates convened to address the issue of bridging the digital divide, and Free and Open Source Software was what everyone was talking about...
Bruce Perens, Open Source Initiative
“Today Open Source is a leader in sharing knowledge to everyone’s benefit offer one of the most effective methods yet tried to achieve the goals of this Summit... a productive Open Source partnership helps liberate the poor and increases freedom knowledge and well being of every person.”
Narration: But its more than 20 years since Stallman started the Free Software Movement, and the digital divide keeps getting wider.
So how does the future look for FOSS? How will it fare in the evolution of software? We put these questions to the experts... including representatives of 3 commercial computer industry giants...
John Naughton, The Observer:
“Somebody said recently that a modern operating system is far more complicated in terms of the number of components it’s got and the number of interactions between them than say a jumbo jet...and what we are finding is that, this may be perhaps the real significance of Open Source is that these are things now that are so complicated that even vast smart intelligent well-resourced software companies like Microsoft are buckling under the strain...and my guess is that what we may find in relation to Open Source is that for many kinds of complex software products Open Source is the best way to do it.”
Narration: And how does IBM see the future of FOSS?
Adam Jollans, IBM
“What we’ve seen is that over the past few years the adoption of Linux and Open Source software has accelerated. Linux is the fastest growing server operating system, growing faster than any off the other systems and other Open Source software is now starting to be used and it’s opening up these possibilities for collaborative innovation, between IT vendors, also between IT and universities and individual developers, so it’s an idea whose time has come I think.”
Narration: It appears that even Microsoft now also believes in getting together with the Open Source community...
Jonathan Murray, Microsoft:
“When we look at the challenges that are faced around the world and when we look at the various models that are available to solve those challenges we recognize there’s room for everybody to contribute. And the Open Source community again stimulates innovation in software, it’s something that frankly we feel very good about. It brings a lot of people into the development community, it generates further innovation around software and it’s something we absolutely see as being a partnership with Microsoft.”
Narration: And Fortune 500 computer hardware and software developer Sun Microsystems, are also using Open Source.
Simon Phipps, Sun Microsystems:
“I think we are going to see more and more corporations and even smaller businesses turning to Free and Open Source Software as their development methodology. Certainly at Sun Microsystems we decided a couple of years ago that it made no sense to develop our software in secret. That there was much more to be gained by working with the global crowd of experts than by trying to identify who the real genii were and trying to hire them.”
Narration: So, it would appear that there are a number of reasons why FOSS may make life easier for digitally deprived:-
there are no up front costs and therefore no need to be tempted by pirated software...
geeks and non-geeks can create virtual communities to invent new software
service charges can be the same or steeper than for proprietary software, but in the developing world where skilled labour is relatively cheap that is less of a problem.
and the adaptability of the software also means the programme can be written in local languages, the vast majority of which are not are not catered for in off-the –shelf software
Does that mean FOSS will be the bridge across the digital divide? No-one can say for certain. But what is certain is that the evangelists for free and open source software will not stop singing its praises.
END CREDITS
English subtitles
Fabian Rodriguez, FACIL - http://www.facil.qc.ca
Production Credits
Thanks to:
UNDP ASIA PACIFIC DEVELOPMENT INFORMATION PROGRAMME
UNESCO
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTRE CANADA
INTERNATIONAL OPEN SOURCE NETWORK
MICROSOFT
SUN MICROSYSTEMS
GALAPAGOS NATIONAL PARK
Narrator:
Dilly Barlow
Graphics:
Andrew Keys
Original Music:
James MacCavana
Additional Camera:
Propaganda Films - Beatriz Rodriguez
Assistant Producer:
Melissa Walsh
Editors:
James MacCavana
Justin Rhodes
In Association With: (dev.tv logo)
Director & Editor:
Maximillian Jacobson-Gonzalez
Executive Producer:
Robert Lamb
(One Planet Pictures logo)