Re: [OSS] Re: OpenOffice 1.0.2... vs "LAMPS" Promotion

GS Chuong, JC, Stefan, et al,

RE>Stefan:as far as I can tell, there is agreement, that we should first
aim at
>Public SW (Free SW and Open Source Software) for the Windows platform,
before
>pushing for a Free OS (like Linux).

&>JC: Translating Public SW from english (or other language) to vietnamese is a
>very good way to get more vietnamese people interested into using Public SW,
>IMHO.

I agree that Freed & Open-source (FOs) end-user applications are needed to
introduce FOs systems and propogate FOs and IP awareness further into VietNam's
Information Systems (IS) user population, including business managers, esp.
IS purchasing decision makers, first on Win32, and localized is better, but...

FOs end-user apps are still lagging the propriety apps quite a bit and getting
end-users, who just want to get their work done with minimal technical
learning,
to switch is going to be very difficult and slow, at least until Vietnam can
afford to pay IPR enforcement officers a few times the value of the proprietary
systems whose IPRs the enforcers are already legally responsible to defend and
prosecute violators.

Linux is the FOs product which has the 3M-MA, mass market, maturity & media
attention, for itself, its business successes and its development and advocacy
communities. Apache, though more widely used than Linux is still hidden from
both end-users and most media attention. MySQL and PHP would probably follow
Linux and Apache in terms of 3M-MA.

Linux is still the only FOs system that can compete with MS on 3M-MA. And even
PCWorld VietNam and VNExpress need worldwide Media Attention in 3M-MA to be
able to provide a significant share of their reports on FOs systems, since most
of their reports are *necessarily* translations, not original research.

Even the FOs community's recent surge in publications and projects is in a
large
part the result of FOs egos playing up to the recent Media Attention to
GNU/Linux.

That's the public relations and education (knowledge dissemination) side of
the
here and now of FOs promotion.

But there are a more practical, technological and economics arguments for
giving secondary priority to FOs end-user applications, like Open Office (but
also Evolution, GIMP, Konqueror, Mozilla and many others).

Even outside VietNam the first and primary applications of FOs systems are
infrastructural and this is where FOs systems naturally excel most since FOs
systems are built by and for developers first, end-users later.

There's a lot of evidence for this and i can quickly provide references
from IBM,
Meta-Group, David Wheeler, Gartner, ZDNet and IDG if requested.

Further, the money and *jobs* in FOs systems in VietNam will follow the
market's
primary requirements path, no? And VietNam still has lots of IS infrastructure
it needs to build and that's where the most pre-educated IS buyers are going to
be spending the most amount of money on for at least a few years to come, for
both the government and private sectors.

If police and judiciary incomes catch up with proprietary software licensing
costs faster, business users, especially exporters, may consider non-pirated
software sooner, but it will still focus on infrastructural systems first.

Just my opinion, but if i had a limited budget for FOs systems propogation, i'd
be following the biggest trend in global FOs systems adaptation, that of LAMPS
(Linux-Apache-MySQL/Masquerade-PPP/PHP/Perl/Python/PostGreSQL-Samba/Squid)
which
basically forms a complete LAN, WAN, Intranet &/or ISP infrastructure,
including
billing and content management where needed. For security, add gpg, iptables,
nmap, snort and tripwire (aside from the logs and last that are built in to
Linux by default).

But LAMPS is for IS people, not end-users (or policy makers or even most IS-
purchase decision makers). Only IS people will learn LAMPS -- and if they don't
we're still stuck with FOs end-user apps on a still unaffordable Win32 IS
infrastructure.

And, finally, LAMPS will have to be learned in English, just to keep up with
patches, massive documentation changes and the vast majority of the trade
press.
Core, classic, stable documents and reports will be worth localization, like
the Linux-FAQ of VietLUG's pclouds, but the leading-edge documentation will
need English skills to use. Compare with the French, Spanish, Russian, Indian
and even the Chinese FOs development and support communities' recent histories.

respectfully,
AD Marshall
*--------------------------------------------------*
AD Marshall, VietInfoComm&Edu [VICE]-8 Consulting
Vietnam Information Communications & Education
ParadoxCafe-VietNamAsia HTTP://ParadoxCafe.Com
Post: 8A/G8 Don Dat, Q.1, TpHCM, VietNam
eM01: MailTo:AD.VICE@ParadoxCafe.Net
Cell: +84 (0)903871313
YIM: ad_marshall
*------------- Country Maintainer -----------------*
*--- Linux Users Counter - VietNam (Vie^.t Nam) ---*
*---- http://counter.li.org/bycountry/VN.html -----*
*------------------ Founder -----------------------*
*--- Hø Chi Minh City Linux Users' Group HøLUG ---*
*--------- http://h0lug.sourceforge.net -----------*
*----- http://sourceforge.net/projects/h0lug ------*
*------------------- Member -----------------------*
*---------- Vietnamese Linux Users Group ----------*
*--------- http://vietlug.sourceforge.net ---------*

At 15:42 2003.02.13, you wrote:
> Dear Anh Chuong,
>
>Tran Luu Chuong écrivait :
> > Dear Stefan, As I know there is OpenOffice for Windows platform released
> > by Open Office itself. It supports Vietnamese characters (Unicode). We
> > tested already in our office and it can be used in place of MS Office.
>
>Stefan meant about an OpenOffice version *in vietnamese language*, and not
>supporting vietnamese characters since it's already provided using Unicode.
>
>Translating Public SW from english (or other language) to vietnamese is a
>very good way to get more vietnamese people interested into using Public SW,
>IMHO.
>
>Best regards, J.C.
>--
>Jean Christophe ANDRÉ <jean-christophe.andre@auf.org>
>http://www.vn.refer.org/
>Coordonnateur technique régional / Associé technologie projet Reflets
>Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AuF) / Bureau Asie-Pacifique (BAP)
>Adresse postale : AUF, 21 Lê Thánh Tông, T.T. Hoà n Kiếm, Hà Nội,
>Việt Nam
>Tél. : +84 4 9331108 Fax : +84 4 8247383 Mobile : +84 91 3248747
>/ Note personnelle : merci d'évitez de m'envoyer des fichiers PowerPoint
>ou \
>\ Word ; voir ici :
>http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.fr.html /
>
>
>
>--
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