two articles: constraints and promotion of Free and Opens Source Software in developing countries

http://business.newsforge.com/business/04/03/24/1744251.shtml?tid=110

Constraints against the adoption and use of FOSS in developing countries
Wednesday March 24, 2004 - [ 06:00 PM GMT ]
Topics: Government and Regulatory , Education/Training , Business
By: Katim S. Touray

Many people have called for the increased adoption of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in developing countries in general, and
in Africa in particular. The reasons center around issues of affordability, ownership, and openness. Although the use of FOSS in
developing countries is increasing, a number of constraints still stifle the growth of FOSS use in these countries. The
constraints are many and varied, but can be grouped into five, namely: the nature of FOSS itself, an adverse policy environment,
lack of marketing, inadequate technical support, and lack of trained personnel.

Background

The use of FOSS has, in the past decade or so, seen an
explosive growth around the world, thanks to factors such as
the increasing popularity of the GNU/Linux operating system,
the growth of the Internet, and the availability of FOSS
alternatives to proprietary applications.

The freedoms and associated affordability of FOSS makes it
particularly attractive to people looking for alternatives
to relatively expensive, restrictive, and insecure
proprietary software. This is especially so for people in
developing countries because they have few resources to
spend on computers and software. For this reason, many
developing countries such as Brazil, India, Vietnam, South
Africa, Malaysia, and Thailand, to name a few, are
increasingly leaning toward adopting FOSS.

In Brazil, for example, the Federal government has published
its Free Software implementation guidelines, and aims for at
least 80% of computers purchased by government in 2004
having FOSS. In the same vein, the Indian government has
launched a Linux India Initiative to support resource
centers and localization projects. Malaysia is launching OSS
reference center to manage OSS implementation, and its
Ministry of Finance has provided venture capital funds to
Malaysian OSS companies.

In Africa, South Africa has taken the lead in the drive for
greater adoption of FOSS. The South African government
recently published a policy paper which called for using
FOSS in preference to their proprietary equivalents if both
types of software had comparable features. The South African
FOSS community has launched Impi, its own Linux
distribution. In addition, many educational institutions in
South Africa use FOSS to increase access to computers and to
the Internet, thereby helping bridge the digital divide that
slows the pace of development and reduces the capacity of
developing countries to effectively use development
assistance.

Despite the obvious benefits of FOSS and its increasing
popularity worldwide, there persist a number of problems
that constrain its adoption and use in developing countries.

Nature of FOSS

To paraphrase the cartoon character Pogo, we have met the
enemy of increased adoption and use of FOSS in developing
countries, and the enemy is FOSS. The very nature of FOSS
generally makes it inaccessible or difficult for many people
to use. FOSS is generally not user-friendly, and require
higher than average technical skills to make use of. It is
perhaps for this reason that while Linux is a popular
platform for servers, and workstations, it has yet to become
as popular as Microsoft Windows as a desktop environment.

The reasons for the lack user-friendliness of FOSS are
varied but center around greater reliance on a command line
rather than a graphical user interface, and poor
user-interface design. In consequence, FOSS applications
generally require greater technical skills to use than the
point-and-click menu-driven user interface on Windows.

Poor documentation is another major constraint to the
adoption and use of FOSS in both developed and developing
countries. End-user documentation is of critical importance
to the user-friendliness of an application, and in this
regard, FOSS has a long way to go. Most FOSS applications
lack proper end-user documentation, if they have it all.
OpenOffice.org, for example, a leading FOSS office
productivity suite, has a Web site dedicated to its
documentation, but the documentation is rather scanty.
Although efforts are underway to address the situation, the
problem certainly hinders the widespread adoption of
OpenOffice.org.

Another problem with FOSS documentation is that although
packages are translated into different languages, the
translations are usually restricted to the menu items,
commands, and user interfaces. Seldom are user manuals, if
they exist at all, translated. In addition, while developers
often know enough English to write computer programs, some
of them cannot write useful end-user documentation, thus
reducing the user-friendliness of the applications they
develop, no matter how good they are.

Adverse policy environment

Many developing countries have yet to articulate national
information and communications technology (ICT) policies on
such issues as privacy, strategies, and approaches to ICT
development. Lack of policy on FOSS is a specific aspect of
this general problem of lack of ICT policy in many
developing countries. For this reason, many developing
countries do not have policies on the use of FOSS by
government agencies, and their service providers. In other
cases, they have policy environments that at best are
neutral, or at worse, hostile to the adoption and use of
FOSS.

This situation is especially debilitating to FOSS because in
many developing countries the government is the largest
single buyer of ICT products and services. Furthermore, a
favorable government policy on FOSS is frequently a major
boost to the adoption and use of FOSS because it would
justify spending on FOSS.

Another adverse policy effect on the adoption and use of
FOSS in developing countries is that many government and
donor agencies insist on proprietary software when they
invite bids to provide ICT products and services. It is thus
not uncommon to find advertisements that specifically ask
for computers pre-loaded with Microsoft Windows and Office,
rather than stipulating the required functionalities of the
computers to be provided.

Donor agencies, either by omission or commission, also
frequently hinder the adoption and use of FOSS in developing
countries. Again, the problem emanates from the insistence
of many donor agencies on proprietary software, and a
failure to adopt a more pro-FOSS policy in their assistance
programs. Furthermore, the lukewarm attitude of developed
countries to FOSS in the ongoing World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) process seriously hampers the
adoption of FOSS in developing countries.

This lack of commitment by the donor community to the
increased use of FOSS in developing countries is especially
unfortunate because governments in many developed countries
are turning to FOSS and curtailing their use of proprietary
software. The UK government, for example, in a 2002
published a policy paper that among other things called for
using products that support open standards, and avoiding
being locked into proprietary IT products and services,
while the European Commission has called for promoting the
use of OSS in government. Given that more and more developed
countries are opting for FOSS, it makes sense for donor
agencies (e.g. the Department for International Development
(DFID) in the UK) to have a more pro-FOSS policy in their
development assistance programs.

International development organizations and agencies have
also yet to promulgate and implement pro-FOSS policies.
Despite the fact that a number of UN agencies, such as the
UNDP and UNESCO, provide support to the FOSS community, they
have yet to articulate specific guidelines on the use of
FOSS in their assistance programs, or indeed within their
organizations themselves. Although UNESCO has a vibrant FOSS
portal and the UNDP actively supports the International Open
Source Network (IOSN), there are no indications that they
plan to migrate to FOSS anytime soon.

Lack of marketing

Like any product, FOSS needs adequate and effective
marketing if it is to have a large following. This is
especially so in developing countries, given that many
products competing against FOSS are backed by rich
multi-national companies that have large marketing programs
and budgets. In contrast, FOSS packages generally do not
have any marketing budget whatsoever, and depend only on the
loyalty of their user base to spread the word.

Another advantage proprietary packages like Microsoft
Windows enjoy over FOSS is that many large proprietary
software companies have, or are associated with, non-profit
activities. The large grants given out by the Gates
Foundation create a lot of goodwill for Microsoft products,
even though the Gates Foundation is independent of the
company.

Furthermore, proprietary software companies often provide
their products at deeply discounted prices to educational
institutions and non-governmental organizations (NGO),
thereby reducing the price advantage FOSS has over
proprietary products and locking these institutions into
proprietary solutions. This is especially true in developing
countries because they frequently rely on donated computers
and software packages to equip computer labs in educational
institutions. For this reason, many students in developing
countries grow up on Microsoft products, and have to make an
extra effort to take up FOSS.

Inadequate technical support

Lack of technical support is another problem that stifles
the adoption and use of FOSS in developing countries. Many
FOSS applications (especially Free Software) are provided on
an as-is basis, and developers provide little end-user
technical support. In some cases, commercial support for
FOSS packages is provided by their developers, along with
other companies and individuals. In the main, however,
technical support for most FOSS applications is provided by
Internet communities via Web sites and e-mail discussions.

Almost all FOSS packages have their own Web communities and
these, by and large, provide effective technical support.
However, the quality of support for a FOSS product is highly
variable and dependent on its stage of development, user
base, and the language in which support is desired. As a
rule of thumb, the longer a package has been under
development and the larger its user base, the better the
quality of support. In addition, English-speaking users, in
general, get much better support than people who speak other
languages, simply because English is the de facto official
language of the Internet.

Despite the many advantages of Internet-based support for
FOSS, this type of support is not ideal for many people in
developing countries. The digital divide between
industrialized and developing countries is also manifested
in the cost and ease of access to the Internet. Given that
many people in developing countries do not have adequate and
affordable Internet access, if any at all, the Internet is
not the ideal way to provide technical support to FOSS users
in developing countries.

Another way in which FOSS users are provided support is via
the many user and interest groups around the world. Many of
these groups are vibrant communities that commonly have
superb expertise among their ranks. However, the few in
developing countries generally have fewer resources than
their counterparts in developed countries. For this reason,
user groups in developing countries are not as able as their
counterparts in developed countries to provide adequate
technical support to FOSS users.

Lack of trained personnel

Lack of trained personnel is another major impediment to the
adoption and use of FOSS in developing countries. Most
developing countries do not have enough adequately trained
people in many technical fields, especially in ICTs. The
problem of lack of trained ICT personnel in developing
countries is worse in the case of FOSS because many training
programs are based on proprietary systems and software, such
as Microsoft Windows.

Any attempt to address the shortage of FOSS users and
developers in developing countries also must deal with the
problem of lack of standardization of FOSS training and
certification programs. While Microsoft and other
proprietary software providers have clearly defined
certification programs, there exist few well-known FOSS
equivalents. Furthermore, the fact that fewer people know of
FOSS than of Microsoft products means that even fewer people
know of FOSS certification programs than Microsoft
certifications. The net result is that few people choose to
pursue FOSS training and certification.

Local FOSS user groups and communities are an important
resource for acquiring FOSS education and skills. To the
extent that many developing countries lack vibrant local
FOSS communities, they are also denied the valuable
educational services these communities provide. For many
people, a local Linux install fest is the first opportunity
to dip their toes into FOSS. As such, the fact that few
developing countries support vibrant FOSS communities means
that not many people in developing countries can benefit
from training provided by these user groups.

These five factors are the major constraints against the use
of FOSS in developing countries. In part two, we will
suggest some solutions to these constraints.

Katim S. Touray is an independent media and Internet
consultant based in The Gambia, West Africa. He holds a
Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of Wisconsin.

http://business.newsforge.com/business/04/03/24/1751217.shtml?tid=110&tid=35&tid=85

Promoting the adoption and use of FOSS in developing countries
Thursday March 25, 2004 - [ 06:00 PM GMT ]
Topics: Government and Regulatory , Education/Training , Business
By: Katim S. Touray

Despite the many and severe problems highlighted in my
previous article, all is not lost in the drive to increase
the adoption and use of FOSS in developing countries. Many
measures can be taken to help increase the use of FOSS in
developing countries.

Help make FOSS more user-friendly

FOSS packages are notorious for their steep learning curves
and for not being user-friendly. Efforts should be made to
urgently address this situation, and toward this end, the
end-user documentation of FOSS packages should be improved
and made more accessible. Given that people in developing
countries generally have problems accessing the Internet to
obtain support, proper and easily accessible documentation
is one effective way to increase the adoption of FOSS
packages.

One way to help make FOSS more user-friendly for people in
developing countries is to customize and localize them. Many
developing countries are non-English-speaking, so
translation and localization projects should be given top
priority in efforts to increase FOSS use in developing
countries. Fortunately, many FOSS developers in
industrialized countries originate from developing countries
and can provide an interface with developers in developing
countries. In addition, they can help translate and localize
FOSS packages for users in developing countries.

There should be greater collaboration between translation
and localization projects in various developing countries to
enable them learn from each other and avoid duplication of
efforts. International organizations such as the
Commonwealth, and La Francophonie, which have many members
from developing countries, can be of valuable help by
spearheading FOSS translation and documentation projects.

Despite the shortage of developers, many developing
countries still have many highly qualified people who can
and do make significant contributions to the development of
FOSS packages. It is encouraging that there are efforts to
build Linux distributions in various developing countries
such as South Africa, Vietnam, and India, to name a few. In
the same vein, developers in India have built an online
community and software repository, Sarovar. Other developing
countries should emulate their example.

Develop an enabling policy environment

If FOSS is to take off in developing countries, it is
imperative that an enabling policy environment be created.
Many developing countries have non-existent or ambiguous
policies toward FOSS, and for this reason, make it hard for
FOSS enthusiasts to procure and deploy FOSS packages. To
address this problem, regional policy frameworks should be
formulated. For example, African countries can develop a
FOSS policy aimed at encouraging, or even requiring, the use
of FOSS in government projects.

Toward this end, it would help to educate government
agencies and officials on the benefits of FOSS, not only in
terms of cost, but also in terms of security and national
sovereignty. Here again, developing countries can learn from
each other. For example, ongoing efforts to increase FOSS
use in Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil, and India, to name a few,
can serve as models for other developing countries.
Furthermore, study tours can be organized, networks
developed for user groups and policy makers, and
partnerships initiated to facilitate the exchange of
information and experience about how to increase the use of
FOSS in developing countries.

Donor agencies and development partners should be pressured
to make FOSS-friendly policies on the use of their funds to
procure ICT products and services. Given that governments in
many industrialized countries are already leaning toward
adopting FOSS, it is only fair to have their development
agencies also encourage the use of FOSS in projects and
programs they fund.

Donor agencies and development partners can provide
additional support to FOSS in various forums and resolutions
of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). It is
worth noting that both the Declaration of Principles and
Plan of Action agreed on at the December 2003 Geneva Summit
are neutral on the FOSS/proprietary software debate. For
this reason, efforts should be re-doubled to ensure that the
next round of WSIS negotiations result in a strong
commitment to advocating the use of FOSS in developing
countries.

Increase/improve marketing of FOSS

Increased and improved marketing is another way to spread
the use of FOSS in developing countries. Given that FOSS
developers generally do not have many resources to launch
big marketing programs, more creative marketing is needed.
Thus, the first strategy to adopt in spreading the adoption
of FOSS in developing countries should be to develop
partnership with media outlets.

Special emphasis should be placed on partnering with
community and independent media outlets, which generally
have fewer resources and are not affiliated with
international outlets that lean toward proprietary software.
The best way to convince media outlets about the benefits of
FOSS is to have them use it, so special efforts should be
made to transition media outlets to FOSS platforms.

In the same vein, partnerships should be developed with
civil society organizations (CSO), including
non-governmental organizations (NGO), to encourage them to
use FOSS. Many developing countries have, with increasing
democratization, seen an explosion in the number of CSOs,
and hence, the number of potentially valuable partners to
help increase the use of FOSS in these countries. However,
NGOs might also hinder the adoption of FOSS by, for example,
locking out recipients of the assistance programs on
proprietary products. Also, international NGOs based in
developed countries frequently use proprietary software both
in their head offices and in their branch offices in
developing countries.

Other potentially valuable partners that can help market
FOSS in developing countries are educational institutions,
local IT companies, and cybercafé owners. Educational
institutions can help introduce new computer users to FOSS,
well before they learn how to use proprietary products.
Local IT companies can help promote FOSS to their customers.
Cybercafé owners can install FOSS applications rather than
proprietary products.

FOSS can also benefit from publicity campaigns launched
nationally, regionally, and internationally. For example, a
World FOSS Day would provide a good platform to publicize
FOSS and its use in the developing countries. For this
reason, FOSS interest groups around the world should,
beginning this year, declare an annual World FOSS Day.

Improve technical support

Efforts should also be made to improve the quality of
technical support for FOSS programs. While most FOSS users
in industrialized countries rely on Internet-based support
such as online publications and discussion forums for
support, such an approach is not feasible for many users in
developing countries. Efforts should be made to augment
Internet-based support with offline support tools and
services.

A number of steps can be taken toward this end. First, FOSS
documentation should, as much as possible, be provided
offline on CD-ROM and in print. This way, Internet
connectivity would not be needed, and better yet (in the
case of print documentation), no electricity would not be
needed to access the documentation.

Another step that can be taken is to encourage service
providers in developing countries to start providing support
for FOSS applications. Already, many companies have business
models based on providing technical support for FOSS
products. Examples of these are IBM and HP, along with less
well-known companies like Progeny and Red Hat. Local IT
companies in developing countries can help increase the
adoption of FOSS in these countries by providing technical
support to FOSS products. In this regard, the decision by
the Malaysian government to provide venture capital to
Malaysian FOSS companies is laudable.

Increase and improve training in FOSS

Lack of adequately trained personnel is one of the biggest
constraints against the adoption and use of FOSS in
developing countries. For this reason, educational
institutions should encourage FOSS use and provide training
in FOSS applications.

Fortunately, many popular FOSS applications such as word
processors and spreadsheets have user interfaces that make
it easy to transition from applications such as Microsoft
Office to equivalent FOSS applications like OpenOffice.org
and KOffice.

Educational institutions and IT trainers in developing
countries should provide quality FOSS training programs.
Toward this end, these institutions should be helped to
develop capacity to deliver FOSS training programs by
training the trainers. Organizations such as Geek Corps can
be especially helpful in this regard. In addition, NGOs that
presently provide IT assistance based on proprietary
products should start including FOSS products in their aid
packages. Finally, a FOSS Corps of trainers and evangelists
should be formed to work with trainers in developing
countries.

Another way to improve and increase FOSS training in
developing countries is to leverage ICTs to deliver training
programs. Thus, the Internet can be used to deliver online
FOSS training programs to people in developing countries.
The online course materials can also be supplemented by
CD-ROM and print products to facilitate better delivery of
FOSS training to students in developing countries.

Finally, developing countries should build vibrant FOSS
communities and user groups on and off the Internet. User
groups can not only provide the impetus for the adoption of
FOSS in developing countries, they also are a valuable
resource for delivering training and support to FOSS users.
The fact that most, if not all, user group members are based
locally means that they can provide help and support much
more cheaply than people outside the users' countries.

Conclusions

While there are a lot of compelling reasons for developing
countries to adopt and use FOSS, several problems constrain
the increased use of FOSS in these countries. Many of these
problems can be solved, or at least mitigated. Developing
countries should develop ICT policies that are favorable to
FOSS, or at least give it an equal chance to compete against
proprietary solutions.

Just as there was the desktop revolution, there will be a
sea change in the software industry as more people demand
more openness in the software they use. FOSS stands to gain
a lot from this sentiment. Further, with FOSS being very
affordable and frequently free, once many people in
developing countries know of and learn to use FOSS, it will
be very popular in these countries.

Katim S. Touray is an independent media and Internet
consultant based in The Gambia, West Africa. He holds a
Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of Wisconsin.

To facilitate co-ordination regarding the introduction of OSS SW in Vietnam

Subscribe to OSS:

Subscribe | Unsubscribe