<a href=www.linuxjournal.com>Linux JournalCurrents: Liberation Technology Posted on Monday, June 09, 2003 by Frederick Noronha   

The recent Finnish study on the significance of FLOSS (free/libre and open-source software) in developing countries labels itself version 1.0 and ushers in a new concept--not free as in beer or speech, but free as in education. This report, the latest in a series of studies on the impact of free and open-source software worldwide, focuses on the third world. It has been sponsored by Finland, home of the Linux kernel. "This is the beginning. We will put out our findings on the Net and hope to get ideas on improvements (to the study)", says lead researcher Niranjan Rajani, originally from Pakistan and currently based in Helsinki. "This has become a project that most probably will not have an end. You could consider this report [to be] version 1.0...this is just a starting point", stressed Juha Rekola of KEPA, a Finnish network of non-governmental and campaign organisations involved in the study.

Rajani, a philosopher who took to computing to earn a living, looks at the impact of FLOSS in specific countries, and he also views the implications of what it means for a cash-strapped economy. He has few doubts about the usefulness of FLOSS, which he believes would be "extremely relevant" in any of the poorer parts of the globe. He says, "Take the example of education. In terms of computer education, FLOSS has no match. Nothing else provides [as] much value to learners as FLOSS does. You're free to tinker with the code. Not only that, you can get in touch with the people who wrote the code and ask why this or that was done in a particular piece of code.

"[FLOSS] offers low entry barriers. That's how it should be described. It reduces the barriers for anyone wanting to enter this field by making everything open. So much so, that many people fail to appreciate that fact. Besides, there's the element of cost. Most of the studies show that, in terms of cost, free and open-source software is unmatched. Some studies have been made which tend to show that, in certain cases, FLOSS may have more immediate costs. But I doubt the seriousness and validity of these studies on the ground that these studies do not take into account what would be happening if there was no FLOSS. Where would the cost structure of the current software be?"

Recently, while unveiling the report in downtown Helsinki, Rajani agreed that "there is no magic bullet or magic wand, and neither FLOSS nor computers (by themselves) can provide a great leap into development". Development, he argued, comes about by humans determined to make changes in the direction they are moving. "But FLOSS can do wonders in terms of savings (on software), educating and building a solid base needed for going ahead", said the 45-year-old Karachi and philosopher-techie.

Rajani argues the ideas of free software are spreading to other fields, as seen in terms of open law, open-source biology, MIT's opencourseware, e-books put on-line through volunteers under Project Gutenberg, free dictionaries, the open music movement and the like. Rajani contends the freedom offered by FLOSS is of "paramount importance in more than one way" in the third world. Yet, he says, the price aspect is also "very important, without which developing nations would not be able to significantly meet the challenges of the computing age". So, rather than arguing whether free and open-source software is free beer or free speech, it ought to be thought of as "free education...in terms of both freedom [and] price."

Taking a broad overview, the study suggests "the situation in Asia and even Africa can be contrasted to Latin America, where the contribution of code to FLOSS started much earlier and is duly noticed and recognised". But Niranjan goes along with the view that the output of free software and open-source code from Asia "in coming years (could see) more contributions, and some will excel so much that they will get attention".

"Going through the 20+ countries mentioned in the Asia report, the highest overall FLOSS-related activity seems to be taking place in countries like India, China and Taiwan (excluding Japan, which is not the subject of this study) followed by South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, etc.", summarises Rajani. In Latin America, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina top the FLOSS-related activity scores, both in terms of usage and code-contribution. They're followed by Colombia, Venezuela and Peru.

"Latin American programmers have made significant contributions to the overall FLOSS projects around the globe", Rajani confirms. For instance, this Finnish study notes that GNOME, one of the two competing GUIs available for Linux, was started by the Mexican developer Miguel de Icaza while he was working at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences (UNAM-Universidad Autonoma de Mexico).

Latin America also can boast of projects such as Brazil's CodigoLivre at UNIVATES and the Rede Escolar Livre RS, plus UTUTU, BioLinux and Via Libre Foundation in Argentina, PHP-Nuke from Venezuela and INFOMED from Cuba, among others.

In Africa, the spotlight turns to the Translate.org initiative of South Africa, a translation effort to make Linux available in South Africa's 11 official languages; OpenLab, in South Africa and Nigeria; SchoolTool; and LinuxLab, among others. There's also the radio e-mail project in Guinea and the use of Linux wireless routers to bring in subscribers for an ISP in Ghana. In February 2003, the Free and Open Source Software Foundation Africa was launched in Geneva.

Interestingly, Rajani points to a recent trend that has seen South Asians at the helm of a number of important studies on free software and open source. First it was Rishab Aiyer-Ghosh, in the Netherlands, who undertook the prestigious study on free/libre and open-source software for the European Union. In addition, Seema Arora at Stanford is part of the team looking at what makes programmers gift their critical code without hoping to earn millions in return. Now comes Rajani's work.

This latest report was funded by Finland's Ministry for Foreign Affairs and undertaken by OneWorld Finland and KEPA. The latter two are organisations working in development, a field in which software--particularly free software--is being looked at as a tool with considerable promise. Also of note, Peruvian Congressman Dr. Edgar Villanueva Nunez, well known for his stand on free software and his legislative initiatives there, was present at the unveiling of the report.

Copies of the report are available at www.itfirms.co.za/research.html and fi.oneworld.net/article/view/56261. An English language version can be found at www.kepa.fi/english.

Frederick Noronha is a freelance journalist living in Goa, India.

Take a look at Namibia (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Wednesday, June 11, 2003 Here in Namibia we have an initiative Schoolnet.na (www.schoolnet.na) that aims to connect all schools in Namibia to the Internet. We are using all open source sortware (linux, kde, openoffice) to both run a national network of schools and on desktops in computerlabs which we put into schools. Some of this is done using wireless technology in areas where there are no phones, electical connections, etc.

In the past we have refused offers of "free" software from commercial companies because this will tie us into a path of costly upgrades in the future. Using OSS allows us to spend scarce resources on equipment and to keep our serices up and running. We also feel that in a developing country it is very important to have young Namibians using software that allows them to "get under the hood." By doing so we are encouraging those who are intersted to develop their programming/networking skills.

Please check us out at www. schoolnet.na

Dr. Ben Fuller

The daily Standard by Thor Halvorssen 06/09/2003 6:40:00 AM Caracas, Venezuela

EARLIER THIS YEAR, the U.S. media was atwitter with coverage of the protests against ousting Saddam Hussein. At the same time, just weeks before the war in Iraq began, a record-setting one and a half million Venezuelans marched in protest against a law proposed by the president of Venezuela, Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez. Simultaneous marches against Chavez took place across the world. It was the largest peaceful protest in Latin American history.

These protests did not register even a blip in the international and U.S. media. There were no page-one articles or photo-spreads about this widespread rejection of the Chavez regime. That the international media failed to cover these events is particularly dispiriting, since the protest was organized specifically to support the Venezuelan media, which has been tirelessly exposing human rights violations by the Chavez regime.

Despite being followed, harassed, arrested, tear-gassed, fire-bombed, shot at, and even killed by Chavez supporters and party members, journalists here have bravely persevered in their jobs and serve as the only effective check to arbitrary government power. Given that the courts, congress, military and the executive branch are firmly under Chavez's control, it's little wonder that in poll after poll, the Venezuelan media ranks as the most respected institution in the country.

Since January, using a presidential decree, Chavez has interrupted regular television and radio broadcasts on 60 separate occasions, forcing all media to transmit his hours-long tirades and pro-government propaganda.

And Chavez now seeks to formalize his control through the "Media Contents" law, a bill that controls TV programming by defining time slots suitable for children. The law assumes that children will be watching television for 18 hours a day and prohibits the broadcasting of news or any content with violent images or political language except between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. For example, live footage of Chavez militia members shooting at innocent protesters, would be content unsuitable for children.

IN ADDITION to controlling the programming, the law criminalizes any content that "promotes, condones or incites disrespect for the legitimate authorities and institutions." Known locally as the "gag law," it states explicitly that mocking or criticizing the president and his henchmen is illegal. Broadcasters face million-dollar fines, loss of their broadcast licenses, and even jail time for noncompliance. If this column was published in a newspaper or read on television here in Venezuela, it would be in violation of the proposed Chavez media law.

When journalists expressed opposition to the law's barefaced censorship, Chavez responded: "That's just like drug traffickers opposing anti-drug laws or criminals complaining about crime-fighting."

And to further control the media, Chavez has imposed exchange controls. No Venezuelan citizen may purchase foreign currency without government permission--an act that renders the local currency worthless for import transactions. As a result, any television company that needs to purchase electronic equipment or any newspaper editor wishing to order newsprint paper or buy ink must petition the currency control agency that is, conveniently, headed by a man who assisted Lt. Col. Chavez in his failed 1992 coup attempt.

TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE, some American elites are actively shilling for the Chavez regime even as the media crackdown proceeds. Jack Kemp, notably, has been busy opening doors for the Chavez government. Recently Kemp and the Venezuelan ambassador visited the Wall Street Journal's editorial board in an unsuccessful attempt to charm the paper away from its anti-Chavez stance. Since that visit, the Journal reported that Kemp has been trying to broker a complicated deal to fill the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve with Venezuelan oil via an intermediary company--Free Market Petroleum LLC--on whose board Kemp sits. Since hooking up with Free Market Petroleum, Kemp has visited with Chavez and his ministers in Caracas. Surely he must have noticed Chavez's brutality here.

American elites should be helping pressure the Chavez regime and publicizing its anti-democratic doings in Venezuela, not seeking to profit from collaboration with it.

Thor Halvorssen is a human rights and civil liberties activist. He grew up in Venezuela and now lives in Philadelphia.

The Panama News By: Eric Jackson

If you pay a lot of attention to the international corporate mainstream media, you will have heard that Venezuela is an economic basket case whose leader is a media-bashing Fidel Castro wannabe who's about to be recalled by the voters. You may have even read some of that in the opinion sections of The Panama News, along with contrary views.

There is, however, another side to the story that's rarely told by the major news corporations. That includes Panama, and the trend will continue for now, as this reporter was the only journalist present at Excedra Books on May 27, when Ramon Alfredo Lopez Martinez, the cultural attache at the Venezuelan Embassy in Panama City, defended the government he serves.

Lopez's presentation was long and in a few parts tedious. Beginning with a brief video about the events surrounding the abortive April 2002 coup, he systematically responded to four common allegations:

• That Hugo Chavez is a dictator;
• That Hugo Chavez is a Castro-style communist;
• That there is no freedom of expression in Venezuela; and
• That the state controls everything in Venezuela.

The video, "Conspiracion Mortal," offered a version of the events leading to last year's coup attempt that has not been heard much outside of Venezuela.

You may recall that on April 11, 2002, a large crowd, urged on by Venezuela's commercial broadcasters, made its way toward the presidential palace in Caracas with the intention of overthrowing President Chavez. The palace was guarded by troops and a crowd of government supporters. Sniper fire broke out, killing several people. A group of military officers, accusing Chavez of ordering the troops to fire on demonstrators, declared themselves in rebellion. Chavez was taken into custody and the head of the Chamber of Commerce was declared head of a new ruling junta. Rioting broke out in the poor neighborhoods where there is strong support for Chavez, and troops loyal to the president restored him shortly thereafter. Since the president's restoration, there have been major arguments about who really shot whom on the day of the coup.

Ah, but according to Lopez and the video he showed, the order of events described above was wrong, and that, he argues, says a great deal about who's telling the truth and who isn't. Conspiracion Mortal might be easily dismissed as commie propaganda, but for the fact that one of its main sources is Otto Neustald, a respected reporter for CNN's Spanish-language network who has no particular political allegiances in Venezuela. He was covering the story in Caracas that day, and he and others noted something VERY odd -- the rebellious military officers announced that protesters had been shot down at Chavez's orders BEFORE any shooting started. The conclusion that the video and Lopez draw is that the shooting was part of the coup plot, not something that the president ordered, and that those who were trying to overthrow the government exposed themselves by their bad timing.

The attache then launched into a lengthy review of Venezuelan political history since 1998. In December of that year some four decades of two-party rule by the Accion Democratica and COPEI parties came to an end with Chavez taking about 56% of the vote despite the two major parties' fusion behind a single candidate. "This is the origin of democratic change in Venezuela," Lopez claimed.

There followed an April 1999 referendum in which Venezuelans by a 92% majority called for the creation of a Constituent Assembly to "reform all of the state institutions." Chavez supporters won 121 of the 131 seats in that assembly the following July, and in December of 1999 the voters approved the new constitution that they wrote. "It was a revolutionary process," Lopez said, "but a democratic and peaceful revolutionary process."

The new constitution provided that all elected public officials would have to face new elections, which were held in July of 2000. In that round of voting Chavez won some 60% of the vote. His political party, the Movement for the Fifth Republic, won only 75 seats in the 165-member unicameral legislature, but with 11 allies from smaller parties gained a working majority. On the opposition side, Accion Democratica won the most seats with 25, while COPEI won 7 and a number of other parties split the rest.

The new constitution provided that certain things could pass by a simple legislative majority (which Chavez has) and other things require a two-thirds majority (which he doesn't have).

One of the things that could be and was adopted by a simple majority was an enabling law allowing the President to issue certain decrees. That Chavez did, on a host of matters from the name of the country (now the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela") to oil and gas regulations, and most controversially, decrees on development along the coastlines and land tenure. Chamber of Commerce president and later dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona brought a lawsuit to have all of these decrees nullified, but did not prevail.

The new constitution provided for several different kinds of plebiscites -- initiatives and referenda to pass or repeal laws, advisory votes and recalls of public officials. All of these four processes have different rules under the constitution, Lopez explained.

This past December and January, the opposition called a management lockout that was supported by labor strikes in some sectors and bolstered by street protests and other measures in an effort to force an advisory vote on whether Chavez should step down. The president insisted that an advisory vote on a public official stepping down is merely an unconstitutional shortcut for a recall and insisted that if the opposition wants to recall him, they will have to follow the constitutional procedures.

Although the argument caused a 63-day crisis in Venezuela's crucial oil industry, differences between the two sorts of plebiscites has not been much discussed by the international corporate news media.

A Venezuelan advisory vote can be held more or less any time. Its proponents must gather the signatures of 10 percent of the voters. With 50% of the votes plus one more, the measure passes.

For a recall, however, proponents must gather the signatures of 20% of the voters in a given district for a lower-level official and nationwide for a President. Such petition drives can only take place after half of the official's term has been served -- that will be in August, in Chavez's case. In a recall election, there must be at least a 25% voter turnout for any result to be binding. Moreover, to recall a public official there must be more votes, in absolute terms, than were cast to elect him or her. Thus to recall Chavez, at least 3,757,774 votes would be required as he received one vote less than that in the 2000 election at which 56.6% of the registered electorate showed up at the polls.

All this suggests that even if the polls published by Venezuela's opposition press are to be taken at face value, the conclusion most frequently reached by the international corporate news organizations -- that Chavez is likely to lose a recall vote later this year -- may be more a matter of wishful thinking than reality.

According to Lopez, the opposition's bid to hold a vote under the easier consultative referendum rules did enormous economic damage to Venezuela. Although he dismissed the lockout and strike as "half effective at its height," disruption of the oil industry cost the country $3.626 billion, and another $2 billion in cash was taken out of the country. The attache also noted that "during 63 days, the commercial media didn't broadcast one single commercial."

There ensued a long discourse on the Venezuelan economy (the tedious part of the lecture). "Oil for Venezuela is like the canal is for Panama," Lopez explained, defending his boss's role in OPEC, which has entailed visits to world leaders that Washington doesn't much like in an effort to win higher prices for his country's main export. "The US has twisted this to say 'he's a terrorist because he visited Iraq and Libya," he argued, but "when Chavez came to power Venezuela was getting a nickel a liter and his foreign policy was aimed at raising that, which has happened."

Lopez also noted the special deals that Venezuela has given to Latin American neighbors that don't have oil, including Panama. Chavez has been criticized in the US and by the Venezuelan opposition for giving Cuba preferential petroleum deals, but the attache said that the Cubans pay the same prices that Panama does, but pay in part by providing doctors for the Venezuelan public health care system.

"This concerted, systematic campaign about the 'Cubanization' of Venezuela conflicts with the basic communist principle of expropriation," Lopez alleged. His country's constitution, like those of Panama and the United States, guarantees private property rights and requires compensation when property is taken by eminent domain.

Lopez also defended a proposed new press law that was under consideration back in Caracas as he spoke. "In Venezuela, not one medium has been closed," he argued, adding that "if there's a fault, it's with the media." He said that the legislation is not for the purpose of limiting freedom of expression, but to stop the incitement of violence. "What we're looking to do is to prevent the kind of thing that happened on April 11," he concluded.

www.thepanamanews.com