[wilhelmtux-discussion] Re: World Summit on the Information Society and Free Software

Alex Schroeder alex at gnu.org
Don Mar 27 01:22:40 CET 2003


(There is some Emacs related stuff at the end of this mail)


Today I was at a meeting organized by the OFCOM and the SDC on the
subject "ICT 4 D -- Information and Communication Technologies For
Development".

  OFCOM = Federal Office for Communications, aka. BAKOM/OFCOM/UFCOM
  SDC = Swiss Agengy for Development and Cooperation, aka. DEZA/DDC/DSC

Marc Furrer (OFCOM) did the opening and welcome, then we saw a video
from the SDC about people in Sri Lanka talking about education via
community radio, less risk for fishers due to weather report from the
Internet, sometimes broadcast via loudspeakers to the entire village,
and we saw a young team of people producing TV with a local
perspective, including information in two languages and information
about the peace process.  Nothing surprising in this area.

Later, there was a panel discussion with some questions from the
audience at the end.

I was able to mention Free Software.  ;) People talked a lot about
local content, and so I asked them what the strategy was to ensure
local software; to ensure that people can and will contribute
software?  This fit well with earlier statements made by others that
we are talking about poor countries with no existing markets, such
that big business will not be interested in the stuff, yet.  I then
admitted that I was from the Free Software camp, and that I felt this
was a valid strategy, and I asked them about their strategy with
respect to WSIS.  There was no real answer, but one of the panelists
later picked up the term Open Source again, and stressed its
importance.

In the afternoon, I went to a workshop where one development org
explained their plan for train-the-trainers for IT in Bhutan, and
there I was able to mentaion Free Software again.  ;) The speaker
admitted that licensing costs for a school could use up the entire
year's budget, and therefore this was an unresolved issue.  Even the
orgs' representatives in Bhutan used pirated software.  I then asked
him what he would write if he had one or two sentences to himself in
the WSIS declaration, and he was unsure, and asked me back.  I once
again admitted that I was from the Free Software camp, and that I felt
this was the answer, and he agreed to that.  There was another comment
about the importance of private sector-government partnerships, but it
contradicted stuff said earlier in the workshop where the speaker said
that eventhough they considered asking one of the local people working
in a private school to provide support (for pay), they dropped it.

Unfortunately, I did not volunteer to summarize the workshop and it's
"main message" for the clossing session, and the person responsible
botched it in my not-so-humble opinion.  She stressed the importance
of private sector-government partnerships, believed open source
software was important because it cost nothing, and believed that we
should do away with all licenses.  Perhaps it was just a problem of
the language, because surprisingly enough, all talks I heard were in
English.

Certainly the meme "Open Source" is very strong -- when I said
something, I never said "Open Source", I always said "Free Software",
but people always responded using the term "Open Source".  Oh well.
That is my private little uphill battle.  :)

At the end, I had one final opportunity to ask a question, and since
we had just given lots of messages for the official Swiss delegation
to take along to WSIS, I asked whether and how it would be possible to
actually join the official Swiss delegation.  Marc Furrer said that
there are still seats available, and that he'd welcome new people!  He
told me to contact him, or his secretary, or Chantal Peyer if we
wanted to go as part of civil society.  I told him that I knew her,
and that I'd contact her.  This positive reaction surprised me, and
contrasts with my dark suspicions when Marc Furrer stressed the side
events at the summit in his opening speech.  There, I felt like NGOs
where being kept separate from the "real" delegations and the "real"
events.

I was also able to talk to Chantal Peyer, and she told me that she
would like to see a short and concise statement from Wilhelm Tux (the
name of the association promoting Free Software in Switzerland) on the
exact phrase we would like to see in the final declaration.  Other
NGOs would then be able to use this as "words from the experts", and
include it in their position papers.

I was also contacted by Hassane Makki of the OFCOM because I had
piqued his interest when I had mentioned the multilingual features of
my favorite piece of free software, Emacs.

I was also contacted by Loris Vettorel, Marketing & Sales ICT4D
Platform, because of the multilingual features of Emacs.  When I
mentioned these, I said that Emacs had shown me that we could get
first bug reports, then suggestions, and finally actual code written
by people in so-called developping countries, and as an example I
cited Muthukrishnan Ramakrishnan's contribution to the Malayam
language support (I hope I got that right?).  Loris Vettorel is
looking for concrete projects, big or small, for an exhibition at the
summit.  Perhaps we can get a machine running Emacs, there, and
explain how this piece of free software can be used as a starting
point for mulitlingual text editing, programming, etc.

Ok, enough for now.

Alex.