19 December 2006 M. Farah 1

for Regional Integration

ESCWAESCWA Information & Communication Technology DivisionInformation & Communication Technology Division

1

FOSS: Needs and Opprtunities

Mansour Farah

Team Leader, ICT Policies

UN- ESCWA

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FOSS and WSIS outcome

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FOSS in WSIS Plan of Action (Geneva)

C3. Access to information and knowledge 10.e. Encourage research and promote awareness among all

stakeholders of the possibilities offered by different software models, and the means of their creation, including proprietary, open-source and free software, in order to increase competition, freedom of choice and affordability, and to enable all stakeholders to evaluate which solution best meets their requirements.

10.i. Encourage initiatives to facilitate access, including free and affordable access to open access journals and books, and open archives for scientific information.

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FOSS in WSIS Plan of Action (Geneva)

C8. Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content

23.o. Governments, through public/private partnerships, should promote technologies and R&D programmes in such areas as translation, iconographies, voice-assisted services and the development of necessary hardware and a variety of software models, including proprietary, open source software and free software, such as standard character sets, language codes, electronic dictionaries, terminology and thesauri, multilingual search engines, machine translation tools, internationalized domain names, content referencing as well as general and application software.

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FOSS in WSIS Tunis Commitment

29. Our conviction is that governments, the private sector, civil society, the scientific and academic community, and users can utilise various technologies and licensing models, including those developed under proprietary schemes and those developed under open-source and free modalities, in accordance with their interests and with the need to have reliable services and implement effective programmes for their people. Taking into account the importance of proprietary software in the markets of the countries, we reiterate the need to encourage and foster collaborative development, inter-operative platforms and free and open source software, in ways that reflect the possibilities of different software models, notably for education, science and digital inclusion programmes.

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FOSS in WSIS Tunis Agenda

49. We reaffirm our commitment to turning the digital divide into digital opportunity, and we commit to ensuring harmonious and equitable development for all. We commit to foster and provide guidance on development areas in the broader Internet governance arrangements, and to include, amongst other issues, international interconnection costs, capacity building and technology / know-how transfer. We encourage the realization of multilingualism in the Internet development environment, and we support the development of software that renders itself easily to localisation, and enables users to choose appropriate solutions from different software models including open-source, free and proprietary software.

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Why Developing countries need FOSS?

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Reduced costs

For a company of 50 users: Microsoft Solution software: $87,988 FOSS Solution Software Cost: $80

Use of GNU/Linux: Intel saved $200 million Amazon saved $17million

Public sector organizations savings: Government of Sweden: $1 billion Government of Denmark: $480-$730 million

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Better security

Reasons: Availability of source code: Discovery and fixing of bugs,

proactive audits (rather than reactive audits) Focus on robustness and functionality with no compromise

for user friendliness Unix model as basis, multi-user, sharing with strong

security and permission structure, limited breach

Resulting in: High reliability tests for Red Hat Linux, Open Linux and

GNU/Linux

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Reduced reliance on imports and avoiding political pressure

Reduction in imports means reduction in hard currency spending

Some developing countries need US government approval for software purchase

Great delays or even refusals are common

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Vendor independence

Through open standards Standards are imbedded in the FOSS culture Greater freedom in selecting vendors, software

packages and platforms

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Reduced software piracy

With open source software, no need for piracy and the disadvantages of such a culture

Avoiding IPR and WTO penalties

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FOSS opportunities for developing countries

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Developing local software capacity

Increase growth of ICT industry and exports Improved interoperability among systems Development of the knowledge society and knowledge-

based economy Reducing the digital divide

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Better and timely localisation

Localisation is better done by local people who know their needs

Can be carried out as needed without waiting for availability of funds or proprietary products availability

Development of expertise among various communities

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Expansion of applications

Education needs can be satisfied more quickly and efficiently

Government applications can be expanded and diversified

More vocational training applications, particularly in community telecenters

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Partnership development

FOSS adoption policies and strategies require development of partnerships

Communities of practice and collaborative work International networking and capacity-building

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Thank you!