Ubiquitous Open Source in Spain: How government, business and community work together

Cierre de Penalizaciones con Telefnica del Proyecto RTJA para

Ubiquitous Open Source in Spain: How government, business and community work together

Free Software in Andalusia

Guadalinex and Guadalinfo project

Government, business and communityGuadalinex example

Guadalinfo accesible example

About Andalusia

Southernmost region of continental Spain

Sun, beaches, wines&foods Free software!

Junta de Andalucia is the Regional Government

About 250.000 public employees


PrehistoryKnown to IT people since early 90's

Mostly used on the server side

Self training

Transparent to the end user

Free software has been a companion of our IT people for a long time, since prehistoric times. I mean the times before our oficials wrote down that free software was good and our regional government should use it, spread it, and support it.

In the early 90's, even before Linux, many technicians used code shared under not well defined licenses that they got from BBSs, the antecessor of the Internet.Most of the free applications used in those early times were server software: web servers, file servers, print servers, Netware emulators, DNS, DHCP, etc.Those were times without LPI, commercial training, nor even many O'Reilly books. But documentation was there and self training was from possible to excelent, in cases as the glorious Linux Network Administrator's Guide by Olaf Kirch.Most of uses of free software were, thus, transparent to the user.


Legal regulations (I)2003 Decree for the impulse of Information Society:Free software will be used in Public Schools

Free software will be used in Public Internet Access Centers

Use of free software by the citizens will be promoted and supported

It is well known that 2003 was a ground breaking year for OSS in Andalusia. ADALA, the Asociacion Desarrollo y Avance software Libre (Association for the Development and Advancement of Free Software), was founded in 2001. In 2002 the 3rd edition of GUADEC was in Seville. With this atmosphere some people from the local government get interested in OSS.

JA officials were then aware of the functionality, reliability, friendliness and advantages of free software and they decided to bet on free software in the way the governments do: publishing regulations.


Legal regulations (II)2005 Order for the public availability of software owned by Junta de Andalucia All custom made applications owned by Junta de Andalucia, present and future, will be free software.

Later, in 2005 we realized the huge value of our own custom made software and decided to publish it as free software. Although we have received some contributions, the main results have been increased business possibilities for the developers and more and better offerings received in public tenders.

Open Source World Conference2004 Mlaga

2005 Mrida

2006 Mlaga

2007 Badajoz

2008 Mlaga

2009 Cceres

2010 Mlaga, 27-28 October


In the middle of those milestones, in 2004, a collaboration protocol was signed between the neighbouring region of Extremadura and Andalusia, for the promotion of free software. As a result of this, the Open Source World Conference has been organized by the two regional governments since 2004 to the present, one year in Andalusia and other in Extremadura.Of course, all of you are invited to attend the conference in Mlaga on 27th and 28th of October.

Guadalinex

Is the GNU/Linux distribution of Junta de Andalucia

Based on Ubuntu (formerly based on Debian)

Gnome as desktop, because:Simplicity, compared to other desktops

Previous experience in Extremadura (GNU/LinEx)

Accesibility

Agreement with ONCE (Spanish National Organization for the Blind)

Base software to implement other projects

A nice penguin, Andatuz!

In order to fulfill the mandate of spreading and supporting the use of free software, a concrete tool was needed, and Guadalinex was born. By 2003, friendlyness of most noncommercial Linux distributions was poor for the non technical user, so we made a distribution easier to install and use, with Live CD to allow peple to test before installing.

Accesibility was a clear need. Gnopernicus, the screen reader available in 2003, was not the best solution, but it was the only solution. KDE didn't provide a screen reader, nor accessibility services. This reason would have been enougth. KDE was more Windows-like and the impact in switching from windows to Linux would have been lees than using Gnome, but our target was not the Windows user. Our target in reducing the digital divide was the no_computer_user, and Gnome, in general, was easier to use.

Last, but not least, Extremadura was already using a Gnome based distribution and was in its way to success in public schools. This fact gave an increased confidence to our officials in selecting Gnome.

>300.000 desktops

>2.000 public schools

>180.000 laptops for students and teachers

100.000 more to be delivered in course 2010/2011

Goal : >1.400.000 students in >4.000 schools

764 in small towns and districts of bigger cities: Guadalinfo

635 public libraries

200 centers for elderly people

Guadalinex: by numbers

Schools

Internet centres

Since 2003, our user base has grown to the figures you can see...

In the early times of the deployment of Guadalinex in public schools and Guadalinfo centers, an agreement was made with ONCE. ONCE would help Junta de Andaluca in testing accessibility of Guadalinex and in prioritizing the needed developments, and Junta would make some of the needed developments and do it best to include updated accessibility tools in Guadalinex.

This way some minor developments for Orca were made, and a pair (male, female) of Spanish voices were developed for the Festival speech synthesys engine.

Guadalinex: new plans

Analisys of requirements for an Administration Edition of Guadalinex (GEA), about to finish

Small scale migrations to free softwarePhase 1: On the same operating system

Phase 2: Deployment of GEA

We are on the move to introduce the use of free software in the desktop of the public employee. There are some small scale deployments with years of use without significant trouble. An analisys of requirements for the administrative desktop is about to finish, and results will be made publicly available. And, finally, we are planning for extending the move to free software, step by step, avoiding rushes and big risks, but targeting the use of free software wherever it's the best option.

Some ninety some percent of cases, isn't it? :-)

Guadalinfo 2003-2008

Goals:Bring Internet on < 10.000 people towns

Computer literacy

Digital training

Results:634 Guadalinfo centers

400.000 total registered users

About 40.000 distinct users every month



Goals:Get andalusian population into the modern knowledge society

Remove the digital divide for the disabled or socially marginated people

Results (by now):764 centers in < 20.000 towns and cities district with risk of social margination.

550.000 registered people

110.000 activities


Guadalinfo: Accessibility

2009-2012 objective

In agreement with ONCE

Guadalinfo as a accessibility lab:Accessibility device kit

Intelligent a11y adaptation system

Contributions to Community projects:Improvement of ORCA

Enhancement of OCRFeeder and Evince

On screen keyboard Caribou and predictive text system Presage

And more to come ...

Guadalinfo: Accessibility

Community wayOpen devel. Model

Meritocracy matters

Quality terms: Functionality of interest

Needs of project

Hacking habilities

Government, business and Community

Government wayOnly final product available

Financial and workforce capacity matters

Closed terms:Budget

Roadmap

Requirements

Penalties

Public tenders with closed terms (budget, timeline, requirements, penalties, etc)

Long time from idea to contract

Closed development model (only final product is available)

Economic requirements may exclude small companies

Reliability measured on terms of financial and workforce capacity.

Most usual contractors are alien to Open Source Software

Government, business and Community

Community matters:Third party improvements

Ease maintenance

Achieve amount of users

Solve local problems, share solutions globally

Needed Companies that:Understand opensource way

Relates with community

Can fulfil government terms of contract

Willing to put the right hacker to do the job

Willing to try getting work into upstream

A new thriving regional industry appeared to support the ICT public projects.

Guadalinex example

Tech Objectives:Care of spanish citizens needs

Improvements over Ubuntu

Release at Ubuntu +45d

Target communityLocal citizenship

Ubuntu approach for upstreaming

Custom distro TranslationsRelate with administrations via internetLacks on OSS: hardware used in spain, official support.

Consider:Listen your local users

Work at upstream community forges

Sync community roadmap with yours

Benefits:Local citizenship will reveal what OSS lacks

Community will show what local work matters globally

Guadalinex example

Guadalinex example

Local Community:Web site: news, forums, support, downloads with > 42.000 registered users.

>1.000.000 copies downloaded or distributed since 2003 (7 versions)

GDS, GenteGuada

Improvements: Hispavoces, Eadmin, Nanny, Hermes, Installer

Launchpad use to host projects

Upstream: first installer, nanny


Tech Objectives:Bug fix/Enhancements/Doc on Orca & OCRFeeder

Requests designed with ONCE

Upstream required to assure maintenance

About the target community:Gnome focused

Bugzilla and mailing list to collaborate

Manages their own roadmap


Consider:Gain credit first in order to be listened

Sync community roadmap with yours

Involve with community beyond your scope

Benefits:Community helps on design, coding and peer review

If useful, your work will be maintained by community

Conclusion

Community means opportunity

Private companies could ride with it

A sustainable FLOSS industry appear

Society breaks with private soft. habit

Will this new culture drive the change?

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Ubiquitous Open Source in Spain: How government, business and community work together

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