for Regional Integration ESCWA Information & Communication Technology Division 1 19 December 2006M. Farah 1 FOSS: Needs and Opprtunities Mansour Farah Team Leader, ICT Policies UN- ESCWA

2 2 M. Farah2 19 December 2006 FOSS and WSIS outcome

3 3 M. Farah3 19 December 2006 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.

4 4 M. Farah4 19 December 2006 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.

5 5 M. Farah5 19 December 2006 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.

6 6 M. Farah6 19 December 2006 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.

7 7 M. Farah7 19 December 2006 Why Developing countries need FOSS?

8 8 M. Farah8 19 December 2006 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

9 9 M. Farah9 19 December 2006 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

10 M. Farah10 19 December 2006 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

11 M. Farah11 19 December 2006 Vendor independence Through open standards Standards are imbedded in the FOSS culture Greater freedom in selecting vendors, software packages and platforms

12 M. Farah12 19 December 2006 Reduced software piracy With open source software, no need for piracy and the disadvantages of such a culture Avoiding IPR and WTO penalties

13 M. Farah13 19 December 2006 FOSS opportunities for developing countries

14 M. Farah14 19 December 2006 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

15 M. Farah15 19 December 2006 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

16 M. Farah16 19 December 2006 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

17 M. Farah17 19 December 2006 Partnership development FOSS adoption policies and strategies require development of partnerships Communities of practice and collaborative work International networking and capacity-building

18 M. Farah18 19 December 2006 Thank you!