Group Project

Working together using this wiki

Group members

• richjob (AIM: richjob MSN: richjob@hotmail.com ym: richjob | richjob _at_ jobity _dot_ com)
• klashley (klashley _at_ gmail _dot_ com)
• Any other interested people

Source document :

The Ministry of Public Administration and Information (MPAI) has
published a discussion paper on "the role of Open Source Software in
Trinidad and Tobago". The deadline for comments is November 25th, 2006

Download consultation paper: "The role of Open Source Software in Trinidad and Tobago (2006 – 2008)"

From the document:

Discussions

Online through the mailing list.
Meeting at Marios St. Augustine.
Nov 4th, 10 a.m.

Official Response (Draft)

Name Richard J.., Richard B..., Richard H..., Vasudev, Kirk L... (add or remove your name as you see fit)
Organisation Trinidad and Tobago Linux Users Group (TTLUG)
Postal Address
Telephone/Fax
Email Address
Website (if applicable) http://ttlug.frontspace.org/

Title of Consultative Document Comments on the GoRTT initiative into FLOS from TTLUG

Response

• Key point 1: From your understanding, do you agree with the above analysis?

• Key point 2: Do you think fastforward, the NICT Plan should encourage the use of open source software, and accept the associated ‘risks’ when very sensitive information is at stake?

• Key point 3: From your understanding, which of the above perspectives is accurate?

• Key point 4: What do you think should be the primary goals guiding decisions for or against the use of open source software in Trinidad and Tobago?

• Key point 5: Given the above data, and your understanding of the current state of the ICT sector in Trinidad and Tobago, is there a potential to develop numerous niches and cost saving strategies through the implementation of OSS?

• Key Point 6: In your opinion, what new structures are needed to encourage niches of activity through OSS?

• Key point 7: Considering the comments above, should open source software model follow the FLOSS philosophy? Please provide context to your response.

• Key point 8: Considering the points above, and your contributions to key points 5 and 6 above, what role if any do you think the Government of Trinidad and Tobago should play with regard to the open source industry, as opposed to the proprietary software industry, in the country?

• Key point 9: Should Government look primarily at formal (direct) or informal (non-direct) approaches to the question of software models (proprietary or open) within the ICT sector?

Comments

Sundry comments from the TTLUG mailing list. Just a raw dump for convenience - if anyone wants their comments removed, I'll do it.

Richard Hamel-Smith (taken from TTCS wiki)

• I've read through the document at least once. I note no mention of the GPL anywhere. Strange when the main difference between FLOSS and closed source is specifically the license issue. They mention everything except the terms 'GPL' and 'EULA'.

• They concentrate on issues like 'risk' and economic impact, but do not talk about ownership and licensing. I think they have not understood clearly that the point of FLOSS is freedom from licensing restrictions. They are seeing it only in terms of other benefits. They are, in fact, diverting the discussion away from the licensing issue. They only mention it in passing. I see only three places in the text where the word 'license' appears.

• My particular concern is over whether we become a nation of software consumers or software producers. Licensing and ownership issues are key to fostering a climate where software development and production can take place. If there is ambivalence on this issue, there is no possibility of a local software development industry taking root. Neither open nor closed source can find encouragement in the absence of legislative protection of licenses. We will always have to import software in the presence of such ambiguity.

Views by Richard B.

One thing I noted in the paper was the incentive for developmental opportunity. However this developmental opportunity would be more "relizable" if our education systems (secondary & tertiary) used open source in their teachings. As far as I know UWI does not really use open source software much in it's teachings, even though it will be a great illustration of concepts, especially in courses dealing with networking, operating systems and programming languages.

Does any one know of any education institutions that use open source software as a reference, or even a tool in teachings?

Given this aspect, and observation, I propose that we have a representative from UWI attend our discussion meeting on this paper. I already have someone in mind, a lecturer that apparently uses *some* open source.

If any of you have any idea on how to address this developmental opportunity issue of the paper please flesh it out and bring it to the meeting. Because as it is I don't see that section in the paper as having a big impact... and it will definitely be a counter point for the proprietary software persons responding to the document.

- RB

RB, again.

I just finished reading the document. It's a bit wordy upfront, like someone else said either here or on ttcs, but it's generally not that hard to read once you get into it... it helps to read it out loud :P

As for the content (and not the wording), the document threw me for a curve... I wasn't expecting what I read, especially when I saw the Table of Contents initially.

I think what needs to be done is the document should be read as if I'm Microsoft, or a proprietary software company, trying to poke as much holes as I could in it as I can, then counter those holes as my personal comments.

I'll have to give it a second read of course.

I'd be interested to hear you guys' initial thoughts.

- RB

PS: And gals too

From last Saturday's TTCS meeting, as summarized by Vasudev.

Most participants agreed that the term 'open source software' was not correctly defined (page 5 of the 'Public Consultation OSS in NICT 20061020.pdf' and that there was confusion between the terms 'open source' and 'open standards' (page 4). Under Formal Involvement (page 15), there was debate whether the use of open source software should be legislated or not.

TTLUG and TTCS may or may not be submitting separate responses. The reasoning was, one document with many signatures may carry more weight that multiple documents with fewer signatures. Your comments can be submitted at http://ttcsweb.pbwiki.com/ under the 'Role of Open Source Software in Tnt' link.

In addition, the Apache Foundation may be submitting a response to the paper.

Initial views (Kirk L.)

The document is written with a question of 'how much' not 'if' proposition which I find exciting.

Although I had to read past the jargon, which it seems to be too much of; as the scholars say, if you can't say it without jargon - then you probably don't know it. So I think we should help them with a more balanced view of open source.

They cover the bases with the spectrum of 'Formal' to 'Informal' relationships. The document entails a timeframe 2006-2008, I have no idea what that means, is it to confine the stated relationship to FLOSS over the next 1.2 years?

Any defined relationship over the next 1.2 years makes no sense to me. As there will be an adoption period. We still can't get our new passports, yet we're expecting the role of FLOS to change in 1.2 years. Maybe I should drop the whole 2006-2008 and look beyond that. Any relationship beyond that time frame is good. Promoting the use of FLOS 'when proprietary solutions have no competitive advantage' is looking at it from the wrong side, we need to step back and look at all solutions 'open' and 'closed' and give the edge to which one gives the best ROI, widest accessibility, stability, and gets the job done right.

Document Formats

OpenDocument is a great format, and would be even better if open source applications started supporting it. My company right now has the adopted OpenDocument. We've been influencing our customers to go in this direction and the move is very painful for them - as they loved 'Word Perfect' and kept their documents organized there. In having them move to OpenOffice, we went in too trusting of OO and what it could do. With the OpenDocument format however we were able to write applications to manipulate or open documents to do whatever we wanted with them, limitation overcome.

So do I endorse formal adoption of a document format? If this were any other government I would say overwhelming 'yes'. But I don't see anybody really following through with that recommendation when we make it. So I'd say use what works. ODT works for our customers because we make it work for them.

Legislation

The legislation didn't do it. There was no legislation to figure out the relationship between proprietary software and the people or the government, so why is this different? I don't know if I advocate special legislation for FLOS or not, I'm erring on the side of not, because I don't want FLOS tied up with copyright and IP issues in Trinidad. I support little or no legislation in that regard other than legitimizing it. I think we need to figure out how we make FLOS seem as viable as commercial vendor solutions.

In Practice

Before we all start writing about the wonderful benefits of Open Source software in response to the government's draft, I suggest we really decide how far we want to push it. I'm not pushing very far for practical reasons, reasons we all believe in just no one ever says it.

Why is the TTLUG logo and even by extension the FLOS Caribbean logo on their respective websites JPEG and GIF? Both closed proprietary formats with pending lawsuits? Why is it that we're not using PNG which was the first recommendation made by the W3C? We know how to use it don't we? In fact the TTLUG logo is stored as a PNG in our files, but we chose a JPEG version... subtly because it works. We know that PNG hasn't quite taken the pre-IE6 world by storm, but we stick with it because it works, and we feel no remorse in using them.

Protection or Freedom

Capitalism is a dangerous thing: Without protection for the puritans of open source, money calls the shots. Oracle announced today that it will take RedHat's version of Linux, strip off all of RedHat's trademarks, and sell it to customers for a big discount off of what Red Hat charges. It's a ruthless and brilliant act of capitalism. I think Larry got the idea from the whole Firefox issue... take out the trademarked items and its open source again.. good to go.

Much ado about nothing

My only fear is that after all of this it will be overridden by the PS or minister and that the public view will not really be taken. I say this with the experience of collaborating on a draft policy document for MPAI which went through the process and then got shot down at the very end by someone with 'interest' in it.

 Create your own educational wiki!HelpPublic, not yet premium Privacy Policy RSS