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IT Software Linux

Sri Lanka Declares an Open Source Week 105

Posted by Zonk from the tux-for-all dept.
AnuradhaRatnaweera writes "Sri Lankan Government has declared (Google cache) the week starting from the 5th of September as the National Free and Open Source Software Week. The FOSS Community, Government's ICTA and the industry are working together to organize the week's events including the FOSSSL Conference and Asia Open Source Symposium. The week has been selected to end (well, almost) with the Software Freedom Day."
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Sri Lanka Declares an Open Source Week More

Sri Lanka Declares an Open Source Week

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  • Link City (Score:5, Funny)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Sunday August 28, 2005 @11:57AM (#13421039) Homepage
    See here [thebestpag...iverse.net] for why its a bad (and extremely annoying) idea to make every other word in the summary a link.

  • wow.. editors.. really.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by peculiarmethod ( 301094 ) on Sunday August 28, 2005 @11:58AM (#13421042) Journal
    AN Open Source Week. Seriously.. are we outsourcing editorial work to India, too?
    • We oughta fork this open source Week! We could add an extra day--to the weekend of course.

      What license is it distributed under?

    • Re:wow.. editors.. really.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday August 28, 2005 @12:24PM (#13421142) Homepage Journal
      Maybe "AN Open Source Week" in a country where open source has really had an impact on society? I don't know the situation in Sri Lanka very well, but I can well imagine that it's a place that would welcome (cheap and easy to adapt to the local language) open source software over (expensive, and you're dependent on the developer) proprietary software.

      Besides, how many other places you know of have an official open-source week, or even day? It's not like this is the 10,000th repitition of an old theme (unlike some other stories we get to see here).

    • Re:wow.. editors.. really.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Coneasfast ( 690509 ) on Sunday August 28, 2005 @12:41PM (#13421203)
      are we outsourcing editorial work to India, too?

      uh, since when is Sri Lanka in India

      they are 2 seperate countries,
      know your geography, read a book.
      • uhhhh, I never gave reason for you to assume that. The media, slashdot included, have been all in a stink for the last year about jobs being "stolen" by individuals in India, among other places (rural areas supposedly, according to yesterdays news), in order to avoid expensive costs of highly decorated management and employees. However, jobs are slowly trickling back as people are finding they are under trained, it's hard to train someone who is far away, and their communications abilities leave something
        • comedy is when you try to make someone laugh, thus the FUNNY tage MODERATORS

          i know what funny is, and i have a sense of humour,
          unfortunately, you failed at your attempt at being funny

          thus the reason for my reply :)

  • In other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Sunday August 28, 2005 @12:02PM (#13421057)
    Slashdot announces a gramer/spelink wek

    • In other news... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Microsoft Declares Open Souce Weak
    • My original post did NOT have spelling mistakes and the title read "Sri Lanka Declares a FOSS Week". "Editing" it and posting is not in our hands, although it might spawn a perception that Sri Lankans have poor command of English.

  • FOSS Week (Score:2, Informative)

    by lakiolen ( 785856 )
    I suppose this is to lure people away from warez?

  • This sounds like terrorism. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) * on Sunday August 28, 2005 @12:03PM (#13421060)
    If they celebrate open source and free software, they're essentially attacking proprietary and costly software. And if you're not paying for software, you're hurting American business. And if you are hurting American business, you're a terrorist.

    Time to attack that piddly nation and that fat lazy western science fiction author!

  • Wow! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Musteval ( 817324 ) on Sunday August 28, 2005 @12:05PM (#13421066)
    Now that Sri Lanka supports open source, 2005 is sure to be the year of the Linux desktop!

    • Re:Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Sunday August 28, 2005 @12:30PM (#13421161) Homepage Journal
      ``Now that Sri Lanka supports open source, 2005 is sure to be the year of the Linux desktop!''

      Maybe in Sri Lanka it is. And frankly, it would be a very welcome development. Westerners may be able to pony up two times the price of the hardware just to get MS Windows and MS Office, but I can imagine Sri Lankans cannot. F/OSS can really change the landscape and provide more people with access to computers.

      Plus, if somehow the whole country were running Linux, soon the missing applications would have to be developed. You know, the ones that only 5% of the people use, and therefore don't get the mindshare of things like browsers and office suites, but that are nevertheless critical to businesses?
      • Have you checked out the hardware requirements for Linux lately? It's not as if you can run a current version on a 386 system with 4MB of RAM.
        • ``It's not as if you can run a current version on a 386 system with 4MB of RAM.''

          I've run a 2.6 kernel on a 486 with less than 4 MB RAM. I'm sure I could run that on a 386 with 4 MB, too.

          Just because _you_ can't, doesn't mean it's not possible. Just because the latest and greatest desktop environment won't run on it, doesn't mean it isn't possible to run a usable system on it. Would you like to compare the usability of my Linux installation to your Windows XP installation on the same 486?
          • You mean 10 year old version of Linux runs better on 15 year old hardware than a 2-3 year old version of Windows. I'm impressed.
            • The 2.6 kernel is the current version; not 10 years old.
              • My mistake. I was referring to RHL release numbers.

                So, what can you do when the 2.6 kernel runs with 4MB?
                • I was using the machine to check email (mutt), chat (with some IRC program I forget the name of; I use sirc now), SSH into other machines to do maintenance, write my homework for courses (using elvis or nano; later I would run latex on a more powerful machine).

                  I'm sure you can also serve files, and there are GUIs that would work in such an environment (picogui works for sure, I think nanogui would work, too, but I never tried).

                  In past times, I had been running XFree86 3.something with fvwm2, compiling softw
        • I just recycled a PII 400 mhz with 64 mb of RAM. I bought 128 extra mb for $35 and installed Ubuntu 5.04 on it (Gnome Desktop). It runs very smoothly.
        • Linux can run on this thing [picotux.com] (using a Linux version released last year). What makes you think it can't run on a 386 with 4MB of RAM?
      • Sri Lanka up until now was using pirated software (even now this is true for most part). this is because most people here cant afford to pay for MS Windows and MS Office which is 'needed' to run their computers. Paying for the hardware alone is difficult for most people. however since microsoft has setup a prescence here in SL and started going after pirated software people (specially computer dealers) have been looking for alternative software. so Linux has a good chance of being picked up by everyone. onl
      • Westerners may be able to pony up two times the price of the hardware just to get MS Windows and MS Office, but I can imagine Sri Lankans cannot

        No, they can not, so they do not. Everyone here uses pirated software. It is openly on sale in every computer shop. MS do not seem to mind - it is sold openly, you can find 20 or 30 shops selling pirated copies of Windows and MS Office by strolling through a shopping mall, so if they wanted to stop it they could.

        That said, in spite of this, Linux is making headw

  • I mean, making what seems like a holiday for open source...next it will become a religion...

    Ummm...Oh yeah. Nevermind. Too late.

    I, for one, welcome our new Sri Lankan Open Source Celebrating Overlords.
    • And we think the Jews and Muslims aren't getting along... Wait till the FSF and OSI duke it out...
      • The Christians don't seem to be getting along with the Muslims, either. And in Sri Lanka (and their neighborhood), the Hindus, Buddhists and Jains (to name a few) aren't getting along with the Muslims, either. I think it's inevitable, especially in South Asia, that sectarian conflicts based on clan property and power show up in tech sectarian conflicts, too. Software bickering that people call "holy wars" is nothing compared with when the real religious zealots get into the game.
  • "Sri Lanki Declares Open Source Weak." Open source isn't weak, you insenstive Sri Lankan clods... Oh wait, where did I put my glasses?
  • It's not exactly silicon valley... Do people even care about rights ensure by the GPL when they'd probably be ecstatic to have a magic wonder box that can compute results in seconds!

    • Only a few has got computers here. But there are lot of activities happenning to change it. Including a project to put tens of thousands of GNU/Linux boxes in rural homes

      Looks like many are thinking we are looking for FOSS as a cheap alternative, which is only a part of the story. We are more interested in the flexibility and independence than the cost itself.

      And in terms of contribution, Sri Lanka hasn't been idle. For example, most of the Apahce Web Services contributers [apache.org], including the lead, are

  • Facts about Sri Lanka (Score:3, Informative)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Sunday August 28, 2005 @12:23PM (#13421140) Homepage

    Sri Lanka [cia.gov] has a population of 20 million and has 19 political parties.

    --
    Faith-based lying? Faith-based killing?

  • cool (Score:2, Informative)

    by SolusSD ( 680489 )
    I work for a company called Interact whose hardware/software runs cell phone networks down there... and yes They DO run Linux! ;)

  • Where can I download (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the source for this week?

  • Cool (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MarkWatson ( 189759 ) on Sunday August 28, 2005 @01:35PM (#13421415) Homepage
    Sorry for this obvious observation: why would any small country not want to use open source?

    The only possible answer would be to be compatible with the world of all-things-Microsoft, but OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, etc. have good compatibility when you need it.

    I am very much of a computer nerd so using Windows, Linux, and OS X all on a dayly basis does not bother me, but for 'normal people', multiple learning curves are too big of a hit on productivity.

    Start kids off in grade school with a reasonable Linux distro like (for example) Ubuntu with OpenOffice.org (or a lighter weight word processor on limited computers), and save money and build up local infrastructure and capabilities.

    For large companies in the US and Europe, I could (if I wanted to, which I don't :-) make arguments for my standardizing on Windows Desktops is a good idea - but, for developing countries open source IT infrastructure is the best.

    • Re:Cool (Score:2)

      by xmda ( 43558 )
      Sorry for this obvious observation: why would any small country not want to use open source?

      Funny that you'd ask this; a couple of weeks ago I discussed this with a collegue in SL (I live and work in Sweden) and he said that SL has always been quite MS-friendly, mostly because it has been "free" to obtain as they until previously had very week, if any, copyright-laws.

      That's why... :)
  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Sri Lanka [wikinews.org] at the edge of a civil war? Sounds like someone is trying to get some good press for their country.
    • SL has been in a civil war for 30 years. and how is this open source movement going to make good press for us? do you think that the goverment hoped that Linus or you slashdotters come and help fight the civil war once they declared the open source week? FYI the week is the result of the local linux and opensource movment which is gather momentum among university students and several IT companies.

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