Jeudi, je vais intervenir pour la seconde fois pour l’Université Populaire sur le thème “Les logiciels libres: une opportunité pour Maurice?” dont voici un résumé:
“Un logiciel est un ensemble de programmes qui permet à un ordinateur d’assurer une tâche. Un logiciel libre est un logiciel dont la licence d’utilisation donne à chacun le droit de l’utiliser, de l’étudier, de le modifier, de le dupliquer et de le diffuser sans contrepartie, en particulier sans paiement. Le système d’exploitation Linux, la suite bureautique OpenOffice, le navigateur Firefox et la plate-forme de développement Java en sont des exemples très connus qui sont utilisés par des millions de personnes dans le monde. Or, tout pays qui aspire à adopter l’informatique comme un des piliers de son économie requiert des infrastructures et des ressources humaines de très haut niveau. Les logiciels libres, étant gratuits, fiables et performants, représentent t-ils donc une opportunité pour Maurice?”
Mon intervention se tiendra ce Jeudi 21 Mai de 17:30 – 19:30 à la salle du Conseil de la Municipalité de Port-Louis. Le public ainsi que tous les lecteurs de mon blog sont cordialement invités.
PS: Si vous avez envie que je parle de quelque chose de spécifique, n’hésitez pas à me le dire. Envoyez moi un mail par exemple.
They are indeed an opportunity for developing countries. One example, why on earth should the government bodies use Microsoft office and pay millions of tax payers money when Open Office is free. Could an MLA ask a parliamentary question on this?
Once someone told me, 5% of “commission” of Rs. 0 = Rs. 0 :-)
More seriously, I have to be honest about this. The Linux User Group of Mauritius has somewhat failed to create a big awareness for Open Source Software at the level of the Government. There is a lot of work to do.
Well.. Raj, to answer your question, [i normally tend to be politically neutral .. but hell i was dying to say that]
Have you ever heard our minister of information & Technology speak!!! Damned this guy is totally like he is out of phase with what he is thinking and what he is saying! How can he even think about opensource.. when i bet he has no idea whether windows is a program or a computer or a Keyboard!
As for the point raised by avinash, very true… if it the system doesn’t cost, there’s no way blackholes could suck in money, so no corruption… hence a not balanced mauritian society.
Gud luck for your prez.
the technicality involved to swap OS for instance..from Windows to Linux…it’s non user friendliness for installation..and above all, you need to learn how to use Linux, where with Windows you learn easily by trial and error…by yourself..
cost effectiveness..second to none..no doubt..
but with the capitalistic society of ours..do you think it is economically viable for a country to just jump to open source?
don’t you think for instance with the numerous treaties we sign, with the US for instance, let’s take AGOA..whereby we’ve got the people there forcing our hands in buying Microsoft products to benefit of their markets..it’s give and take..
the US economy benefits a lot with Mircrosoft…
so, maybe politics too should be a major concern in the propagation of open source?
fiction or reality? time ‘maybe’ will tell..
Oh nice!
I may be there, everything depends if work has been completed. :-)
Hey guys, did you hear the Chief Executive of MT yesterday on the radio being interviewed for the launching on TV on Orange mobile phones? He was not at all, ahem, impressive. His point was that, finally, we could have what Europeans (as if they were something “special” — maybe to him) have been using for the past few years now. In fact, he felt completely clueless and this is frightening on the part of a CE and a past Minister of IT. We really need to do something or else we’ll have to invent a new word for “digital divide” but tailor-made for us.
Linux is not less user friendly than Windows for a typical clueless computer user who only wants to click on things. My parents (who are mostly clueless) have been using Ubuntu for the past year now and they are happier than before when Windows routinely failed (them.) As for installation, I would say that installing Windows, patching it, installing the Anti-virus and INSTALLING ALL THE DRIVERS ONE BY ONE is way more complex than installing Linux.
I also think you are mistaken about Microsoft and the AGOA. They are completely unrelated. Or else, why Microsoft? Why not Sun? Or Apple? They are all American companies.
What is true is that Linux is free (and therefore difficult to sell to those who want a part of the money…) and consultancy, support & training is lacking (and that’s why I’ve created Knowledge Seven Ltd.)
As a matter of fact, open source has already “won”. It exists and works great. As it does not cost anything, what is important is the quality of people using it and not the quantity. Why should I care if my neighbour is using open source or not? That’s his problem. What I do care of though is when the Government uses my taxes to pay for proprietary software which is then left unused. That is the norm in the public sector where countless Windows and Office licenses are bought each year where Linux and OpenOffice would have been perfectly good alternatives (and not clones i.e. training will be required and this will cost money but this investment can be recovered rather quickly — ask the French or Brazilian Governments.)
AGOA was just an e.g….why not Sun or Apple..maybe because Microsoft is more profitable…maybe hundreds of millions is injected into the back drawer of the republicans/democrats. (too simplistic lol !)
What I’ve noticed is that there are some software which provides quality like Adobe Photoshop; but cannot be mounted onto Linux.. You’ll tell me that there are alternatives..like GIMP? To me they’re not comparable..
the interface of open office for instance…i find that there are options lacking in it that is available on microsoft office…
simple e.g the other day i needed to print two pages on only the recto side..i was looking for this option on open office but couldn’t find any.
these small things that really complicate your life…that’s the only cause of concern to me really…and that’s why i’m not ready to swap…unfortunately!
I don’t know if M$ pay politicians but if you say so…
As for the Gimp not being Photoshop and OpenOffice not being M$ Office, you’re just stating the obvious! Gimp is not Photoshop. And OpenOffice is not M$ Office. They have different graphical user interfaces and set of functionalities for instance. But the thing is that competent users can come up with pretty much similar creations. And that’s what important.
When I was young, I thought that I should fight for more people using OSS. Now that I’m older, I’ve realised that most people are reluctant to change and, therefore, I’ve changed my focus to quality instead of quantity. In other words, I don’t care if you don’t use OSS :-)
On the other hand, as a tax payer, I don’t want the Government to waste money on Windows and Office if Linux and OpenOffice can be used instead (of course, with some retraining…)
Well, try running OpenOffice 3.0 in Windows. You will notice it loads much much faster than on Linux itself :P
And I will insist: so far free or open source software has not matured as a viable alternative to Microsoft’s ultra popular and very much loved suites, products (both free and retail), etc.
Thanks for pointing out that OO3 runs faster in Windows than in Linux. I have done any tests myself but, who knows, you may be right.
As for saying that OSS has not matured enough, that’s also your opinion. And you’re, of course, entitled to have an opinion. Personally, I don’t use Windows (and, consequently, Office) and, therefore, I believe that Linux and OpenOffice are mature enough :-)
The City of Vancouver seems to have some common sense.
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/24/1851226&art_pos=4
Thanks for this, Raj.
It’s important that people realise that they should always have their documents in OpenDocument Format in case something bad happens to Microsoft (grin :-) )
what are the exercises done by word?
What do you mean?
Word documents can be easily converted to the ISO OpenDocument Format using, say, OpenOffice. I think Microsoft supports ODF out of the box too now…