Open Source Software : Good Bye to Digital Divide Md. Anwarul Kabir

Open Source Software : Good Bye to Digital Divide

Md. Anwarul Kabir

Published on July 16, 2007

Prelude: Based on the Marxist economic theory of surplus value incorporated with the Darwinï¿½s theory of evolution in social sphere, socialism, the pro-poor doctrine has been introduced in the late 19^th century. Later the early 20^th century has witnessed the empirically established model for socialist country Union of Soviet Socialist Russia (USSR) in 1917. Since then people from underdeveloped country on the globe have been inclining towards socialistic ideology in different forms for the economic emancipation and many countries following the Soviet Union have adopted the socialist structure of the government aligning with the aspirations of the poor people. However, the fall of socialist structure of governments in the Soviet Union and other countries in the Soviet sphere, in 1990 and onward has instilled to the psyche of some social scientists a negative notion towards socialism and socialist structure of the government. But still it can be argued that socialist structure of government is a proven and perhaps the best one for the economic salvation of the poor. Besides, the empirical evidences have strongly suggested that the socialism with all its limitations is the best ideology to ensure the basic rights of the people as well as minimise the gap between the poor and the rich in a society. So, till to date, for the poor people of the third world countries, the appeal for socialism has not been diminished.

The technological development has the sharp impact on formation of social order, social relationships and sociological discourse. The invention of microprocessors in 1980s and subsequent birth of PC have facilitated the wide use of computers over the globe. Parallel invention of TCP/IP protocol for the Internet has added a new dimension to the arena of computer communications by compressing time and geographical distances which in turn has coined the buzz word globalisation in sociological discourse. Though this post modern technology, namely Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been transforming the world into a knowledge-based society since its inception, still it has side effect too. Due to disparity in use of ICT, the world is now distinctly digitally divided. Though the UN has recognised, the access to information is one of the basic rights, the majority of the people in the third world countries are deprived of this right even in this information era. The causes of this are manifold. However, two major causes that have been identified, so far, are the high price of ICT technology and the linguistic barrier. Regarding the price of the ICT technology, it may be mentioned here that the prices of hardware since the introduction of microprocessors have been going downward but conversely the prices of software are spiralling abruptly. This, in turn, has revealed that the resulting prices of the ICT technology are towards upward thrust. However, if we survey the third world countries like Bangladesh then it may reveal surprisingly that despite the price hike of software in the global market, the number of computer users has been increasing at exponential rate since last decade. This is, in fact, possible due to the availability of pirated software in the local market. Still, in our country the use of computers are limited to some segments of the society and it may be claimed that the percentage of the computer users has not exceeded 4% of the people, considering the English enabled population of the country (only 4% people can read and write English!)

Apparently the availability and the use of the pirated software due to lack of enforcement of software copy right act seems to be a blessing for the third world countries though morally this trend is not acceptable. However, this trend will not persist in near future. Already the leading proprietorship software company Microsoft has opened its branch office in Dhaka. It is understandable that following the foot step of Microsoft, other such companies will come forward to find new business opportunities. Eventually with the increase of computer users these entrepreneurs will exert pressure on the government to enforce proper copy right act for software as a vanguard for their business interest. Facing this reality the Government of China has cleverly decided to replace the Closed Source Software with the Open Source Software (OSS) paradigm at least at the government level. Malaysia has also opted for OSS envisioning the future debacle if it sticks to the Closed Source Software development paradigm. Not only the developing countries, even the developed countries, for instance, France has also emphasised on OSS with a view to cutting down its budget for ICT development. Perhaps understanding thee new technological doctrine, UNDP has also started to promote the OSS by initiating some global projects. In essence, it may be argued that the OSS has paved the way to cut down the ICT cost abruptly and this pro poor technological discourse has the capacity to eradicate the curse of digital gap from the societies worldwide.

A Glimpse of Open Source Software Development Paradigm: According to an Internet definition, software are written coded commands that tell a computer what tasks to perform. For example, Word, PhotoShop, MS Windows and Oracle are software programs. Software may come with either in human understandable written codes (or source codes) or machine understandable binary formats (or executable files). The traditional closed source software (or proprietary software) does not include human understandable source code, rather it includes the binary formatted codes. So, any modification or enhancement in this type of software is not possible without assistance from the manufacturers who keep the source coded with them. The primary motivation of such non-delivery of source code is commercial one. Such software has the strict licence agreement at the time of purchasing which restricts the users in copying, modifying or redistributing of the product.

The sojourn of Open Source Software has started in 1991 and onward with development of Linux operating system which includes source code and provides free license for copying, modifying and redistributing. Inspired with the success story of Linux, OSS facilitates the end users with a license that gives the end user the right to use OSS for private or commercial use. OSS comprises of features such as the users' right to a) inspect and modify the underlying source code, b) sell or distribute original or modified version of OSS, c) distribute the modified source code for others' benefit. So essentially by definition the OSS has a motto for social welfare which may be compared with socialism as discussed in the prelude. Moreover, one of the OSS development methodologies emphasizes on sharing of software development work like the community work. So OSS can also be defined as software that is developed collaboratively by developers across the globe. The software itself is available at little or no cost. The source code is distributed with the executable form, giving users of the software the freedom to modify, adapt and improve the software to meet their needs. This sharing strategy can also be compared with the left oriented socialist ideology.

OSS is helping people around the globe escape the crime of software "piracy". GNU/Linux, and numbers of useful software that come along with it, is clearly attracting interest from a range of quarters. In large parts of the world where the average per capita income is often less than the cost of a computer, the current phenomenal price of software turns millions into "pirates". This sort of piracy can be easily avoided by adopting the OSS. In the arena of OSS, words such as free or low cost are not necessarily associated with low-quality, rather the availability of many high quality OSS discards this negative notion. For instance, open source operating system Linux is far better than proprietary MS Windows operating systems in terms of quality, security and flexibility. OSS for database languages like MySQL, PostgresSQL have been proved to be as efficient as other leading proprietary database programming languages. On the Internet the wide use of apache, SendMail expressed the success story of OSS.

Since the inception of of OSS paradigm, it has been playing a significant role to eradicate the linguistic barrier of computer use by incorporating with it the concept of localization. Enabling ICTs in the local language of the user is known as localization. The activists of OSS are voluntarily carrying out many projects on localization worldwide with a view to minimizing the digital divide worldwide.

Software entrepreneurs may perceive the OSS paradigm as a barrier to their business opportunity as the very term OSS is intermingled with ï¿½free of cost.ï¿½ But in reality the OSS is not always free and commercially it has been found more viable than its closed source counter part. In fact, use of OSS neither minimizes the profit margin nor lessens the wages of programmers. Rather the use of open source developing tools reduces abruptly the production cost of application software which in turn, attracts more customers and provides the entrepreneurs with more business opportunity. For instance, the production cost of developing any application software using MySQL on the Linux platform is much lower than that of using Oracle on the Windows platform as the latterï¿½s case while assessing the price of the end product includes the price for the operating system and the developing tool.

OSS and future ICT Development in Bangladesh: ï¿½Bangladesh should prefer Linux operating system to Microsoft in order to leapfrog in the ICT sector. Bangladesh government's ICT policy should also make Linux the national standard of computer operating systemï¿½ this quote of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia has implicitly suggested that Bangladesh should opt for Open Source Software for its future development. The rationales for shifting from the Closed Source Software towards OSS on part of Bangladesh can be identified as follows:

Developing Systems with Open Source Software (OSS) require less money as the tools for OSS development are freely available. So, if we could quickly adopt the culture of working with OSS then we would be able to save huge amount of public money in near future. It may be mentioned that presently we are living in an ICT and knowledge based global village and so there is no alternative on part of our government to move towards e-governance. Besides the private sectors must install virtual systems for their own existence in this present competitive market environment. These require huge amount of money which our country would not be able to afford. The only solution is to join the OSS movement.

Till to date most of the business and other organisations in private or even government organisations run their systems using pirated software which is ethically wrong and legally a punishable offence. We have the option to avoid this unethical and illegal practise by adopting OSS discarding the closed source software.

It is evident that the OSS software are more efficient and safer than many of their Closed Source counter parts. For instance, Linux is more powerful, efficient and secure than Windows Operating systems as suggested by the leading computer scientists.

OSS provides the best mechanism for localisation of the software systems compared with their closed source counterparts. It has already been mentioned that, in our country about 96% people can neither read nor write English Language. But if we want to get the maximum benefits of computerisation, localisation i.e. making software systems with Bangla interfaces is a must.

Many young ICT experts of Bangladeshi Diaspora worldwide are eager to work on OSS projects voluntarily. Already some platforms of OSS movements have initiated some projects on localisation. Due to their collaborated works some localisation projects (e.g. Bangla wikipedia ) has been successfully implemented. Besides, Ankur, a leading platform for the activists of Open Source Movement deals with the localization of Linux, Open Office, Gaim etc. BdOSN (Bangladesh Open Source Network) is also contributing much to the Open Source Movement. So, at the state level if the government initiate e-government project using the OSS philosophy then presumably it would get volunteer supports from OSS activists. This, in turn, will save huge amounts of government revenues.

Conclusive Remarks: Right decision in right time is the basic mantra for a nationï¿½s development. For overall development of the country, Bangladesh must concentrate on the rapid advancement of the ICT sector. Considering present financial constraints and linguistic barrier, right now the policy makers of the country should think about incorporating Open Source Software at all levels. Especially, at the state level, government should introduce proper policy for OSS and adopt projects on e-Governance emphasising the use of Open Source Software.

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Md. Anwarul Kabir is an educationist, working at the Computer Science Department, AIUB and a freelancewriter.