102. Society breaks with private soft. habit Will this new culture drive the change?
Notas do Editor
Free software has been a companion of our IT people for a long time, since prehistoric times. I mean the times before our oficials wrote down that free software was good and our regional government should use it, spread it, and support it. In the early 90's, even before Linux, many technicians used code shared under not well defined licenses that they got from BBSs, the antecessor of the Internet. Most of the free applications used in those early times were server software: web servers, file servers, print servers, Netware emulators, DNS, DHCP, etc. Those were times without LPI, commercial training, nor even many O'Reilly books. But documentation was there and self training was from possible to excelent, in cases as the glorious “Linux Network Administrator's Guide” by Olaf Kirch. Most of uses of free software were, thus, transparent to the user.
It is well known that 2003 was a ground breaking year for OSS in Andalusia. ADALA, the Asociacion Desarrollo y Avance software Libre (Association for the Development and Advancement of Free Software), was founded in 2001. In 2002 the 3rd edition of GUADEC was in Seville. With this atmosphere some people from the local government get interested in OSS. JA officials were then aware of the functionality, reliability, friendliness and advantages of free software and they decided to bet on free software in the way the governments do: publishing regulations.
Later, in 2005 we realized the huge value of our own custom made software and decided to publish it as free software. Although we have received some contributions, the main results have been increased business possibilities for the developers and more and better offerings received in public tenders.
I n the middle of those milestones, in 2004, a collaboration protocol was signed between the neighbouring region of Extremadura and Andalusia, for the promotion of free software. As a result of this, the Open Source World Conference has been organized by the two regional governments since 2004 to the present, one year in Andalusia and other in Extremadura. Of course, all of you are invited to attend the conference in Málaga on 27 th and 28 th of October.
I n order to fulfill the mandate of spreading and supporting the use of free software, a concrete tool was needed, and Guadalinex was born. By 2003, friendlyness of most noncommercial Linux distributions was poor for the non technical user, so we made a distribution easier to install and use, with Live CD to allow peple to test before installing. Accesibility was a clear need. Gnopernicus, the screen reader available in 2003, was not the best solution, but it was the only solution. KDE didn't provide a screen reader, nor accessibility services. This reason would have been enougth. KDE was more Windows-like and the impact in switching from windows to Linux would have been lees than using Gnome, but our target was not the Windows user. Our target in reducing the digital divide was the no_computer_user, and Gnome, in general, was easier to use. Last, but not least, Extremadura was already using a Gnome based distribution and was in its way to success in public schools. This fact gave an increased confidence to our officials in selecting Gnome.
Since 2003, our user base has grown to the figures you can see... In the early times of the deployment of Guadalinex in public schools and Guadalinfo centers, an agreement was made with ONCE. ONCE would help Junta de Andalucía in testing accessibility of Guadalinex and in prioritizing the needed developments, and Junta would make some of the needed developments and do it best to include updated accessibility tools in Guadalinex. This way some minor developments for Orca were made, and a pair (male, female) of Spanish voices were developed for the Festival speech synthesys engine.
We are on the move to introduce the use of free software in the desktop of the public employee. There are some small scale deployments with years of use without significant trouble. An analisys of requirements for the administrative desktop is about to finish, and results will be made publicly available. And, finally, we are planning for extending the move to free software, step by step, avoiding rushes and big risks, but targeting the use of free software wherever it's the best option. Some ninety some percent of cases, isn't it? :-)
Public tenders with closed terms (budget, timeline, requirements, penalties, etc) Long time from idea to contract Closed development model (only final product is available) Economic requirements may exclude small companies Reliability measured on terms of financial and workforce capacity. Most usual contractors are alien to Open Source Software
A new thriving regional industry appeared to support the ICT public projects.
Custom distro Translations Relate with administrations via internet Lacks on OSS: hardware used in spain, official support.
Local Community: Web site: news, forums, support, downloads with > 42.000 registered users. >1.000.000 copies downloaded or distributed since 2003 (7 versions) GDS, GenteGuada Improvements: Hispavoces, Eadmin, Nanny, Hermes, Installer Launchpad use to host projects Upstream: first installer, nanny