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FOSS Government Policy/Policy Formulation Approach

While formulating a FOSS policy is not fundamentally different from creating other national policies, it is worth examining the different stages in the formulation process. Due to its unique nature, a FOSS policy potentially involves a larger segment of society than some of the more focused policies.

Motivations and Needs Assessment
The first step in the policy formulation process is clearly identifying the motives and needs for a FOSS policy. As FOSS solves certain problems in a more efficient manner, clearly articulated motivations are a must for implementing FOSS policies, especially if they are backed at the highest level of government. Specific motivations would greatly affect implementation strategies. For instance, if the motivation is to reduce high cost imports by using affordable ICT solutions, then strategies are more likely to emphasize converting existing infrastructure to FOSS. If enhancing local capacity is the need, then the emphasis would be on use of appropriate ICT solutions for education.

Once the basic needs and motivations have been established, an assessment of the existing environment has to be conducted to determine the suitability of FOSS policies and their specific benefits to the society as a whole. This involves taking a look at a variety of factors, including but not limited to:

 * Existing ICT infrastructure.
 * Existing human ICT capacity, both in the public sector and in the society as a whole.
 * Education infrastructure and capabilities within the country.
 * Existing and proposed national policies.
 * Regional context.

Two of these factors deserve greater attention:

Existing and Proposed National Policies
FOSS policies may interact greatly with or be affected by other policies, depending on the actual strategies chosen to implement the policy. Some policies may in fact prevent the implementation of a FOSS policy. A detailed survey of national policies, laws and standards must be undertaken to ensure that a FOSS policy can peacefully coexist with broader socio-economic national objectives, after having made the necessary adjustments. In particular, a FOSS policy should not be separate from the national ICT policy or ICT4D strategy if it exists, as the likelihood of overlap is great. Other policies/strategies that can also significantly affect FOSS policy include education, intellectual property and international trade. The specifics of the more common cross-sectoral concerns are covered in a later section.

Regional Context
Most regions in the world today have varying degrees of active FOSS initiatives and policies in progress. An assessment of regional efforts is important to ensure that FOSS policies will work in the regional context as well as to identify the areas of cooperation or common interests. For example, countries in the Asia-Pacific region should be aware of a regional effort by China, Japan, and South Korea to produce a common, regionally localized and customized FOSS system and utilize this in their own countries. Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Viet Nam, have strong FOSS initiatives or formal policies encouraging FOSS. In such a situation, a country that does not have FOSS capabilities would be at a serious disadvantage.

Other issues include regional trade requirements and interoperability standards. The European Union is mandating open standards in their inter-government communication and suggesting FOSS as a method for implementing this. On the other hand, existing inter-government systems in other regions may still require proprietary software and an overly strong FOSS policy would be impractical under such circumstances.

Establishing Goals and Targets
Once the benefits and suitability of a FOSS policy have been established, goals and targets of the policy need to be stated in a clear, measurable manner and linked with the larger goals of the nation. Merely saying “FOSS is good for the country and we desire an increase in FOSS usage in the country” is unlikely to produce concrete results.

Measurable targets should be identified, even if these targets may be adjusted later during the policy formulation process. Targets at this stage set the tone and pace of the policy to be formulated. A typical target is “converting 10 percent of civil service infrastructure to FOSS”. Other possible targets are “50 percent of all ICT graduates are proficient in FOSS” or “95 percent of private sector organizations are aware of the benefits of FOSS”.

Strategy Formulation
Once tentative targets have been set for the FOSS policy, strategies to achieve the goals of the policy need to be formulated. FOSS policy level strategies unfortunately do not have a long history of development, testing and implementation. Policy-makers, therefore, will have to be especially careful with implementation and monitoring issues.

The regional survey mentioned earlier, may find many strategies being implemented regionally that can either be adopted as is, or modified to suit the local environment. However, these policies are relatively untested and policy makers should not restrict themselves to these options. A popular method of coming up with strategies involves brainstorming sessions.

Brainstorming
Different parties can do brainstorming. Different countries have relied on ICT Ministry personnel, industry groups and even cross-sectoral working groups, expressly for this purpose. If an active FOSS community exists within the country, their opinions should be tapped as they are likely to have been promoting FOSS within the country for some time and would be aware of issues that policy-makers may not be familiar with.

After several rounds of brainstorming sessions, the strategies are evaluated, summarized and then compiled into a draft policy document ready for the next stage – the consultative process.

Stakeholder and Consultative Process
FOSS development is typically an inclusive and democratic process. Projects or organizations that operate in a secretive or exclusive manner usually fail in the FOSS environment. This makes it even more important for FOSS policies to undergo a stakeholder and consultative process to ensure that the views, needs and aspirations of all the stakeholders are fully considered. Without support from the FOSS community (including corporations, academic institutions and developers), few FOSS policies are likely to succeed.

Policy-makers may find that the FOSS community is more chaotic than most other stakeholders. There are few formal structures or organizations, no elected leaders, and a diverse array of opinions on any single matter. Discussions on mailing lists often include heated arguments and public disagreements. Yet, this movement has created software that matches and even surpasses the software created by the finest corporations in the world.

There are several different methods commonly used to consult with stakeholders. Policy-makers can implement one or all of the following:

 * Round Tables
 * Focus Groups
 * Online Consultations

Round Table
Round tables are gatherings (public or by invitation) of representatives of stakeholder groups. The FOSS community usually has no formal leader, there are usually individuals who are greatly respected and deferred to within the community. These individuals need to be identified and invited to attend round table sessions. Other affected stakeholders such as government ministries, educational institutes, civil society organizations and private sector representatives should also be included.

In the round table sessions valuable insights and suggestions can sometimes be generated and a sense of buy-in and ownership of the policy can be cultivated among the stakeholders. Networks of communication between FOSS practitioners and policy-makers can be forged. At times, the most valuable outcomes of these round tables are born during the breaks between sessions, rather than in the actual sessions themselves.

Round tables should be held regularly and the findings and recommendations of the sessions should be made public. Organizing round tables, however, can require much energy and resources, especially in a geographically diverse country.

Focus Groups
While round tables cover a broad spectrum of the FOSS community and interests, focus groups tend to concentrate on narrower areas such as education, private sector or legal issues. The number of participants is smaller but they are focused on these specific fields. The discussions in these sessions, though narrower in scope, are often detailed and lengthier, tending to yield greater information.

Focus groups should be organized for the critical areas targeted by the policy, to ensure that the policy and implementation strategies are realistic, workable and have community support.

Online Consultations
Online consultations leverage the power of the Internet to reach a wider audience and involve more stakeholders in the consultation process. Rather than meeting in person, participants communicate via mailing lists and discussion boards to cover all of the various aspects of the policy.

However, the policy steering committee should be aware and especially careful of certain issues with respect to online discussions. The most obvious issue is that the availability of Internet access within the country often limits the participants of the consultation to only a small subsection of the population. For this reason, online consultations should never be the only stakeholder consultative process employed. However, if the consultation is public, then an online consultation may tap into the worldwide FOSS community, which has valuable insights, past experiences and resources to contribute.

Another issue is how public the online consultation should be. Making the discussions fully public on a mailing list or bulletin board is true to the spirit of the FOSS community, but this can generate a large amount of “noise” on the discussion lists. Nor are all policy-makers comfortable with this. However, restricted online discussion, especially with many restrictions on participant behaviour, can discourage any meaningful input. A careful balance has to be found.

Policy-makers should expect some changes during the consultation process, to accommodate stakeholder concerns and new strategies suggested by participants. At times, even significant changes may have to be considered. In many cases, it may be necessary to go through several rounds of consultation to produce a policy that reflects the needs and concerns of all involved.


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FOSS Government Policy/Strategies

There are numerous strategies for achieving any conceivable policy goal. Each strategy has its own advantages and drawbacks. This section discusses considerations affecting strategy formulation, and some of the more commonly used strategies with their advantages and drawbacks.

No strategy should be taken and implemented without careful consideration of the local environment. Issues such as language, economic development, legal environment and cultural attitudes can make a particular strategy impossible.

To date, FOSS promotion strategies via government procurement throughout the world fall into four broad categories. They are:

 * 1) Mandating FOSS
 * 2) Preferring FOSS
 * 3) Mandating Open Standards
 * 4) Best Value

Mandating FOSS
This is the most radical approach as it mandates the usage of FOSS systems throughout the government sector. In some countries, this means replacing the entire existing proprietary infrastructure, which involves large implementation and training costs. Although a number of proposals (legislative or otherwise) to this effect have been submitted, to date few have passed. The high costs and risks involved are the main deterrents in this approach.

Other countries have chosen the less painful route of mandating FOSS for all new procurement. More conservative approaches such as this are somewhat more common. Countries that mandate the change of only a proportion of the infrastructure over to FOSS include Brazil (80 percent of all systems), South Korea (20-30 percent of all systems) and Thailand.

This approach greatly promotes FOSS usage and capacity in the local economy. However, the criticism is that this is done at the expense of the proprietary software industry. Certain economically advanced countries have also criticized such policies as being protectionist and against the spirit of free trade. China has a policy of blocking of foreign software usage in government offices. This does not mandate FOSS per se but it has a strong stimulating effect. The policy considers locally packaged FOSS systems as local software, even if the international FOSS community produces the majority of its components.

Preferring FOSS
Recognizing the difficulty of switching the entire government infrastructure over to FOSS, many governments have moderated their approach by preferring FOSS solutions for the new procurements. When all traditional commercial measures are equal (functionality, TCO, risks, stability, etc.) then the FOSS solutions are selected in recognition of the social benefits, which can be hard to quantify.

This approach has the benefit of being easier and less risky to implement. It is also more flexible, allowing procurements to be decided on a case by case basis, taking into account factors such as the possible lack of a local developer pool. However, the weaker mandate may not be enough to counter the advantage that proprietary software enjoy when there is an established proprietary system.

Mandating Open Standards
Mandating open standards often has a complementary effect on FOSS systems. One of the most effective ways in which software vendors lock in their users is the use of proprietary standards. FOSS systems are at a disadvantage in a mostly proprietary software environment due to the lack of interoperability. The mandating of open standards would level the playing field and introduce increased competition, not just between proprietary software and FOSS but also between different proprietary software solutions. However, this often requires modifying procedures and legacy documents that are still stored using proprietary standards.

The two areas often targeted by open standards advocates are documents and web standards. Text documents and spreadsheets are typically stored in proprietary formats and may not be retrievable without the proper proprietary software, thus impeding the free exchange of information. Proprietary, closed web standards are ironic, since the World Wide Web is primarily based upon open standards. However, the dominance of a single web browser and its complementary web development tools from the same vendor have resulted in many Web sites being created using non-standards compliant HTML tags that are only accessible using Internet Explorer even though it would take minimal effort to make these sites cross-platform.

In some cases, mandating open standards would initially preclude certain proprietary software vendors from participating until such time that they add proper support for open standards in their products.

Emphasis on open standards is strongest in countries with mature ICT industries and infrastructure. The European Union, the United Kingdom, certain states within the United States and New Zealand are among the governments supporting open standards.

Best Value
This approach focuses mostly on the economic value of FOSS, de-emphasizing the national and social benefits of wide scale FOSS adoption. This approach is the least controversial and is the standard policy in most countries.

However, due to the relative newness of FOSS and lack of general awareness, there have been calls for legislation or policy that explicitly places FOSS on the same level playing field as established and reputable proprietary software. Multiple legislative initiatives were started at the state level in the United States but, to date, none have passed. Any policy or legislation that explicitly requires that FOSS be considered on an equal footing with proprietary software is strongly opposed by proprietary software companies and intensely lobbied against.

Level of Development
The first and most important factor to note is that the level of economic development and ICT infrastructure greatly affects the strategies employed. Depending on whether a country already has an existing infrastructure, appropriate strategies change significantly.

Relatively advanced nations typically have existing ICT infrastructure and a trained technical pool. The infrastructure and skill set are typically on proprietary systems and this poses significant problems in several ways:

 * Institutional resistance
 * Since decision makers are familiar with their particular version of proprietary software and their skill sets are all rooted in this system, any FOSS policy is likely to encounter strong resistance. Any institution is resistant to change and ICT departments are no different. In new procurements, decision makers are likely to be more comfortable staying with the same technology as their legacy systems and biased against new technologies, including FOSS systems.

 * Migration costs
 * Since legacy systems are already in place, implementing FOSS systems will eventually involve migrating existing systems over. Migration can sometimes be even more expensive than implementing a system from scratch. This is due to retraining costs and difficulties involved in migrating data from proprietary data formats or interfacing with legacy systems that were not built with interoperability with other systems in mind. Even in a minimally computerized environment, moving simple word processing documents from a proprietary data format to an open standard can be a significant amount of work.

 * Incompatibilities
 * Even if a total migration to FOSS systems were contemplated, there will be a period of time when both FOSS and proprietary systems must coexist peacefully. Unfortunately, a common strategy with proprietary software is to make their systems not fully compatible with other systems, be they competitor proprietary software or FOSS systems. In some cases, this incompatibility is relatively minor (for example, text documents that are strangely formatted). But in other cases, data interchange may be quite complicated.

For these reasons, implementing a FOSS infrastructure or at least creating a FOSS-friendly environment is much simpler when the existing infrastructure is limited.

With relatively developed countries, FOSS policy issues tend to focus on migration strategies, open standards, new procurement and coexistence issues. Relatively undeveloped countries focus on capacity- building and legal issues to ensure that the infrastructure they build, from the very beginning, is FOSS-friendly.

Policy and Legal Environment
Most countries have an existing body of policies and laws. As the proprietary model of software development has been the predominant model until recently, existing policies and laws are normally favourable towards proprietary software. In some cases, this may mean that some policies or laws create a hostile environment for FOSS.

Many countries are finding that they have to re-examine and often tweak their existing policies and laws to align them with their FOSS goals. Often, the changes are not just within the ICT sector but within other sectors as well, such as copyrights, patents, industry promotion and education. For some of the more common issues, please refer to the “Cross-Sectoral Concerns” section later in this primer.

Countries that have directly addressed this problem, frequently form a working group or committee, to identify the different problems and work with the appropriate government body to address them. This often involves a process of awareness raising and education of policy makers in other sectors of the government. Obtaining consensus can often be a lengthy process and it helps to have support for FOSS from the highest levels of government.

Capacity Development
Many developing countries have noted that a serious shortage of FOSS capacity in their economies holds back the implementation of major FOSS projects. Any major FOSS policy in developing countries will involve building a pool of local FOSS experts and companies to support the projects and users of FOSS in the country

There are several focus areas for strategies on FOSS capacity development:

Traditional Education
The traditional educational structure, starting from primary schools up through to the university level, can often be an excellent training ground for FOSS. There are a wide number of strategies in this sector, too many to be listed exhaustively. Some of the more common strategies include:

 * Computer labs with FOSS installed
 * Projects such as these have been carried out in various countries, including Brazil, Mongolia, Spain, and Thailand. In some cases, the initial purpose was not to build FOSS capacity but to build ICT capacity in general. FOSS systems were utilized to reduce expenses but this also had the added advantage of introducing an entire generation of students to FOSS relatively painlessly. Mongolia, among others, has reported that students had no difficulty learning and using FOSS systems. Implementing an initiative such as this requires a minimum level of FOSS capacity within the country to support the school computers. Otherwise, some schools may find their computers not being used, as was experienced by the Goa Schools Project.

 * Ensuring that curriculum is vendor neutral
 * Many ICT literacy and computer science programs in schools today, even at the university level, are written with a specific proprietary software suite in mind. By ensuring that the teaching of ICT concepts is decoupled from vendor-specific skills, a more level competitive field can be achieved. In most cases, ICT skills can be taught on many platforms. For instance, basic ICT literacy skills such as email, web browsing and word processing can be taught on multiple proprietary and FOSS platforms. It may even be beneficial for students to experience two different implementations of a certain concept (one proprietary, one FOSS) to ensure that the students learn flexible skills that can be easily transferred from one system to another. This does place an extra burden on both educators and students.

 * Some universities justify their teaching of skills tied to specific software packages by noting that their graduates are likely to be more productive immediately upon graduation. However, educators and policymakers should keep in mind that most software systems have extremely short lifespans. A software package taught today is often outdated within five years and a graduate who has not learned broad, easily transferred concepts will become obsolete.

 * Scholarships/innovation awards
 * These are relatively small financial rewards given to students who contribute to the development of FOSS. Meant more as encouragement and recognition of their achievements rather than financial support, these awards raise awareness and interest in FOSS. This will in turn lead to more skilled FOSS practitioners within the formal education system. Such awards have been implemented in places such as India, but it is still too early to assess the long-term outcomes of such a programme.

Certification and Retraining Programmes
Most policies, especially those with short-term goals, normally have a certification and retraining component as well. It typically takes less time to retrain already skilled technical personnel than it takes to train new personnel from scratch through the formal education system.

Retraining programmes can either be part of continuing education classes taught in the evenings at colleges and universities or in specially mandated training centres. Some initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region have had government-subsidized FOSS training as part of the retraining benefits given to unemployed or downsized workers.

A certification programme is also recommended to complement the retraining effort. Certification ensures that all technical personnel possess a consistent and sufficient level of skill before they are allowed to implement FOSS projects. These minimum standards are necessary to ensure that initial FOSS projects do not fail due to a lack of sufficiently qualified personnel, thereby creating a bad impression for future projects.

An alternative to creating a certification programme from scratch (which is quite a significant undertaking) would be to utilize one of the globally recognized certification programmes. Two of the notable certification programmes for GNU/Linux (which is only a subset of the entire FOSS movement) are the Linux Professional Institute's Certification (LPIC) and Red Hat’s Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) programme or the Comptia Linux+

 * LPIC
 * The LPI is a non-profit organization that administers a distribution-neutral examination. The LPI tests the most commonly used Linux skills via a multi-choice exam plus some fillin the blank examinations. The neutral rather than specific vendor approach has its merit. Two exams  are required for Level One at a cost of $300(US)

Comptia Linux + is also operated by a non profit organization and it is a single exam. They updated the exam in recent years

BSD exams are also available priced at only $75 for the one exam which has employed a psychometrician

 * RHCE
 * This examination focuses primarily on Red Hat’s distribution of Linux but a good proportion of the skills can be easily transferred between different FOSS distributions. The RHCE also includes a hands-on practical examination involving the actual set up of a GNU/Linux system. The LPI does not offer a practical exam component at present. However, the RHCE is specific to a single Linux distribution and significantly more expensive.

Both organizations are willing to cooperate in localizing their examinations, so language considerations are not a major issue.

Other organizations offering certification programmes include CompTIA with their Linux+ certification and SuSE with their certified engineer programme.

FOSS Competency Centres
A common strategy of many FOSS policies is the creation of a FOSS competency/research/compatibility centre that performs a variety of functions:

 * FOSS awareness raising and promotion.
 * Implementing pilot projects in e-government.
 * Documenting current best practices of FOSS usage.
 * Providing technical support for government agencies.
 * Providing training of both end-users and technicians.
 * Aggregating news and resources on FOSS.

These centres typically serve as the core of FOSS competency supporting the development of competencies elsewhere in the country, especially in the public sector. In larger countries, multiple centres may be established, one per major metropolitan area.

Research
Some policies include a requirement that software produced by publicly funded research should be released under a FOSS license. The rationale is that the fruits of public funds should be freely enjoyed by the society as a whole. Releasing it under a FOSS license would ensure this, as opposed to a trend in some countries to have publicly funded research patented and licensed to commercial organizations to commercialize the results of the research.

The United States has a situation that is similar in principle: most of the software created by US departments is released into the public domain, made available to all to utilize and take advantage of. As this situation has been in place for many years, some of the results are quite interesting. The VISTA hospital information system released by the Veterans Administration is a widely used FOSS system that runs hundreds of hospitals around the world, saving millions of dollars in software costs in each hospital. The bioinformatics field throughout the world relies very much on software created by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).

In both cases, the primary beneficiaries are the citizens of the country itself, as adoption is normally quickest there. But the benefits have spread globally.

Some critics of such initiatives say that releasing research under a FOSS license is unfair to the private sector, as this would prevent the commercialization of this research. However, this criticism applies to only one or two of the 52+ FOSS licenses. There are a variety of licenses that are especially business-friendly and some were even created by corporations such as Sun, IBM or Apple. Deciding the appropriate license for research is best left to the local legal experts.

FOSS as an Industry
As a challenge to the traditional proprietary software industry, FOSS can be a large contributor to the local economy. Large multinational corporations such as IBM and Red Hat, as well as countless small and medium-sized companies such as MySQL AB, Digital Creations and Trolltech, have generated strong profits by focusing on FOSS.

While a large traditional proprietary software firm like Microsoft is unlikely with the FOSS model, a vibrant ICT industry based on FOSS is quite possible and several countries have already begun policy initiatives to encourage a FOSS industry.

In many developing countries there is insufficient local capacity to properly support widespread FOSS usage (or ICT usage of any kind) throughout the economy. Thus, FOSS policies can and should be linked with the creation and development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) to supply support services. In combination with a FOSS government procurement strategy, this can create a vibrant ecosystem with strong supply and demand.

There are several strategies that governments may employ to encourage the growth of FOSS among SMEs, as discussed below.

Awareness Raising
SMEs normally do not have access to the wealth of information resources that larger corporations have and they may be unaware of the full benefits of FOSS. Awareness-raising activities such as conferences, workshops and training sessions will help SMEs fully utilize this resource and incorporate it into their organizational strategies.

Government Procurement
Although government procurement has been covered as a general method of promoting FOSS within a country, it can serve as a vehicle to promote SMEs as well. Most government procurement contracts are too large for SMEs to compete for and this normally places them at a competitive disadvantage. However, some governments (notably the United States and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom) have requirements that a certain percentage of a government contract must be carried out by SMEs or be subcontracted out to SMEs by the ultimate winner of the contract.

These initiatives have created strong partnerships between large corporations and SMEs, and have helped quite a few SMEs grow to a size where they are able to compete with the larger corporations in their respective countries.

Tax Incentives
Besides directly creating demand via overt purchases, governments can increase the attractiveness of FOSS to SMEs by offering incentives such as tax breaks. Countries like Singapore have offered tax reductions to companies that use the GNU/Linux operating system. The guaranteed cost saving makes FOSS systems more attractive to SMEs.

Credit/Financial Assistance
In rare cases, governments can choose to support local FOSS companies via loans, loan guarantees, seed funding, venture capital funds and other financing methods. Assuming there is sufficient demand in the local economy for FOSS products and services, government support can reduce the financial roadblocks to starting and running a successful FOSS business, particularly among SMEs.

Many countries have credit programmes for small businesses. An example is the United States’ Small Business Administration (SBA). The SBA has put over US$30 billion in the hands of small business owners since 1958 to finance the growth of the United States’ vibrant SME industry. A modified version of such plans can be adopted to assist FOSS SMEs.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: FOSS Government Policy/Strategies


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FOSS Government Policy/Cross Sectoral Concerns

Due to its unique nature, FOSS touches on more than just national ICT policy. Particularly in the area of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) as well as in other areas such as consumer rights and international trade, FOSS can wither or thrive depending on the specifics of the policies implemented. In this section, we look at some of the important non-ICT areas that must be aligned with national FOSS goals.

Patents
Software and business process patents are particularly dangerous to FOSS for two reasons: FOSS developers rarely patent anything, and paying for patent royalties is impractical with FOSS software. Because of this, software companies threatened by FOSS can utilize software and business process patents to stifle FOSS development.

The nature of FOSS development is open and cooperative, with many individuals and organizations involved in the process. These communities rarely file patents for any of the ideas that they produce. Besides disrupting the cooperative nature of FOSS itself, patents are expensive to file. In the United States, the absolute minimum for a successful patent hovers around $1,025. Most patent filers utilize the services of specialized patent attorneys and this greatly increases the costs to between 8,000 and US$30,000 per patent. As can be expected, few FOSS patents are filed and FOSS is often defenseless against patents that competitors may possess.

FOSS is also unable to pay royalties on patents held by others. Royalties would restrict the ability to freely redistribute the software, destroying one of the fundamentals of FOSS. Royalties are also incompatible with some of the major FOSS licenses. It becomes extremely costly for distributors such as Debian, a non-profit community organization, to track, collect and pay royalties every time someone shares a copy of Debian’s software with someone else.

Note that FOSS is not affected by traditional patents covering inventions, manufacturing processes and most other tangible patents. It is primarily the patenting of software and, to a lesser extent, business practices that threaten FOSS. If software patents are allowed within a country’s legal system, FOSS adoption may be severely threatened.

Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation notes that patents are also a threat to small and medium-sized companies that develop or use software. The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), a European grouping of over 1,000 small companies and 60,000 individuals, is fighting the introduction of software patents into the European Union and has collected an extensive array of resources arguing against software patents. One of the more telling quotations in their resources is attributed to Microsoft’s Bill Gates in 1991:

 * If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.

Full details can be found at the FFII site at: http://www.ffii.org

Copyright
Copyright law is fairly standard throughout the world. However, there are a few areas where copyright laws differ somewhat and therefore affect FOSS in different ways.

 * Derivative Works
 * There is sometimes ambiguity over what constitutes a derivative work in software. This has consequences on some of the most popular FOSS licenses, including the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). The GNU GPL has a provision requiring that all derivative works of GNU GPL software must be released under the GNU GPL. The definition of derivative works is not consistent worldwide and this may not be applicable in every nation in the world. Clarification of these issues may be necessary to ensure that the legal basis of FOSS licenses is strong in the country.

 * Reverse Engineering
 * Reverse engineering is the method of taking something apart in order to figure out how it works. Most copyright laws allow some form of reverse engineering, especially for interoperability and compatibility reasons. However, some recent laws, particularly the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States, have placed restrictions on reverse engineering. This directly impacts FOSS as its interoperability with proprietary software often comes about through reverse engineering proprietary protocols and data standards. If reverse engineering is prohibited, proprietary software producers are able to erect barriers to keep FOSS (and other proprietary competitors) out of their markets by using proprietary communication protocols and data standards. This would make it easier for vendors to lock their customers into their software solutions.

Consumer Rights
Overly aggressive consumer protection laws can also destroy the FOSS industry, particularly with regard to implied warranties. This is ironic since FOSS tends to give consumers far more rights than proprietary software does.

Certain countries are either considering or have enacted laws that do not allow software distributors to totally absolve themselves of liability, should their product not work as expected. Doing so would result in almost no software being released as FOSS, since software producers are unable to handle the legal liability involved when the software can be freely distributed to just about anyone and used for any purpose. Such laws are also incompatible with many FOSS licenses.

It should be noted that nothing prevents a commercial FOSS company from offering warranties and assuming liability risks on software that they sell. Many companies such as Red Hat, SuSE or Mandrake offer industry standard warranties. However, individual projects or non-commercial community distributions such as Debian cannot do the same. Mandating such a warranty for all would seriously cripple the FOSS community as it would then be impossible for anyone other than large corporations to participate in FOSS development.


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FOSS Government Policy/Conclusion

Free/Open Source Software is a proven and mature solution set that offers many opportunities to developing nations that are building their ICT infrastructure. Numerous corporations, institutions and government agencies are utilizing FOSS throughout their ICT infrastructure and running mission-critical applications upon it. Countless national governments are relying on FOSS to jumpstart their ICT infrastructure, develop local capacity, increase competition in the ICT industry and reduce their dependence on any single vendor.

However, FOSS is not a “magic bullet” that immediately solves all of a nation's problems. Its benefits are real and tangible; but implementing a policy that fully captures these benefits with no significant drawbacks is difficult. National leaders must be able to make balanced and well-informed decisions pertaining to FOSS policies. Tony Stanco from the Center of Open Source and Government highlights 50 several strong points in the South African Open Source Strategy:

 * Official Statement of Recognition of the Legitimacy of FOSS
 * Since FOSS is new and unknown to most decision makers, official recognition and legitimacy has a strong promoting effect on FOSS adoption.

 * Designation of Particular Government Agency to Lead FOSS Programme
 * A designated lead agency is responsible for coordination, communication and execution of the policy. The single point of responsibility reduces the likelihood that a FOSS policy is not issued and forgotten or improperly implemented.

 * Level Playing Field in Government Procurement:By ensuring a truly level playing field between the different options, a government can increase competition in procurement. This involves, among other things, ensuring that open standards and open protocols are used.
 * Appreciation of Social Value of FOSS
 * Some policies focus too much on the financial benefits of FOSS and leave out benefits such as capacity building, transparency in government and greater citizen access. A policy that focuses on all the benefits addresses both the economic and social needs of a country.

 * Phased Implementation
 * Any large undertaking carries with it a large amount of risk, especially in developing countries where local capacity is highly limited. A phased implementation plan, including pilot projects and and a prudent transition strategy allows a government to build institutional knowledge and capacity while developing best practices and case studies for future projects.

No national policy is easy to formulate or implement. The unique conditions in each country, the demands of the different stakeholders and the challenges faced present a different problem to each country. Still, the benefits to be gained are enormous and policy-makers need to be well informed to make optimal choices so that each nation can fully realize the benefits that FOSS can bring to each.

title: FOSS Government Policy/Conclusion


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FOSS Government Policy/Useful Resources

Portals Focused on FOSS and Government
eGovOS - The Center of Open Source and Government. Contains many useful resources, including many policies from various government departments and reports. http://www.egovos.org/

The European Commission’s Open Source Observatory: http://www.osor.eu/

The United Nations Development Information Programme (UNDP) Networking and Information Technology Observatory (NITO)’s Open Source section: http://www.sdnp.undp.org/perl/news/articles.pl?do=browse&categories=10

The International Open Source Network (IOSN): http://www.iosn.net

Policy Related Documents
United Kingdom’s Open Source Software policy, as issued by the Office of Government Commerce: http://www.ogc.gov.uk/embedded_object.asp?docid=2498

Extensive FLOSS survey conducted by the International Institute of Infonomics at the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands: http://www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/report/

South Africa's Open Source Software strategy: http://www.oss.gov.za/docs/OSS_Strategy_v3.pdf

Open Standards policy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States of America: http://www.state.ma.us/itd/openstandards.htm

Report of FOSS usage in the US Department of Defense, prepared by MITRE Corporation: http://www.egovos.org/rawmedia_repository/588347ad_c97c_48b9_a63d_821cb0e8422d?/document.pdf

Feasibility study conducted by the Swedish Agency for Public Management: http://web.archive.org/web/20040328043752/http://www.statskontoret.se/pdf/200308eng.pdf

“Open source software in e-government” report produced by the Danish Board of Technology: http://www.tekno.dk/subpage.php3?article=969&survey=14&language=uk&front=1

title: FOSS Government Policy/Useful Resources


text:
FOSS Government Policy/About the Authors

Kenneth Wong is a Free/Open Source Software advocate with a strong interest in utilizing FOSS to widen the reach of ICT in developing communities worldwide. Ken is currently the head of software development projects at Exosoft, a FOSS focused software development firm in Beijing, China. Ken has been making a living from FOSS throughout his entire professional career. He has BBA and MBA degrees from the University of Hawaii and a MS degree in computer science from Boston University.


text:
FOSS Government Policy/About APDIP

The Asia-Paciﬁc Development Information Programme (APDIP) is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that aims to promote the development and application of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for poverty alleviation and sustainable human development in the Asia-Paciﬁc region. It does so through three core programme areas, namely, Policy Development and Dialogue; Access; and Content Development and Knowledge Management.

In collaboration with national governments, APDIP seeks to assist national and regional institutions in the Asia-Pacific through activities that involve awareness-raising and advocacy, building capacities, promoting ICT policies and dialogue, promoting equitable access to tools and technologies, knowledge sharing, and networking. Strategic public-private sector partnerships and opportunities for technical cooperation among developing countries (TCDC) are APDIP's key building blocks in implementing each programme activity

http://www.apdip.net

title: FOSS Government Policy/About APDIP


text:
FOSS Government Policy/About IOSN

The International Open Source Network (IOSN) is an initiative of UNDP’s Asia-Paciﬁc Development Information Programme (APDIP). Its overall objective is to serve as a Center of Excellence and a Clearinghouse for Information on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the Asia-Paciﬁc region. In order to accelerate the world-wide adoption of FOSS, IOSN seeks to raise awareness, facilitate networking of people, strengthen capacities, and conduct R&D.

The beneﬁciaries of IOSN are governments, IT professionals, software developers, the FOSS R&D community, academics and the NGO community. IOSN serves as a resource center to help policy-makers and decision-makers in the public sector, educational institutions, businesses and others develop policies and plans for the use of FOSS in their respective organizations. Much of IOSN’s activities are undertaken online and the IOSN portal has been developed for this purpose and serves as a comprehensive online resource center on FOSS. The IOSN portal also provides a means for the FOSS community in the region to contribute to its efforts and to interact with each other.

http://www.iosn.net

title: FOSS Government Policy/About IOSN


text:
FOSS Government Policy/Glossary

 * Free Software:The word “free” in Free Software refers to the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. It does not refer to the price of the software. More precisely, a program is Free Software if users have the following four freedoms:

 * The freedom to run the program for any purpose
 * The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
 * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
 * The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

 * The definition of Free Software and a more detail explanation is available at http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

 * GNU:GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU’s Not Unix” and the name of a project started in 1984 by Richard Stallman to develop a complete UNIX-like operating system that is available as Free Software. This is called the GNU operating system.

 * GNU GPL:The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) was originally used as the license for “Free Software” distributed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Under the GPL, users may run, copy and modify the software, and distribute the modified software. However, users are not allowed to add their own restrictions and the modified software must be released under the same licensing terms. The GPL also requires that the source code be made available to anyone who possesses the program binary.

 * Localization:In the context of software, localization is the process of adapting, translating and customizing a product for a specific market. This means the modification of the interface so that it becomes meaningful and comprehensible to the local user of the product. Localization needs to address linguistic, content, cultural and technical issues.

 * NSA:National Security Agency (NSA) is the United States of America’s cryptologic organization. It coordinates, directs, and performs highly specialized activities to protect US information systems and produce foreign intelligence information. A high technology organization, NSA is on the frontiers of communications and data processing. It is also one of the most important centres of foreign language analysis and research within the United States government.
 * Information adapted from NSA website at: http://web.archive.org/20040307142240/www.nsa.gov/about/index.cfm

 * Open Source Software:Open Source Software does not only mean access to the source code. To qualify as Open Source Software, a software must have distribution terms that comply with the following conditions:

 * Free redistribution.
 * Availability of source code.
 * Possibility of derived works.
 * Integrity of the author's source code.
 * No discrimination against persons or groups.
 * No discrimination against fields of endeavour.
 * Distribution of license.
 * License must not be specific to a product.
 * License must not restrict other software.
 * License must be technology-neutral.

 * For further explanation of the definition of Open Source please refer to: http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

 * Operating System:An Operating System (OS) is a collection of software that controls the hardware and software applications on a computer. The OS manages and allocates the physical resources (CPU processing time, hard disk space, inputs from the keyboard, etc.) among the different applications that run on it. Examples of an OS are Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X. Most modern OS bundle additional applications (word processors, media players, web browsers) that are not traditionally defined as part of an Operating System.

 * Reverse Engineer:To reverse engineer a product is to take apart a functioning product to understand how it works. This is often used as part of a process to create a separate product that functions in a similar fashion. Reverse engineering for compatibility purposes is protected by law in many countries.

 * Source Code:Software source code is the set of programming instructions written by the programmer using a particular computer language. Most computer languages are easily read and understood by a competent programmer. In order for the computer to understand and run the software, the source code must be compiled or “translate” into machine code (also referred to as binary code, executable code or object code). To modify software, the source code must be available, as the machine code is not human-readable.

 * TCO:Total Cost of Ownership (TOC) includes all the costs involved in a technology or business solution. In addition to the initial investment cost, TCO includes training, maintenance, support, replacement costs, and the like. In the case of software, the TCO should include the initial cost of the software; upgradation cost; and maintenance, support and training costs.

title: FOSS Government Policy/Glossary


text:
FOSS Education/Infrastructure

Requirements of Educational Institutions
Different educational institutions have different ICT infrastructure requirements, depending on the level of education, the nature of the courses they offer and the available funding. Invariably, however, there is a need for computer laboratories in educational institutions for conducting basic computer classes, allowing students to complete their assignments, conducting specialized ICT classes,providing access to the library system, making available learning management systems and facilitating email communications. The number of computers required depends on the student population and the student-computer ratio that the institution considers desirable.

Networking
Computers within laboratories are normally connected via a Local Area Network (LAN). In an education environment most of the student users are "nomadic" and do not have designated computers.Hence, the set-up must allow them to work from any of the computers on the network.

Internet Connectivity
Ability to connect to the Internet is a basic requirement that educational institutions should strive to provide as it allows both students and academic staff to access the numerous digital resources available on the Web. It also enables the use of email, which has become an important means of communication. For educational institutions, the Internet is a service that facilitates effective administration of the institution and provides a channel of communication between educators and students that can lead to more effective learning. It is also necessary for the implementation of e-learning and distance learning.

Security
With Internet connectivity, an institution's network is accessible from the Internet. Thus it is essential to have a firewall to protect against intrusion by unauthorized users, especially if there is high-speed 24-hour Internet access.User authentication is required to ensure that only authorized users can access the network.

Web Publishing
There are often requirements, in an academic setting, for publishing information and providing access to materials via the Web. These include teachers and lecturers providing course materials online, students putting up Web pages, administrators publishing information on the intranet and the institution maintaining a public website. All these require appropriate Web server hardware and software.

Server Software
A main component of the ICT infrastructure of an organization is the servers that provide various services such as email, file and print services. Appropriate software is required to provide these services. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) have been found to be appropriate for this purpose. They compare favourably with the proprietary equivalent in terms of features and, in certain cases, have a higher market share.

Email
The provision of email services requires setting up an email server that controls sending and delivery of messages. Once such a server is set up, it is expected to run continuously without any problems. An interruption will affect communication and the work of many in the organization. Hence, reliability is a major concern for email server software. Other concerns are security and performance. Several robust FOSS email servers such as Sendmail ( http://www.sendmail.org ) and  Postfix ( http://www.postfix.org ) are available and are being deployed successfully in many organizations, including educational institutions. They compare favourably with proprietary email servers such as Microsoft Exchange, are simpler to deploy and require fewer computing resources.

File and Print Services
One characteristic of ICT usage in an educational institution is the "nomadic" user, that is, students who use the network services from different computers. This requires a file server that would allow them to save their work and configurations in a central server instead of in the local workstations. The possible need to print from any workstation requires server software that allows this. Samba ( http://www.samba.org ) is a FOSS file cum print server that runs on GNU/Linux and works seamlessly with workstations running Windows at the same time.

Network services
The Domain Name System (DNS) is needed to translate domain names to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The most widely used DNS server is BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain), which is Free Software.

Every computer connected to a network needs to be assigned an IP address. This can be done manually but it is most common to have the IP address assigned dynamically by a DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server. Most GNU/Linux distributions include a DHCP server.

GNU/Linux has a utility called Iptables that can be used to implement firewalls to protect against security intrusion. Some ready-made FOSS firewalls are also available, such as Shorewall ( http://www.shorewall.net ). Intrusion detection tools are used to detect any security breach and one such FOSS is Snort ( http://www.snort.org ).

Web Server
The most popular Web server is Apache ( http://www.apache.org ), which is Free/Open Source Software. It is reputed to have a 67% share (April, 2004) of the total Web server market worldwide. It can be used to host public websites for educational institutions and to host intranets within institutions. It is often used with GNU/Linux as the operating system, MySQL as the database server and PHP as the scripting language. All of these are FOSS. Their combination is often referred to as LAMP-Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (alternatively Perl or Python).

Other Server Software
There are numerous other Free/Open Source server software that can be useful in an education environment, such as database management systems,content management systems and mailing list servers.

The most well-known FOSS database management systems are MySQL ( http://www.mysql.com ) and PostgreSQL ( http://www.postgresql.org ). As mentioned earlier, MySQL is often used for building dynamic websites. It is suitable as a database management system for many other applications and is used in business-critical enterprise applications and packaged software. Various educational applications such as Learning Management Systems and Library Management Systems also use MySQL.

A Content Management System (CMS) facilitates the creation, publishing and management of Web content by providing a platform that can be used by individuals without their having to be skilled in the underlying technologies. Examples of FOSS Content Management Systems are PostNuke ( http://www.postnuke.com ) and Plone ( http://www.plone.org ). PostNuke is based on PHP and MySQL, while Plone is based on the Zope application server, which is written using the Python programming language. In an educational institution, the availability of such FOSS CMSs enables staff and students to develop Internet and intranet websites for various purposes with relative ease.

The mailing list is an older application that enables online discussions and collaboration to take place. When an email is addressed to a mailing list, it is broadcast to the individuals subscribed to the list by email. Although newsgroups and Web-based discussion forums serve a similar function, the mailing list may still be useful in the education environment, especially where Internet connectivity is still rudimentary. The more popular FOSS mailing list servers are Majordomo ( http://www.greatcircle.com/ ) and Mailman ( http://www.list.org ).

These FOSS server applications make the development of a collaborative environment in educational institutions at minimal cost possible. They allow academic staff, students, parents and administrators to interact in a way that was not possible in the past

Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP)
Desktop applications such as a browser, an email client and a productivity suite are basic requirements in education settings. Even a small computer laboratory will require these applications to be installed in all computers. Instead of installing these applications on every workstation,it may be easier and less expensive to use "thin clients" These are computers with a network card, graphics card, monitor, keyboard and mouse, but without hard disk, CD-ROM drive and operating system. The server handles all computing tasks, including the running of applications, provision of storage space and management of files.This means that cheaper hardware (or old and donated hardware) can be used for the clients. Only the server needs to be installed with the necessary peripherals and software, which means maintenance will be easier.

The Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP- http://www.ltsp.org ), started in 1999, provides the necessary software to set up such a network of diskless workstations. It supports various GNU/Linux distributions and over 100,000 sites are using LTSP. During boot up, the diskless workstation obtains the necessary network information from the server and the operating system is downloaded from the server. Any programme supported by the server can be run from the workstation. It should be noted that a network setup using LTSP will be a GNU/Linux only network and is primarily suited for a new installation.

Workstation Software
Although there has been increasing adoption of FOSS for desktops, its penetration is still relatively low. Microsoft Windows still dominates the desktop environment, with an estimated 90% market share. However, it is believed that the desktop based on GNU/Linux suits many users. The increasing availability of applications on the GNU/Linux desktop with features comparable to proprietary software will only encourage more widespread adoption. A long list of FOSS desktop applications that are equivalent to proprietary applications running on Windows is available at http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/table.shtml.

However, it should be noted that in order to use FOSS on the desktop it is not necessary to discard the proprietary desktop operating systems. For example, programs such as LibreOffice, Mozilla, and GIMP are available for the Windows platform. Hence, FOSS programs can be easily downloaded, installed and experimented with, without having to replace the existing proprietary operating system.

In fact, there are various options when considering the introduction of FOSS on the desktop, namely:
 * 1) retain the use of Windows and run FOSS applications for this platform;
 * 2) replace Windows with GNU/Linux;
 * 3) set up dual boot systems, which allows users to choose between Windows or GNU/Linux during startup; or
 * 4) run Windows within GNU/Linux or run GNU/Linux within Windows using appropriate software.

Productivity Suite
In educational institutions, both staff (administrative and academic) and students require a suite of office productivity software consisting of a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software. Microsoft Office is currently the most widely used productivity suite. However, the FOSS productivity suite, LibreOffice ( https://www.libreoffice.org ), is gaining popularity as its features are becoming comparable to the proprietary Office suite. As noted earlier, LibreOffice can run on various platforms and a complete migration to Linux before it can be used is not necessary. In fact, it can be run on Windows side-by-side with Microsoft Office.

Although interoperability with the existing proprietary productivity suite is not perfect, LibreOffice is an attractive option for educational institutions. The look and feel are similar to that of Microsoft Office. In most cases, only the basic features of the productivity suite are utilized by students and staff and these are available in the LibreOffice suite.

Another FOSS productivity suite - ONLYOFFICE - enables to deactivate unnecessary modules and concentrate on most demanded applications: document management, project management, networking and mail. Full-featured editors include word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and enable users to create, edit and co-edit documents in real-time mode.

There are other FOSS productivity suites available but they are not as complete as LibreOffice. KOffice is the productivity suite running on the KDE desktop and GNOME Office is the suite running on the competing desktop GNOME. The word processor ( AbiWord ) and spreadsheet ( Gnumeric ) components in GNOME Office are considered to be of high quality.

AbiWord ( http://www.abiword.com ) works on most major operating systems, including Windows, and it supports many languages. It can read and write most documents in Word format and has the same look and feel as Word. AbiWord's native document format uses Extensible Markup Language (XML), which is an open standard. This means that an AbiWord document can be read by any other software using an appropriate XML parser.

Gnumeric ( http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric ) is a fast and complete spreadsheet programme that is being actively developed. It can support various spreadsheet file formats and has good support for Excel files. Many of the worksheet functions available in Excel are supported in Gnumeric. However, it currently does not run on Windows. Work is being carried out to make this possible.

Web Browser
There are a number of Open Source browsers available such as Firefox, Galeon and Konqueror. Firefox ( http://www.mozilla.org ) is a popular browser that is based on source code released by Netscape. Apart from a browser it also contains an extension system and can be expanded with many additional tools and utilities such as a Web authoring tool. It is cross-platform and a version for Windows is available that can be downloaded and installed without affecting existing Internet Explorer installation. Galeon ( http://galeon.sourceforge.net ) is another FOSS Web browser. It runs on the GNOME desktop. Konqueror ( http://konqueror.kde.org ) runs on the KDE desktop.

Multimedia
A wide range of multimedia FOSS is available, including graphics editors and video players that can serve as tools for enhancing educational content and its delivery.

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Programme - http://www.gimp.org ) is the most well-known FOSS for image editing and graphic design. It is a desktop application that can be used for various purposes by both academic staff and students. It is available for GNU/Linux, Unix variants and Windows. As it supports various image file formats, interoperability with other programs should not be an issue. GIMP is considered to be the FOSS equivalent of the proprietary Photoshop software.

A programme that allows the drawing of diagrams will find good use in an educational institution.There are some good proprietary software that serve this purpose, such as Visio and Smartdraw. A FOSS equivalent called Dia ( http://gnome.org/projects/dia ) has been designed to provide similar functions. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams and has special objects to facilitate the drawing of flowcharts, network diagrams and simple circuits.The programme is available for the Windows platform in addition to FOSS operating systems.

Audacity ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net ) is a FOSS audio editor through which you can record sounds, play editor through which you can record sounds, and import and export files in various formats. It can be used to edit your audio, mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings.This software will be useful when there is a need to digitize audio or make recordings for incorporation into multimedia educational content. It runs on most Unix systems (including GNU/Linux) and Windows.

A media player for workstations is necessary for playback of videos and other multimedia content. This is commonly available on proprietary platforms. On FOSS platforms, Mplayer ( http://www.mplayerhq.hu ) is a programme that provides similar functionalities. It is available for Linux and many other Unix variants and it supports many video and audio formats.

For a listing of other multimedia FOSS available, please refer to http://llinuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/table.shtm.

Other Educational Software
Aside from FOSS desktop applications for general use, there is a lot of Free/Open Source educational software that may be used for teaching specific subjects or courses in schools and colleges and universities. The software ranges from drawing programs for young students (e.g., Tux Paint - http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/tuxpaint ) to programs for learning geometry (e.g., Kig - http://edu.kde.org/kig ), chemistry (e.g., Ghemical - http://bioinformatics.org/ghemical ), and physics (e.g., Open-Source Physics Education project - http://www.opensourcephysics.org ). For higher education, there is QCAD ( http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad.html ), a programme for Computer-Aided Drafting which may be used in technical drawing classes. Scilab ( http://scilabsoft.inria.fr ) is a full-featured scientific software package that may be used in numerical analysis or engineering courses at the university level.

These software titles represent a very small sample of FOSS available for education. There are various useful online resources available for locating other educational software, some of which are listed below.

SchoolForge ( http://www.schoolforge.net ) is a Web site for projects using Free and Open Source solutions in education. It was conceived as a site where resources are made available to help schools develop affordable and dependable software, as well as educational content.

SEUL/edu ( http://richtech.ca/seul ) is an education portal of Simple End-User Linux, promoting the use of Linux, among other Open resources in education. It covers various aspects of educational uses of Linux by teachers, parents and students. It has a directory of school-related FOSS.

The Organization for Free Software in Education and Teaching (OFSET) has developed Freeduc ( http://www.ofset.org/freeduc ), which provides a catalog of educational software. It has also created a live CD-ROM of FOSS for schools to use. The idea behind a live Freeduc system on CD-ROM is that no installation is required, therefore students and teachers can easily use the applications as if they were installed on the local computer.

The KDE Edutainment Project ( http://edu.kde.org ) aims to develop educational software for the KDE desktop. Its main focus is young school children, but there are also programs that cater to university students and teachers.

Cost Savings
As shown earlier, FOSS in backend servers is mature and is equivalent or better than the proprietary counterpart. Applications for the desktop are increasingly available and some of them are suitable for production use. Given this case, it is imperative for administrators of educational institutions, especially those that are publicly funded, to give due consideration to the use of FOSS in their institutions. Even though it is common for heavy discounts on proprietary software to be made available to academic institutions, FOSS should still be considered. In the long run the choice to use FOSS instead of proprietary software can result in bigger cost savings.

Proprietary software designed specifically for the education market is generally very expensive, since vendors must recoup their development costs from very small markets. These may be administrative software such as Library Management Systems or Learning Management Systems. However, even for such specialized applications, high quality FOSS equivalents are now becoming available. In other areas such as Student Information Systems, Human Resource Management and Financial Management Systems the FOSS alternatives are not mature enough for production use. But it is likely that FOSS for these and other education-specific applications will become available in the future.

As mentioned earlier, the initial cost of FOSS is negligible. The cost of upgrades of FOSS is also insignificant. However, it has been argued that Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) should be used in making comparisons between FOSS and proprietary software. TCO also includes maintenance, support and training costs and these may be higher for FOSS. However, in various comparisons, the TCO for FOSS is still lower than that for proprietary software.

In countries where labour costs are lower, the cost of maintenance, support and training will be a smaller percentage of the TCO, in which case the TCO of FOSS will be much lower. The availability of the source code also results in more companies being able to provide maintenance and support, which will drive down these costs. In an academic setting, there is often the possibility of getting assistance from the FOSS community without any cost involved.

In some situations, the availability of funds or lack of it is such that it is not a choice between proprietary software and FOSS but a choice between FOSS and nothing. By using inexpensive or donated hardware with FOSS, some institutions may be able to provide computing facilities to their students that would otherwise be impossible.

Even if funds are available for purchasing proprietary software, the savings resulting from using FOSS alternatives can be used for better purposes such as buying more computers, providing training for administrative and academic staff or developing non-ICT related infrastructure for the institution.

title: FOSS Education/Infrastructure


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Template:FOSS Government Policy

 FOSS Government Policy Foreword — Preface — Acknowledgements — Overview — Introduction — Strategic Importance of FOSS — Why is a FOSS Policy Needed? — Policy Formulation Approach — Strategies — Cross Sectoral Concerns — Conclusion — Glossary — Useful Resources — About the Authors — About APDIP — About IOSN

title: Template:FOSS Government Policy


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FOSS Education/Administration

Proprietary software tailored for education administration has been dominated by a small group of companies. They usually have a niche market for specialized software such as Library Management Systems or student information systems. The costs of these types of software are often very high because of the small market. Usually only the well-endowed universities or schools can afford such systems.Many schools even in developed countries are not able to afford these. Needless to say, they are beyond the reach of most educational institutions in developing countries.

In recent years, FOSS catering to this segment has appeared and in some categories like Library Management Systems and Learning Management Systems, good systems have been developed and are available for use by academic institutions.

Library Management Systems
For any school, college or university with a decent-sized library, a computerized system to automate the management of the library is essential.The most well-known FOSS Library Management System is Koha. There are other systems being developed that are not as mature as Koha, such as PhpMyLibrary ( http://phpmylibrary.sourceforge.net ) and OpenBiblio ( http://obiblio.sourceforge.net ). These are at various stages of development. Anctil provides a comparison of the various systems.

Koha
Koha ( http://www.koha-community.org ) was developed in 1999 in New Zealand by Katipo Communications Ltd with funding from the Horowhenua Library Trust. It is available under the GNU General Public License. It is now supported by a growing developer community from various countries and has been ported to several languages. It runs on Linux and uses the Apache Web server and MySQL database and was developed in Perl. It is also possible to use other Web servers or databases to run the programme. Koha is used by the Horowhenua Library Trust for their three library branches, which have a total of 80,000 books and 25,000 patrons. Another library that is using Koha is in Coast Mountain School District, British Columbia, Canada. It has eight branches with 2,000-8,000 books per branch and 1,000 patrons.

Koha is full-featured and has modules for cataloguing, reserves, Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC), circulation, patron management and acquisitions. The circulation component includes issues, renewals, returns and fines, and it can be set up to use bar code scanners. The acquisitions module includes budgets, pricing and supplier information.

Koha is a Web-based system where both library patrons and staff access the system using a Web browser. It provides a simple and clear interface to allow searches to be done easily via OPAC over the Internet.

The earlier version of Koha lacked some features,such as support for international cataloguing standards. However, the latest version supports the international cataloguing standards Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC). There are also plans to implement a serials module in future releases.

In May 2002, Koha was awarded the prize in the category for "Software for Public Administration" in an international competition organized in France. The competition was established to highlight FOSS that has the potential to benefit consumers and business.

Key Features

 * Circulation module includes issues, renewals, returns, fines, use of barcode scanners, generation of overdue list
 * Full acquisitions including budgeting, pricing and supplier information and tracking of items ordered and received
 * Simplified acquisitions features for smaller libraries
 * Patron (membership) management
 * Reserves with possibility of self-service reservation in the library or via the Internet
 * Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) in the library or via the Internet
 * Simple and clear interface for librarians and members
 * Customizable search by keyword, author, title, subject, class number or combinations
 * Ability to catalogue websites
 * Support for Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC)
 * Stock rotation through branch libraries

(Source: http://www.koha-community.org )

Learning Management Systems
A Learning Management System is a software application or a Web-based system that provides an instructor with tools to create and deliver online content, monitor student participation and assess student performance. A Learning Management System may also support collaboration and provide features such as chat facilities and discussion forums. Learning Management Systems are sometimes referred to as Course Management Systems.

The availability of such a system in a school or university will help to achieve the pedagogical improvements that ICTs are envisaged to bring to education. Its availability is also essential for implementing e-learning. However, the existing proprietary systems such as WebCT and Blackboard are too expensive and beyond the reach of many academic institutions, especially in developing countries. Fortunately, several FOSS Learning Management Systems are now available. In a report published by the Commonwealth of Learning in June 2003, thirty-five FOSS Learning Management Systems were identified and evaluated. ATutor, ranked the highest,will be described later in this primer.

Standards
To facilitate the interoperability of different Learning Management Systems, the content created should conform to a standard. There are a number of initiatives to establish standards for Learning Management Systems.

The Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) was begun at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2001. It is a collaboration between a number of premier universities, with MIT and Stanford leading the initiative. The initiative has resulted in two Learning Management Systems-Stellar, developed at MIT, and CourseWork, developed at Stanford University. CourseWork was released as FOSS in June 2003.

The objective of OKI is to define an open and extensible architecture for learning technology. It is targeted specifically to the needs of the higher education community. It provides specifications for interfaces among components within a learning management system and facilitates communication with other systems, including existing enterprise systems. Commercial and non-commercial developers of products for the higher education market can use the OKI architecture which is fundamentally FOSS.

IMS (Instructional Management Systems) Global Learning Consortium is a non-profit organization that includes educational institutions, software companies and publishers across the world. It develops open technical specifications to support distributed learning. Several of these specifications are being adopted internationally as standards for learning technology.These specifications allow different course management systems and content from different authors to work together or interoperate. For example, content produced using a proprietary course management system such as Blackboard can be made accessible to another system such as WebCT and vice versa.

A specific implementation of IMS is the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) developed by Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL). It incorporates elements from IMS and other specifications to provide elearning capabilities that allow interoperability, accessibility and reusability of Web-based learning content.

Both IMS and SCORM use XML as a common language to enable communication between disparate systems.

Stanford's Coursework
Stanford University developed its own Learning Management System called CourseWork ( http://aboutcoursework.stanford.edu ) used on its campus to provide instructional websites since January 2002. It was rapidly adopted by its faculty in various academic disciplines, supporting over 400 courses with more than 12,000 users by the spring of 2003.

CourseWork has been released as Open Source software, providing academic institutions nonproprietary, open access to a flexible, scalable Learning Management System. It allows institutions to integrate their course websites with other systems such as a student information system, library management system, and other education-specific infrastructure systems. The tools in CourseWork can be customized to suit the needs of a particular institution and the interface can be modified to be consistent with the institution's websites.

CourseWork is designed to be user-friendly so that academic staff can set up a course website without having to be skilled in the underlying technologies. But it has features that allow faculty with greater expertise in Web technologies to build a more complex course website.

Using CourseWork academic staff can put up announcements, syllabi and course schedules. Course materials can be uploaded on the server and managed by Coursework. Students can easily access these by following the appropriate links. Links to appropriate external resources can also be added as part of the online course readings.A discussion forum can be set up for a course to facilitate online discussions among students and with the course instructor.

Tools are available for instructors to create homework sets, assignments and quizzes.Students can submit their completed assignments online. Multiple-choice quizzes can be automatically graded. CourseWork manages the distribution of assignments, collection of student work and provision of feedback to students. Student grades for online work can be displayed and final grades can be computed.

Moodle
Moodle ( http://moodle.org/ ) was first developed by an Australian, Martin Dougiamas. It is an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. It has been released under the terms of the GNU General Public License and currently has a very active group of developers working on it. Developed using PHP, Moodle is cross-platform: it runs without modification on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and any other system that supports PHP. It supports the FOSS databases MySQL and PostgreSQL and can also be used with other databases. Moodle is multilingual and is currently available in 34 languages, including Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and Thai.

Moodle has numerous features for site management, user management and course management. It has modules for assignment, quiz, discussion forum and chat. Instructors can put up assignments with due dates and maximum grades, allow students to upload completed assignments, and provide feedback to students on their assignments.Various types of quiz questions can be created using Moodle-multiple choice, short answers, true/false and fill-in-blanks. The quiz can be graded automatically and feedback can be given to explain the answers.The questions can be shuffled to make it more difficult for students to cheat, and the maximum number of times students can take the quiz can be specified. All grades for assignments and quizzes can be viewed and downloaded for further processing if necessary.

Discussion forums can be set up, to facilitate student interaction in a particular course, with the option to email copies to the students. Moodle also has a chat function for live discussions. Chat sessions can be logged for later viewing by both staff and students.

Key Features
Overall Design
 * Suitable for courses conducted entirely online as well as for supplementing classroom learning
 * Uses a simple browser based interface
 * Easy to install on almost any platform that supports PHP and requires only one database
 * Full database abstraction supporting all major database systems
 * Emphasis on strong security

Site Management
 * Plug-in "themes" allow the site to be customized
 * Plug-in activity modules can be added to existing Moodle installations
 * Plug-in language packs allow full localization to any language
 * The code is written in PHP under a GNU GPL license which allows modifications to suit particular needs

User Management
 * Supports a range of authentication mechanisms allowing easy integration with existing systems
 * Each person requires only one account for the whole server
 * Teachers may have editing privileges removed so that they cannot modify the course (e.g., for part-time tutors)
 * As a security feature teachers can add an "enrollment key" to their courses to keep out nonstudents

Course Management
 * Choice of course formats such as by week, by topic or a discussion-focused format
 * Flexible array of course activities available via various modules-Forums, Journals,Quizzes, Resources, Choices, Surveys, Assignments, Chats, Workshops
 * All grades for Forums, Journals,Quizzes and Assignments can be viewed and downloaded as a spreadsheet file
 * Full user logging and tracking with activity reports for each student
 * Teachers can define their own scales to be used for grading

(Source: http://moodle.org )

ATutor
The Commonwealth of Learning Report evaluates Open Source Learning Management Systems and recommends two products. The criteria used for evaluation include features and functionality, cost of ownership, maintainability, usability,standards compliance and scalability. The report's top recommendation is ATutor.

ATutor ( http://www.atutor.ca ) has a variety of tools to allow the instructor to manage the online content, such as a built-in content editor, a resources database, a forum manager, course statistics and assessment support. It has good standalone modules for collaboration and chatting. It provides good documentation and online help with a tutorial for new users. However, the user interface may not be very intuitive.

ATutor supports IMS/SCORM specifications, allowing content to be imported from and exported to other Learning Management Systems that also conform to IMS/SCORM specifications. However, it is relatively new and does not have a large installed base. ATutor has been released under the GNU General Public License.

Others
Among the other requirements for the administration of educational institutions is a Student Information System for the management of student records and subject offerings, timetabling, registration, management of academic and financial records, and so on. As Student Information Systems are often customized to the needs of particular institutions, there are not many proprietary systems available. So far, there is no production quality Open Source student information system available. However, there are some initiatives for developing such a system.

The SchoolTool ( http://www.schooltool.org ) project is one such initiative. The objective of SchoolTool is to develop a system for school administration that can be used globally and which is suitable both for schools and for higher educational institutions. It would incorporate best practices in school administration and would be easily customized for local needs. The system will be made available under an Open Source license. This project was started in South Africa in 2000 with funding from the Shuttleworth Foundation. The project was temporarily suspended in 2002 but was restarted in 2003. It is still in the early stages of development and the software is not yet available for use.

External Resources

 * Description of all the Learning Management systems

title: FOSS Education/Administration