In the evening, Ramesh and his friends, children from the neighbourhood, gathered more out of curiosity as a container full of used computers were being shipped-in to a storehouse in a suburb of the Indian state of Goa. For the Goa Schools’ computer project team, getting used computers had been an uphill struggle against bureaucracy and laws in force. One minor victory that evening was the 300 plus computers which got unloaded, was the realisation that underprivileged children took to the Linux desktops quite readily.

‘Please could you give us some (software programmes)? Will ‘our’ school too get some computers?’ Ramesh’s friends wanted to know.

Light at the end of the tunnel? Or just a mirage? Gaps between those who have access to the power of computing and those who do not are wide and further yawning. Getting in affordable hardware might initially seem like a good idea, but that is only a small part of the problem.

Moving further on, let us examine the role of FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) in bridging the ‘digital divide’. Can it bridge the growing computing gap that is felt between rich and poor countries, and within countries between the rich and poor?

This issue has many dimensions
Cost is still the major barrier, and a huge problem for anyone serious about the digital divide. Yohanes Nugroho (http://open source.or.id/~yohanes) of Bandung’s Instituteof Technology in Indonesia puts it thus: ‘Developments in the South East Asian countries vary a lot. Here in Indonesia, Open Source Software (OSS) is mostly used to fight piracy, by providing low cost software. Unlike in some parts of Asia (like Thailand), where Microsoft and some other commercial companies create cheap version of Windows or their products, it is not happening in Indonesia. So we are faced with expensive softwares.’ ‘Affordable’ is a relative term. ‘The price of a typical, basic proprietary tool-set required for any ICT infrastructure, Windows XP together with Office XP, is US$560 in the U.S. This is over 2.5 months of GDP/capita in South Africa and over 16 months of GDP/capita in Vietnam,’ says a study by the Netherlands-based Rishab Aiyer Ghosh.

Hardware obsolescence and software-generated problems is another critical factor that urgently needs to be addressed.

According to a US National Safety Council study, only 11 per cent of the 20 million computers junked in 1998 were recycled. Therefore, it is not a question of having insufficient computers. United Nations University in Tokyo lead by scientist Eric Williams points out that a personal computer consumes far more resources, pound for pound, than many larger machines. With more than a hundred million new computers manufactured every year, that is an incredible strain on the world’s resources. So the pressure to upgrade is enormous. Software gets needlessly phased out, and no longer supported. Hardware turns unserviceable, as compatible components no longer get manufactured. Thus, shipping redundant computers to the Third World is not much of a solution, as they quickly turn unusable there too. Thanks to speedy hardware and software obsolescence traps! So another issue which has got insufficient attention is that ‘Can software work to make sure computers last longer?’

Another issue that comes to mind is that is GNU/Linux also going the bloatware way? From India, techie K. Raghu Prasad explains: ‘This is due to an ongoing effort from GNU/Linux distros to please or convert Windows users into its fold. This makes a lot of business sense. Unless a Windows user finds the system user friendly going by his definition of it, he is not going to use Red Hat or SuSE distros. This comes naturally with some additional costs. If you want all the bells and whistles of latest KDE and GNOME, you need to spend a lot of CPU power and RAM.’

Prasad’s way out is to look to other, lighter options. This can be tackled in another way. Take the RULE (Run Up2date Linux Everywhere ) Project. Fioretti, who is behind the RULE Project, for some time now his goal has been to modify the Red Hat Linux installer so that it runs in less than 32 MB of RAM, or create a new one if needed.

Fioretti points out that 80 per cent of the world’s population will take years to afford a computer that can run decently the majority of modern, apparently ‘Free’ software.

FLOSS can play a big role in language solutions. Linux-Plus has developed a special GNU/Linux distribution, along with its complete tools, administration and office software packages, to be freely and exclusively distributed by ‘Loghat Al Asr’ magazine, published by Al Ahram. One of the main development objectives of this distribution Linux-Plus Core is to make it available on a single CD instead of three, so that it could be distributed on a large scale with Loghat Al Asr magazine. See http://www.linux-plus.com

Other complexities add to the problem. Licenses are becoming increasingly complex - per user, per seat, per year, based on size of the business, among other things. Only when proprietorial software realised that FLOSS was filling in the gap, that it started to make tempting offers that would lock computer learning into the proprietorial software route.

There are other little-discussed dimensions of the ‘digital divide’. Proprietorial standards (or non-standards) lead to unhealthy dependencies. Restricting users to a shallow understanding of technology further complicate issues. Entry barriers to accessing software is another concern.

One aggravating factor is the lack of re-use possibilities in software. One needs to see whether FLOSS offers a way out? FLOSS offers low entry barriers, and reduces the barriers for anyone wanting to enter this field by making everything open. But this is to such an extent that many people fail to appreciate that fact. Besides, there is the undeniable element of cost.

Source Software is unmatched
Learning is easier in FLOSS. Sharing resources comes naturally, more so in the case of individuals and academics, rather than corporates, whether this is software or knowledge.

Recently, Dr Nah and Colin Charles put together some interesting material, published by IOSN (International Open Source Network). As all of this was released under the Creative Commons Attribution license, one is free to copy, publish and modify them as long as one credits the original authors and copyright holders. (See http://www.iosn.net/training/end-user-manual/)

Dr Quang says that, ‘First of all, Open Source give us the opportunities to learn from the experiences of other developments. We can change and adapt IT solutions to our specific needs. For less-affluent countries, specially the non English-speaking areas, there is a very large amount of basic adoption to be done, to push digital tools into daily life. Companies from abroad cannot earn much profit working on these changes. So we have to do the work ourselves, step by step but fast enough to keep pace with global trends. Only Open Source helps us, and gives us a chance of crossing the ‘digital divide’. Localising IT opens other doors — education, business and others. Only when the poor benefit from IT, can you talk about the price.’

Bailetti argues that FLOSS moves ‘wealth creation’ from being concentrated in the location where the software is designed and developed to the many locations where the software is expanded, maintained and supported. FLOSS reduces costly imports, freeing up scarce hard currency. It enables individuals to act locally, while thinking globally. From South Korea, Soon-Son ‘Shawn’ Kwon, who is involved in Korean translations, says, “I think the biggest impact of the Linux/Open Source is the easier access to the technologies which were mostly proprietary. This will give more opportunities to less-developed countries. And it is also important because they have alternatives against proprietary software. Some countries have already used Linux as a weapon for negotiation, at least with Microsoft.”

George Easaw, professor in mechanical engineering at Goa Engineering College (India) and a FLOSS evangelist, says that ‘In the technical sense, FLOSS has many software in the public domain like octave (numerical computation software), gnuplot (plotting software), latex (document preparation software), scilab (numerical computation) etc. The equivalent proprietary software, called MATLAB (numerical computation) costs hundreds of thousands of rupees, though only marginally superior. This way, FLOSS is helping bridge the divide between the technical institutes which are rich and full of resources and the have-nots.’

Currently, the Government of Laos is working to promote e-Learning in an open source environment, among schools that received donated second-hand computers from the UNDP or other institutions. Somsanouk Pathumvan, who works for the National University of Laos says that, “Most of these schools are secondary or high-schools, so they need lot of free software. I think that free is good”.

Japan’s free software campaigner Yutaka Niibe says, “IT isn’t for the rich any more, it should be for everyone. Everyone should benefit from technology, and for software, we need to free the software to do that.”

More than the software here, it is probably the vision that makes a difference. But Linux has a head-start, in the sense that one is free to copy the software without guilt, and sharing both software and ideas tends to come naturally.

FLOSS is throwing up other ideas that help share knowledge. Professor Anil Seth, an Indian educator, says, “One area I have been looking into is the use of animation to learn. VPython is a project created by a physicist to help visualise, well, physics. There is a link on the site with VPython models demonstrating laws of physics. These things could help students learn even in the absence of expensive instruments and equipments.”

Abhijeet Singh (www.abhijeetsingh.com) makes a detailed case for how GNU/Linux can help poor children in poor countries, attending resource-starved schools. “Using Linux on a LTSP (terminal server) reduces hardware costs by approximately half, he says. In this kind of environment he says, ‘you do not need any real computing power at each node, all the real work is done by the server which can support upto 25-30 nodes”.

Moreover, additional software tools like source code compilers, image editing software, DTP software, CAD software, Proxy server, Mail server etc, are available for free copying in the FLOSS world.

FLOSS has also democratised technology, by placing it in the hands of the user. Many criticise GNU/Linux for being too geeky, however, some of the tools it has thrown up, make it rather simple for even small, powerless people to get a voice.

FLOSS powers wikis, blogs and a large section of the Net itself
Journalist and technologist Vickram Crishna of Bombay explains, “India Indymedia (part of a global independent media network) uses a homegrown solution, naturally in FLOSS, called Mir. My own experience is that it is extremely powerful for open publishing. It handles multimedia and multiple languages with a single admin interface”.

Various initiatives are being tried out. In Indonesia, ministers from five different departments signed a declaration for a movement called IGOS (Indonesian Goes Open Source). Some view this as ‘the first step of this movement is to implement OSS in government agencies’. Could this see more FLOSS being used to fill the digital divide? From India fighting against many odds, the Simputer (http://www.simputer.org) is a good example of attempts to use technology to bridge the digital divide. This computing device is a piece of sharable hardware, meant to lower the cost of computing.

One participant at the Simputer mailing-list on Yahoogroups, Arun Kumar Anand said, “What started with affordable and convenient PC solution for rural area, is now trying to compete in the PDA market. The only difference seems that vendors are projecting it as a low-cost general purpose programmable PDA platform. If the Simputer needs to be seriously presented as an Indian innovation for Indian circumstances, then we should avoid mere following of the form factor or feature list, in the otherwise widely available commercial offerings.”

Pressure comes from diverse sides. So do clever arguments. The Initiatives for Software Choice (www.softwarechoice.org) is an organisation which describes itself as doing ‘work to prevent the proliferation of ‘preference’ laws springing up across the globe’.

Some point out that unless serious corrective action is taken, the ‘digital divide’ will turn into a further yawning chasm, with a tiny section going further ahead of the vast majority.

Sivaram Neelakantan is struck by the idea that it costs around Rs 25,000 (USD 500) to develop a single Indic font. He says, “For an alternative to be provided and to be used (Linux/*BSD et al), the infrastructure has to be provided. With a diverse population speaking, at least 14 major languages, whatever IT solutions deployed, has to fundamentally address the language issue.” He further adds that, “From what I have read on the Net, current efforts are fragmented (IndLinux, Bangla, Gujarati Linux) and does not meaningfully address the scale and magnitude of problem.”

Ashish Kotamkar who works with Indian-language solutions from the central Indian city of Pune, points to the other dimensions involved. He points out, “There are larger issues to bridging the digital divide than just FLOSS (or IT for that matter). Access to information and opportunities to the underprivileged is one of the ways to march towards this and IT is just a tool in making it (access to information) happen. The choice of the right IT tool (and not necessarily the technologically most advanced) is extremely important.” He further suggests that FLOSS comes into the picture only ‘much later’ when one encounters issues like cost, or freedom to develop and deploy applications. He says, “I feel FLOSS will require the desired user-friendliness and necessary support structure in place for it to make the desired impact at the grassroots level.

Chen Shunling, a young lady lawyer studying the intersection between FLOSS and the law and till recently at Academia Sinica in Taiwan, says, “The digital divide is not just about technology, but also about all other kinds of divides - wealth, age, gender, the city and the countryside, the majority population and the minorities, etc. I am not optimistic that FLOSS itself could go very far in bridging digital divide, which will remain if other divides are not bridged. I do not mean that it cannot help at all, but for people who do not read code, the influences are quite limited. But I am very positive on the influences it might have on programmers.”

On the legal side, she re-looks at the copyright system. “FLOSS is showing the world that you can refuse the default option offered by the system, and work out something together with other people, which might be a better way of doing things.”

FLOSS might have the answers, but to become meaningful, surely a lot more needs to be done.