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Partners
The FLOSSInclude consortium
Overview
University of Maastricht – MERIT
University of the Western Cape
Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
Tsinghua University - China Education and Research Network
University of Maastricht – MERIT
UNUMERIT, the United Nations University Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology, at the University of Maastricht, has proven excellence in the area of free/open source software socioeconomics and policy. The lead researcher for FLOSSINCLUDE, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, was also the coordinator and lead author of the FLOSS project (FP5 IST programme), the first comprehensive empirical study of the use, development and policy of free/open source software, worldwide, and the ongoing FP6 IST FLOSSPOLS project. The FLOSS study has been widely publicized and presented at several international forums, and the final FLOSS Workshop held at the European Commission in Brussels in 2002 (with the support of the US National Science Foundation) has led to several further research projects. The FLOSS user survey was the first comprehensive survey worldwide to study the extent of use and to ask organizations why they use open source software, and to perform a detailed technical analysis on developers’ contribution to open source software projects. UM has also conducted a detailed survey on open standards and open source in 500+ government authorities for the Dutch Interior Ministry, and has contacted over 3 000 public authorities across the EU for a similar survey under the FLOSSPOLS project, as well as 300 employer organizations for the FLOSSPOLS skills survey. Leading the FLOSSIMPACT study, UM's researchers analysed the impact of Free/Libre/Open Source Software on innovation and competitiveness of the European Union. UM manages the European Union Open Source Observatory for the IDA Programme of DG Enterprise, the central clearinghouse for information on open source and the public sector in Europe. Based upon this Observatory, UM is participating in the OSOR project, building a European repository for free/open source software for the public sector.
With the current FLOSSInclude project, UM is working to strengthen Europe's leadership in international research into FLOSS and open standards, and to exploit research and policy complementarities to improve international cooperation, by building a global constituency of policy-makers and researchers. In this global endeavour, the focus is on FLOSS as a tool for human capacity building; on regional and international differences in software development; and on exploring governments' behaviour towards FLOSS and open standards. UM's research personnel participating in the FLOSSINCLUDE project will be Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Ruediger Glott and Karsten Gerloff.
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh is Founding International and Managing Editor of First Monday, the most widely read peerreviewed journal of the Internet. He is Senior Researcher and Programme Leader at UM's MERIT institute, and has published over a million words on the socioeconomics, law and technology of the Internet, for newsletters, journals and magazines around the world, and has led the FLOSS and FLOSSPOLS projects. He is collaborating on joint research with Stanford University, including the LICKS subproject, supported by the US National Science Foundation.
Ruediger Glott worked from 1993 to 2000 at the Institute for Sociological Research (SOFI – Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut) of the University of Göttingen, working on a wide range of projects on quantitative and qualitative aspects of work in the service sector and on Internetbased collaboration of SMEs in Germany and the USA. Since 2001 he is a Researcher at UM's MERIT institute, where he has played a key role in the design, execution and analysis of the EUfunded FLOSS developer and user surveys on free/open source software and the FLOSSPOLS surveys of government, employers and developers on skills development.
Karsten Gerloff is a Researcher at UM's MERIT institute since 2006. With a background in Cultural Sciences, he contributes qualitative and quantitative research into FLOSS use and development to several EUfunded projects, especially OSOR. Before coming to UM, he worked with the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), where he focused on UN and EU policy issues.
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
URJC is a major University in the Madrid (Spain) area. Within it, the GSyC/LibreSoft group was established as a consequence of the long interest in FLOSS and the strong relationship with the FLOSS community. The group is focused in research and development related to FLOSS. Its main line of research is the empirical and quantitative study of FLOSS development, specifically from a software engineering point of view. It also conducts assessment and consulting activities for companies and public administrations interested in FLOSS, and dissemination activities on the same topic. The group maintains one of the largest databases of factual information and metrics about FLOSS development (with data retrieved from several kinds of repositories of thousands of projects), and is one of the leading teams in data collection and analysis from FLOSS development, a field in
which it has several publications and communications. In addition, it hosts a public weekly seminar on FLOSS engineering, a PhD course on FLOSS (probably the first one in the world, starting in 2001).
Currently, there are 5 senior researchers, 5 junior researchers and about 10 students and research assistants working in the LibreSoft group. Until 2005, the LibreSoft group led the Minerva Edukalibre project (about exporting FLOSS models to education), and has participated until 2006 in the CALIBRE FP6 project (about coordination in the area of research on FLOSS) and the FLOSSImpact study (funded by the European Comission, about the impact of FLOSS on the economy). Currently, the group is leading the FLOSSMETRICS project (FP6, aiming at collecting and publishing factual data about thousands of FLOSS projects), and participates in FLOSSWorld (FP6, about FLOSS in developing countries), QUALOSS (FP6, about quality models for FLOSS development), QUALIPSO (FP6, a large IP in the area of FLOSS), OSOR (the IDABC open source observatory and repository, funded by the European Commission), Morfeo (a community of companies exploring joint FLOSS development, funded by the Spanish Government), and Vulcano (a project about next generation forges for FLOSS development, funded by the Spanish Government). The group is also involved in projects in the area of FLOSS with companies such as Vodafone, Telefonica and Infojobs, and consults on that matter for public
administrations and other institutions. Several members of the group are active developers in several FLOSS projects, such as Debian, TLDP, GNOME, or Mono. More information about LibreSoft can be found at http://libresoft.urjc.es.
The key participants in this project will be Jesus M. GonzalezBarahona, Gregorio RoblesMartínez and Alvaro del Castillo.
Jesus M. GonzalezBarahona started his activities related to FLOSS around 1991, being a founder member the first Spanish group interested in the study of FLOSS. Since then, he has carried on several activities in this area, including the participation in working groups on FLOSS (among them, the Working Group on FLOSS promoted by the DGINFO of the European Commission). Currently, he collaborates with several FLOSS projects (including Debian, for which he is a developer), writes in various media about topics related to FLOSS, and consults for companies and public administrations on topics related to their strategy on these issues. His research interests include FLOSS engineering, and in particular quantitative measures of FLOSS development and distributed tools for collaboration in FLOSS projects. He has been the main researcher in more than 15 funded projects related to FLOSS, and is currently subdirector of IT infrastructure and systems of the Telecommunications School of the URJC.
Gregorio RoblesMartínez joined the group in 2002 after having worked on FLOSS research at Fraunhofer FOKUS (Berlin), and MERIT/Infonomics where he worked on the WIDI survey of FLOSS developers and the FLOSS project. He is responsible for the development of several tools to determine the technical composition of FLOSS projects and perform benchmarking comparisons of the technical and social organisational differences across projects.
Alvaro del Castillo has been working for several years both at the University and at companies related to FLOSS. He has substantial experience in building customized FLOSS distributions (including for instance LinEx) and FLOSS development (participating in projects such as Mono and GNOME).
FUNDECYT
Fundación para el Desarrollo de la Ciencia y Tecnología en Extremadura (FUNDECYT) has collaborated very actively, together with its parent the Regional Government of Extremadura and other regional bodies, in laying the foundations of the RIS project. FUNDECYT has assisted on the preliminary studies undertaken to: firstly, detect the scientific, technological and innovative regional business demands and, secondly, to implement the necessary actions and methodologies in the different regional agents involved on RTD matters to favour RTD investment and to contribute towards the economic and industrial exploitation of regional technological outputs.
Experience in Open Source Software: The organization is the main assistant to the Regional Government in transforming the economic structure of the region using the new tools and services provided by the Information Technologies, making them available to the whole society. In April 2002 the regional government together with Fundecyt launched the GNU/Linex project, an operating system and software applications based on GNU/Linux. This made the region of Extremadura the first region in promoting, developing and distributing FLOSS, focused on the needs of the users and giving them the necessary technical support.
GNU/Linex is the result of four years of development of the regional strategy to create access to the Information and Knowledge Society. This strategy has as an objective the accessibility of the new technologies, technological literacy and the creation of ICTbased enterprises. the basic pillars of the strategy is the Technological Education Network, connecting through broadband all the educational centres of the region, and the distribution of GNU/Linex as operating and office system for all the centres. One of the basic pillars of the strategy is the Technological Education Network, connecting through broadband all the educational centres of he region, and the distribution of GNU/Linex as operating and office system for all the centres.
Fundecyt has developed a (regional) platform, which has as an objective to support the migration towards Free (Libre) Open Source Software, the “Plataforma Empresarial de Software Libre”. The users of the platform are companies, public administration and other types of organizations of the region that are interested in implementing FLOSS and need information and support in the related decisionmaking processes. The platform focuses especially on GNU/LinEx. Fundecyt has been involved in various studies and analysis on European policy and/or policy related issues, such as the thematic Evaluation on the Contribution of the Structural Funds to the Lisbon Strategy and its Implications for the Regions – DG Regional Policy. Fundecyt has been the national contact point for Spain for the eInclusion@EU project, as well as for the eUser project (FP6).
The main staff to participate in FLOSSInclude will be Luis Casas Luengo, Jorge Martin, and Maika
Díaz Aguilar.
Luis Casas Luengo is the Managing Director of FUNDECYT, and has previously been Director of the Regional Minister of Extremadura’s Centro de Fomento de Nuevas Iniciativas (Centre for the fostering of new initiatives), Director of the Extremadura representation to the European Union in Brussels, and professor at the European Studies Centre of Alcalá de Henares Universtity (Madrid).
Jorge Martin is the GnuLinex Project Officer of the Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology in Extremadura (FUNDECYT) in charged of systems administration and development. He is a physicist and has conducted postgraduate studies in GNU/Linux.
Maika Díaz Aguilar is Project Assistant at Fundecyt, where she is in charge of the management of European projects. She has previously worked in a similar position for the Research Results Transfer Office and Coordinator of Social Sciences Research Centre of University of Salamanca, and as a legal advisor to technology startups. She will work on WP2 (dissemination) and the nontechnical part of WP4 (validation and pilots).
Canonical Ltd.
Founded in 2004, Canonical Ltd is a company headquartered in Europe with 90+ employees working in over 18 countries. Canonical's corporate mission is to realise the potential of free software in the lives of individuals and organisations by delivering the world's best free software platform; ensuring its availability to everyone; supporting it with high quality professional service offerings; and facilitating the continued growth and development of the free software community.
Canonical's major project is Ubuntu, a Linuxbased operating system for laptops, desktops and servers. Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users around the world. Whether it is used in the home, at school or in an office Ubuntu contains all the applications needed, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools. Ubuntu will always be free to download, free to use and free to distribute to others. With these goals in mind, Ubuntu aims to be the most widely used Linux system, and is the centre of a global FLOSS software ecosystem.
Canonical also produces FLOSS collaboration tools such as Bazaar, a distributed revision control system, and Launchpad, an online service which helps developers to work more effectively with other communities to solve common problems, such as shared bugs. Launchpad is critical to addressing some of the collaboration issues addressed in the project. Such conversations have traditionally been difficult between communities using different tools. Launchpad brings those communities closer together by linking information from projectspecific sources and presenting it through a common interface.
Staff members contributing to Canonical's efforts on this project will be Mark Shuttleworth and Richard Weideman. Their efforts will be supported by Canonical's development team which operates on a distributed, virtual basis from locations around the world.
Mark Shuttleworth is a successful entrepreneur who founded the Ubuntu project in 2004. He credits the success and subsequent sale of this first company, Thawte, to the power and flexibility FLOSS tools delivered to him as a young college student in South Africa. Building a world class operation on an FLOSS foundation allowed him to compete on a global basis, and Mark founded Ubuntu in part to provide that same opportunity to future generations of entrepreneurs. Mark travelled to the International Space Station in 2002 with the Russian space program, and now lives in London working fulltime on Ubuntu and Canonical. He will provide input for and review Canonical's contributions to the project, particularly the requirements analysis and the planning and execution of pilots. He will also be involved in dissemination activities.
Richard Weideman is the Education Programme Manager for Canonical, and is the first line contact for all education issues across the range of Ubuntu software, and he manages the development team for Edubuntu. Richard has a development background extending back to 1986, and joined the internet revolution in 1996. He was one of the technical leads for the corporate internet hosting environment of Africa's largest financial institution. Richard joined HP Education as Education Project Manager for South Africa in 2003, and managed training in 130 schools, encompassing 3,500 Teachers and 200 LAB Administrators. He was also responsible for school LAB technical readiness, content sourcing, and delivery of trainthetrainer sessions. As the NEPAD eSchools Technical Lead for the HP Consortium, he led the first phase of the eSchool Design process, managing consortium partners, content, and communications. This project extends across 14 countries in Africa, with HP providing 3 eSchools in each of their 7 allocated countries. From this background, Richard brings a strong understanding of the Educational Market, including issues such as driving & stumbling factors for adoption and sustainability of Open Source.
Fundación Vía Libre
Fundación para la Difusión del Conocimiento y el Desarrollo Sustentable Vía Libre of Córdoba, Argentina, is an NGO working on the social implications of information and communication technologies throughout Latin America, with very strong ties to the region's FLOSS community, to Academia, to other civil society organizations, and to the global FLOSS movement. Vía Libre's work on the role of FLOSS for the public administration has led to numerous legislative projects demanding the use of free software for all public administration work. The template "free software bill" Vía Libre together with lawmakers and a large international group of software supporters helped to create, introduce and promote in several Latin American countries was mentioned in the FLOSS report as recommended legislation for all European Union member countries.
Vía Libre is currently part of the international consortium executing the FLOSSWorld program within the European Union's 6th Framework Program, led by the University of Maastricht, as well as the SELF project, led by the Internet Society Netherlands. Vía Libre has cooperated heavily with Heinrich Böll Stiftung over the last two years, working on publications, events and conferences on issues related to copyright and patents all over Latin America. Vía Libre routinely collaborates with the organization of national and international FLOSS conferences together with organizations such as UNESCO, and its members are soughtafter speakers at universities and events all over Latin America on a variety of issues related to FLOSS, from philosophical to practical to policy.
Fundación Vía Libre has strong ties to the FLOSS communities all over Latin America, from informal FLOSS user groups to established projects and organizations. It works very closely with the Free Software Foundation, as well as with its sisters FSFE and FSFLA. It also works with academic communities such as Copy/South and takes part in international cooperation projects like the EU's own FLOSSWORLD. Vía Libre cooperates routinely with NGOs and international bodies in the organization of events and publication of works.
People involved in the project:
Federico Heinz, a founding member of Vía Libre, has a long trajectory as a software developer and IT manager. He was one of the founders of Free Software Foundation Latin America (in formation), an official GNU speaker for the FSF (Free Software Foundation), a member of SADIO, former argentine representative in Technical Committee 9 (Relationship between Computers and Society) of IFIP (International Federation of Information Processing), member of CPSR (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility). He has advised legislators all over the subcontinent, is author of a number of papers on social implications of information technologies and FLOSS, as well as frequent contributor to news media and public fora and highly regarded speaker in conferences and universities of the Americas and Europe.
Beatriz Busaniche has earned Licenciature in Social Communication from the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, and has vast experience in the preparation of online training materials in various subjects. She works with Fundación Vía Libre, and was one of the founders of the Free Software Foundation Latin America (in formation). She coordinated the Civil Society Caucus for Education at the World Summit on the Information Society, and participated in the Academia, Education and Research, as well as in the Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks caucuses.
Enrique Chaparro is Information Technology consultant for the Inter American Development Bank, Consultant for the United Nations Development Programme, member IACR (International Association of Cryptologic Research), Argentine representative in Technical Committee 11 (Security) of IFIP (International Federation of Information Processing), member the Technical Committee on Security and Privacy of IEEE Computer Society.
University of the Western Cape
The University of the Western Cape (UWC) is the leading research institute in Africa for the study of FLOSS. UWC has been the African partner of the FLOSSWORLD project. In 2004 UWC established the Free Software and InnovationUnit (FSIU) with the aim of developing highquality FLOSS solutions for use within the University and create business opportunities around free software outside the University. The unit specialises in the development, adaptation and application of free software, with a primary, nonexclusive focus on the education sector. UWC is the central hub of the African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources (AVOIR) project which is a collaborative effort among 15 African higher education institutions to support capacity building in Free and Open Source software engineering. AVOIR has a strong research component that reviews the practical realities of FLOSS development and ownership in Africa with lessons from other countries. In addition to development and research work, UWC has been instrumental in creating an African community of developers, policymakers and researchers around issues of collaborative production models and ownership of information goods. In 2003 UWC organised Idlelo, the first African conference focusing on FLOSS and the digital commons, and will be holding the Digital Freedom Exposition during April 2007. Recently UWC launched its Free Courseware project, which applies the production and ownership models of FLOSS to educational content and practice.
UWC’s research personnel participating in the FLOSSInclude project will be Derek Keats, Enver Ravat and Philipp Schmidt.
Derek Keats is executive Director of Information & Communication Services at the University of the Western Cape. Derek’s mandate, as ICS executive director is to make UWC a world leader in the creative application of ICT to teaching, research, community engagement and improving efficiency of administration. Derek has published extensively in the area of FLOSS and is a frequent speaker and advisor to international organisations including USAID, IDRC, UNESCO.
Enver Ravat has been the project leader and coordinator on the South African leg of the FLOSSWorld project. Enver is a researcher on the AVOIR project where he analyzes the artifacts of the free/libre open source software development process such as CVS and mailing list data he also focuses on social network analysis and the structure of the AVOIR network in order to improve the strength of the network. He is also involved in the IDRC evaluation of this project.
Philipp Schmidt is Manager of the Free Courseware Project at UWC. He has written and spoken extensively on the practical and policy implications of FLOSS in Africa. Philipp managed the Open Source Software component of DFID's Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa initiative. Philipp's current research interest is the potential of open courseware for developing country universities, and the changing role of the university as a social institution.
Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT
AITIKACE, Ghana’s first Advanced Information Technology Institute, is the Centre of Excellence in ICT for the West African subregion. Established in 2003, AITI has a solid track record in ICT capacitybuilding and has partners located throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Research activities range from scientific computing projects to ICT for Development projects. AITI is a Council member of FOSSFA (Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa). The AITI is also developing, on behalf of Government of Ghana, Ghana’s Free/Libre/Open Source Software Policy Framework. In addition to running Open Source Training and capacitybuilding events for private sector, government officials, students in universities and polytechnics; AITI also works closely with civil society, including communitybased organisations to promote FLOSS through community projects. AITI has been tasked with managing the capacitybuilding dimension of the rollout of over 200 Community Information Centres located throughout Ghana and is actively involved in supporting the use of FLOSS applications throughout the existing network. The AITI team supports the development of Linux user groups throughout Ghana and international FLOSS projects in the areas of Education and Health. The AITI team provides FLOSS repositories such as a Debian GNU/Linux mirror for community use; Ubuntu mirrors are near completion. AITI will host and cosponsor a major FLOSS media event as well as a localisation workshop in late April 2007 and has already cosponsored a Developer Roadshow (with Meraka) as well as a South – North Open Opportunities Roadshow in 2006. AITI invests in activities related to FLOSS to develop skill capabilities that may otherwise be closed off (e.g. participation in major FLOSS projects builds design capability). FLOSS also makes it easier to adapt technology to local needs and budgets.
AITI team members participating in the FLOSSWorld project will be Kofi Kwarko, Ernest Ofori, Frederick Yeboah, Kwesi Smith and Oliver SintimAboagye. Kofi Kwarko, Business manager at AITI has solid experience in business solutions and challenges faced by various stakeholders in implementing FLOSS solutions.
Ernest Ofori, Scientific Computing and System Administration is responsible for the migration from proprietary to open solutions at AITI as well as well as for training the scientific community on modelling using the high performance Linux Cluster (CDAC Technology) Param Padma. Frederick Yeboah is a Certified Linux Professional and trainer and works to promote FLOSS with various stakeholder groups. Kwesi Smith (FLOSS/Education) and Oliver SintimAboagye (FLOSS/Health) are trainers and software developers that have worked on FLOSS projects and would support the adaptation or development of new FLOSS solutions. Other team members would be called on depending on the nature of the tasks to be performed.
IT for Change
IT for Change ( www.ITforChange.net ) is an India based NGO, which envisions ‘a society capable of, and comfortable with, innovative and effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) as a tool, to further goals of progressive social change’. IT for Change (ITfC) works on information society (IS) issues at global, national and local levels. It does policy research, advocacy as well as field projects in the area of ICTs for development. At the global level, it has been very active in the WSIS process, contributing case studies to the Task Force on Financial Mechanisms of WSIS, and drafting numerous ‘text proposals’ in WSIS negotiations with, and often on behalf of, civil society partners.
PostWSIS, ITfC has been a key voice of civil society from developing countries in various fora, like the IGF, CSTD, UNGAID etc. At national levels, we have established a close interaction with governments on one side and an extensive civil society network on the other, which we use for advocating ICT driven governance reform, as well as progressive ICT polices, from a social inclusion viewpoint. At the local level, ITfC engages in field projects to demonstrate ICT for development possibilities that can be taken up by mainstream development agencies, including those of the governments. Through our field project with rural women’s collectives in Mysore, India, we run telecentres, have set up a community radio and do local development videos. In addition, we are setting up a repository of audio visual development content in the local language, under open sharing conditions.
Our main research and advocacy project is ‘Information Society for the South Project’. This project develops a southcentred IS discourse, and presents developing country perspectives at various global advocacy fora. We also run an ‘Information Society Watch’(www.ISWatch.net ), which is a southernlens on the Information. Open access principles for connectivity, open content for knowledge sharing, and FLOSS for developing an inclusive digital space, are on the forefront of our research and advocacy efforts. We are also participating in an international project to review Internet censorship and surveillance policies and practices in India.
Parminder Jeet Singh, Gurumurthy Kasinathan, and Sudhir Krishnaswamy will work specifically on the FLOSSINCLUDE project.
Parminder is an executive director of ITfC and has worked with the Indian government for 9 years. He has also consulted with a couple of ICT for development NGOs and is closely associated with all of ITfC’s activities.
Gurumurthy, a director at ITfC, has worked for 13 years in the software industry before switching over to the NGO sector 3 years ago. Education, ICTs and governance are his key areas of interest.
Sudhir is a senior research associate at ITfC. He holds a law degree from the Oxford University, and is completing a PhD in Law from the same university this month. He has consulted with Government of India on regulatory policy and on open standards.
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
Sarai is a programme of The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), which is one of India's bestknown independent research institutes. Bringing together some of South Asia's best known thinkers and writers, the CSDS has played an important part in shaping the intellectual and creative map of this part of the world since its inception in 1964. The Sarai programme focuses on old and new media, information and communication technologies, FLOSS, cinema, and urban space, with a strong commitment to making knowledge available in the public domain. A team of about 40 academic, media practitioners and software engineers work with Sarai.
Sarai has been involved in FLOSS through an active program of fellowships and student bursaries, centered particularly on Indian language software development and localization. Such fellowships have resulted in the creation of a variety of useful software tools such as those listed under http://www.sarai.net/practices/software. Sarai has been running the Cybermohalla (http://www.sarai.net/practices/cybermohalla) project since May 2001 in collaboration with Ankur. As a whole, Sarai tries to bring together the experts and endusersteachers, students, journalists, and writersto assess, evaluate the value and functionality of free software. A team of people at Sarai work on the IndLinux (http://indlinux.org, http://code.indlinux.net) project which has been at the forefront of communitybased FLOSS localisation efforts. It currently functions as an informal, umbrella platform of individual teams working in a total of 13 Indian languages. Sarai also publishes books to familiarise people with FLOSS.
The people at Sarai participating in the FLOSSINCLUDE initiative will be Ravikant Sharma, Guntupalli Karunakar, and Dr. Gora Mohanty.
Ravikant is a historian, writer and translator. He has been part of Sarai and Indlinux platform almost from the beginning. He edits Sarai hindi publications that invariably carry crucial debates around FLOSS cultures. He also runs a mailing list in Hindi that address all the important sarai concerns including issues related to Indic Computing. Thus he tries to bring to the FLOSS table a perspective which is at once historical, social and linguistic.
Karunakar holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science. He acts as the coordinator of the Indian Linux Project since 2000, and has built up considerable experience in localization of FOSS technologies, fonts and
Indian language issues. Based on this he has been working towards a making a fully Indian language enabled GNU/Linux distribution. He is also Hindi language coordinator for GNOME and KDE projects, and involved in Debian localisation work. He has played an active role in promoting localization activities and helped form localisation teams for other languages (Gujarati, Telugu , Punjabi, Oriya, Nepali, Bhutanese etc.). He has also contributed to the South Asia part of the PAN localization survey (http://www.panl10n.net).
Gora is a physicist by training, and became familiar with FLOSS over the course of his research career. Currently his interests centre around computing in Indian, and nonEnglish languages, and he works on several FLOSS development projects in this area, such as spellcheckers, font converters, font rendering engines and related technology, locales, text speech, optical character recognition, etc. In addition, his interests extend to other areas, such as the development of FLOSS in bioinformatics. He is actively involved in the community, and currently serves as the general secretary of the Indian Linux User Group, Delhi (ILUGD). He also works with government bodies like the National Resource Centre for FOSS (NRCF), administrates a code development server for FLOSS in India (http://code.indlinux.net), mentors students in local colleges, participates in FLOSSrelated activities in India, and takes part in teacher training programmes in and around Delhi.
Open Institute
The Open Institute is a local NGO in Cambodia that houses the NGO side of the KhmerOS project. The KhmerOS project, started in early 2004, aims to replace English language proprietary applications with Khmer language FLOSS software. OpenInst has localised to Khmer languages a complete set of FLOSS applications, as well as a distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. It has also translated or developed in Khmer over 200 hours of training materials for class use on the localised applications and on Linux. It is also creating books in Khmer for selflearning. KhmerOS has a distribution strategy that involves all actors involved in the selection, distribution of learning of computer software, including vendors, training institutions and any other organisation that might act as an advisor for software choice. It also organises activities to build motivation for change, such as the National Typing and Document Development Contest (using FLOSS). KhmerOS is now a joint Government/NGO project, and has participated in the development of the National ICT policy of Cambodia, as well as developed a fouryear Master Plan for Deployment of FLOSS in Cambodia. The KhmerOS project collaborates with a large number of other countries in the region, helping them with their project planning as well as with technical issues of localisation. It has prepared a specific document on How to Design and write a FLOSS Localization and Deployment project. The Open Institute is also one of the two homes (the other being translate.org.za in South Africa) of the WordForge project, in which new tools for FLOSS localization are being developed using the latest computerassisted translation techniques, as well as the web as a mean of collaborative localization
work.
Javier Solá is the founder and codirector of the KhmerOS Initiative. He is also codirector of WordForge, and is involved in the localisation side of some specific FLOSS projects (such as OpenOffice). He is interested in finding working strategies for wide distribution of FLOSS software in poor countries. Javier was formerly Director of the Spanish Internet Users Association, where for seven years he pushed the development of Internet in Spain through participation on Internet related legislation and coordination of competing telecommunication companies to improve service to users. During that time he participated very actively in the creation of ICANN (the Internet's central management Association), where he was chairman of the working group that decided on the creation of new Internet top level domains (.info, .biz, etc.). Javier has a background in Artificial Intelligence as well as in software development, working for companies in France and Spain. He has also taught at several different universities in France, Spain, the United Sates and Cambodia. Javier holds a BSc degree from Duke University and a Masters Degree in Computer and Information Sciences from Ohio State University (both in USA).
Tsinghua University - China Education and Research Network
The China Education and Research Network (CERNET) is funded by the Chinese government and directly managed by the Chinese Ministry of Education. It is China's first and largest national academic Internet backbone, and currently the second largest network backbone in China. It provides an infrastructure for Chinese universities and schools for network research and applications. With about 1,300 universities and institutions connected and about 15million endusers, CERNET is becoming the largest nationwide academic network in the world. CERNET backbone bandwidth is 2.5Gbps, and has 38 Giga PoPs which reach more than 200 cities all over the country. Based on CERNET’s success, CERNET technical experts have been involved in the research activities of the next generation Internet. They successfully convinced the Chinese government to initiate China’s next
generation Internet project. CERNET Next Generation Testbed, named CERNET2, is the major backbone of China’s next generation Internet, which will provide a test bed for nextgeneration Internet designs, keeping China's computer scientists at the forefront of the field. The Chinese government believes that CERNET is playing the most important key role in future Internet research. Being an academic and educational network, CERNET provides an excellent platform for FLOSS development and distribution, especially for talented students. CERNET’s own R&D often contributes to FLOSS applications or utilities. As CERNET is nonprofit, it is playing an important role in encouraging the government’s support and application of FLOSS activities. CERNET is constructed and operated by Tsinghua and other leading universities, and the CERNET National Center (which will participate in FLOSSInclude) is located at Tsinghua University, which is the legal entity that will administer the staff and resources for CERNET’s participation in FLOSSInclude.
Prof. Xing Li has a long history of involvement in FLOSS – as a Ph.D student in US he developed a FLOSS package, MacHanzi, for viewing and printing Chinese articles on an Apple Mac without Chinese support. He has represented Chinese interests in several international standardisation efforts. In particular, he has been a very active participant in a number of working groups of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), the standards body for Internet protocols. More recently, in 2000, Prof. Li and Dr. Maoke Chen performed research on the growth of FLOSS user groups, studying the diffusion speed and scale of FLOSS. They have also spearheaded the efforts to deploy several new Internet standards in China, such as IPv6, for which CERNET was the first and largest deployment. Under Prof. Li's supervison, CERNET’s tasks in the project FLOSSINCLUDE will be coordinated by Dr. Maoke Chen. Joining the CERNET Center in 2004, Dr. Chen continues his research activities in IPv6 transition but focuses on building open platform for “planetary computing for the public”. He serves as the local coordinator of the FLOSSInclude project in China. Dr. Chen Liang is a post doctoral researcher at Tsinghua University's School of Public Policy and Management. With a PhD in Economics, he is a member of the expert group on standardisation and IPR in the ICT sector for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Information Industry. He has contributed to China's WTO submission on IPR in standardisation, and has written extensively on regional financial development. Associate staff will provide support for survey execution and workshop organisation.
Mifos 1.1
