Debating Open-Source Software at the U.N.

ICTs in general, Links 1 Minute

Pogue’s Posts – Debating Open-Source Software at the U.N. – Technology – New York Times Blog:

…though, many countries (or departments within them) are already making the switch to open-source software. They save money up front because the software doesn’t cost anything, but there are other motivations, like security (they can inspect the source code) and, in some countries, the hope of generating jobs for local programmers and administrators.

If you believe the companies who are offering open-source packages–and not everyone does–the momentum is clearly on the free-software side, that the tide is turning, and even that the days of the proprietary-software monopoly are numbered.

As I mentioned at the end of the seminar: Let’s all meet back here in ten years and see how things turned out.

This obviously has very serious implications on the design and application of ICT4Peace systems, and may explain Microsoft’s recent push for open standards through SSE. In Sri Lanka, Sahana, the Peace Library, Echo, Voices of Reconciliation, VOR Internet Radio and several other projects by InfoShare all run on FOSS back-ends, demonstrating not just a growing commitment to FOSS in the humanitarian and peacebuilding sector, but importantly, an emphasis on open standards and interoperability.

See also:
PC’s = Empowerment?

Published by Sanjana

An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance. I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002. I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents. Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs. Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts. I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

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