[guadec-list] Interview with Open Desktop Day's José Félix Ontañón

[William from Texas <williamfromtexas gmail com>]

Dear All, 

Those of you who are interested in this year's GNOME Open Desktop Day GUADEC pre-conference -- where panalists will talk about collaborative efforts between government and open source projects -- will be interested in the interview we did with José Félix Ontañón of the Andalusian government's GuadaLinex project. 

The interview has been posted as an announcement on the GUADEC page and can be seen here:
http://www.guadec.org/index.php/guadec/2010/announcement/view/17

The full text is below. Please pass it along to anyone who may be interested!

Cheers --

William
GUADEC comms team
www.guadec.org

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OSS: Open Source in Spain

GUADEC 2010 sits down with GNOME Open Desktop Day panelist José Félix
Ontañón to talk about the Spanish Government-back Guadalinfo project. 
 
Sometimes the locals need to take things into their own hands. In this
case, they built their own Linux distribution. Before 2003, in a
proprietary society, towns in the Spanish region of Andalucia with less
than 10,000 people were unable to connect to the internet. ISPs did not
consider the areas to be profitable and software vendors weren't
interested in localization. With a population of 8 million people, the
government of Andalucia made a bold move to catapult their region
head-long into the information age by embracing open-source software. 
 
The resulting distribution, GuadaLinex, is supported by the
government's larger Guadalinfo initiative, an effort to reduce the
digital gap between cities and smaller country towns. The distribution
was built and is now maintained through close collaboration between the
government and private company contracts. By 2008 GuadaLinex was
deployed on nearly half a million desktops across 1,100 schools and
1,600 community cybercenters, libraries and healthcare facilities, not
to mention the public's own up-take. 
 
 The current Guadalinfo plan was created in 2009 and will run to 2012. The strategy goals are:
 * To get the Andalusian population running in the modern knowledge society,
 * To support sustainable innovation development in Andalusia, and
 * To erase the digital barrier for the disabled or socially marginated people. 
 
Along with Andalucian Government telecommunications and information
FOSS manager Juan Conde, José Félix Ontañón, software project manager
for Guadalinfo, will speak at the 26 July Open Desktop Day, a GUADEC
2010 pre-conference event in The Hague, The Netherlands. The pair will
guide the audience through an in-depth look at the project's work to
date, maintenance and technical issues, and will speak about software
management and how the project feeds other Linux distributions.
 -- 
 
 GUADEC: Politicians are often skeptical of free software. Where did the initial push for OSS in Andelusia come from?  
 
 José:
It is well known that 2003 was a ground breaking year for OSS in
Andalusia. ADALA, the Asociacion Desarrollo y Avance software Libre
(Association for the Development and Advancement of Free Software), was
founded in 2001. In 2002 the 3rd edition of GUADEC was in Seville. With
this atmosphere some people from the local government get interested in
OSS. The efforts of the OSS community and OSS-friendly public workers
finally culminated in the 72/2003 Law, which literally supported the use of free software as a way to reduce the digital gap and advance a sustainable Andalusia. 
 
 GUADEC:
Did support for the project come from higher in European governing
systems? I'm wondering about project funding, I see the European
Commission badge at the foot of your site.. 
 
 José:
I know the European FEDER funds (European regional development funds)
are behind the budget of Guadalinfo. We, as a private company, only get
contracts with the regional government to develop the software that the
Guadalinfo project needs. 
 
 That would be a good question to
ask Juan Conde during our talk before GUADEC. Juan is the project
leader in the government side. 
 
 GUADEC: Many
regional governments across Spain are following the example, but each
trying to invent their own platform. Are you enlarging your scope to
integrate outside of the region, and would you see Spain adopting one
platform in the future? 
 
 José: Well, that's an interesting point. Do you see Red Hat and Ubuntu adopting one platform in the future? Joking. 
 
In Spain the regional governments are autonomous in funding IT
projects. I think some regions are backing OSS in a big way, and others
not. Some regions really believe in OSS as a way to achieve a
knowledge-based society, while others view OSS as a 'trend of the day'.
With no common objective and no common policies, I don't see a common
platform in the mid-term. 
 
 Nevertheless, we are talking about
OSS. The OSS project in Extremadura shared code with the Guadalinex
Andalusian distro in the begining. Guadalinex also developed a powerful
installer that was adopted in many other distros, including early
versions of Ubuntu. The Guadalinex hardware Hermes is being used in the
Molinux distribution, which is the local distro for Castilla La Mancha.
If you have good OSS, spontaneous collaboration is guaranteed. 
 
 GUADEC:
Why do some of the Spanish regions percive it to be only a trend, while
others see it as a fundamental issue? Do you think that regions with a
lower budget are wiser with the ICT spendings? 
 
 José:
I think the great visions of improving regional economies of
Extremadura and Andalusia through education and knowledge-society using
OSS ICT is a matter of great men and a kind of "universal momentum". 
 
Do you think the big dimensions of OSS ICT in schools, Guadalinfo or
public library goals could be possible in Andalusia with the costs of
private software? Maybe with out-of-cost licenses.. But in his last
speech, the president of Andalusia government said Guadalinex has saved about €180,000,000. 
 

Thanks to OSS, even a new thriving regional industry appeared to
support the ICT public projects. Some of these companies grew and
started to share their activities with other public and private
markets, showing us that this public investments has created a
sustainable ICT industry in Andalusia. 
 
 Other richer regions
of Spain like Cataluña, Valencia, Galicia or even Madrid started to use
OSS for some ICT public projects. I don't think that lower-region are
wiser. Other regions have old and strong industries in secondary
economy sectors that Extremadura and Andalusia do not. We are finding
how to get a step-up and OSS is one of the ways. 
 
 GUADEC: Are you seeing adoption in private non-IT sectors, e.g., mom-and-pop shops, businesses, NGOs, industry, etc? 
 
 José:
Not as much as I would like to see. Think that Guadalinex and
Guadalinfo are projects with citizens as target, not commerce. Regional
government only just started to support OSS, and business adoption is
still reduced to IT departments. 
 
 We hope it will change in the future. Now, in Andalusia, with more than 1,000 schools
using Guadalinex and about 740 Guadalinfo centers, a lot of citizens
use Guadalinex every day even on their home PCs. This will break the
habit of private software use. 
 
 GUADEC: What can other similar projects learn from your experiences? 
 
We are often scared of releasing and being exposed to public criticism.
The success of OSS relies on the community. The more you get involved
with community, the more your projects get life and evolve. The common
pitfall is not adopting a development basis of "release early, release often, and listen your customers". 

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 You can meet José Félix Ontañón and Juan Conde at the GUADEC 2010 GNOME Open Desktop Day pre-conference. 
 
 Register for GUADEC 2010 now! It's fast, easy, and you can even register for free! https://register.guadec.org 

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