Re: GuadaLinex interview for Open Desktop Day

[William from Texas <williamfromtexas gmail com>]

740 cybercenters, 600 libraries and 200 elderly/health care facilities = almost 1600 locations. (or have i double counted- are cybercenters located in the libraries?? I can check this with Jose.)

Quotes, I agree that the one marked by you is a key message. We could incorporate it into a sub-heading or as a side-bar quote.

Last chance - any other questions we should ask a person who is really driving OSS into his local community?

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Sanne te Meerman <sanne opensourceadvies nl> wrote:

<added Stormy as I had just mailed something about press to her>
Hi William!


That's great work! We're expecting Neelie Kroes's video on monday, if this can be online by then, that would be excellent. It provides another opportunity to create press attention, with which I've started again today. If I contact journalist again next thuesday, I can point them to that as well.

Some criticism:
I think the one quote you selected is a bit 'naive' in my perspective, like:
'If you have good OSS, spontaneous collaboration is guaranteed'. I would not emphasize it too much, as it will generate skepticsm I'm afraid.

the other one: The common pitfall is not adopting a development basis of <a href="" href="http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html" target="_blank">http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html">"release early, release often, and listen your customers... sounds a bit like a cliche to me. It might be true, nevertheless, but our government is not nearly ready to experience this for themselves.

IMHO, the strongest quote is definitely:

"The success of OSS relies on the community. The more you get involved with community, the more your projects get life and evolve"....

that's basically what I've been trying to emphasize for a while now:
see also https://noiv.nl/weblogs/sanne-te-meerman/2010/07/06/overheid-kan-meer-met-open-source-gemeenschappen/

I also expect Kroes to say something about the communities and their culture. this is one of the angles that I have communicated with her Cabinet.

Thanks, and great work!
Sanne
ps. I've heard from Juan that there were 600 cybercenters. If there are 1600, we can adjust that also on the page of the desktop Day. That number is even more impressive!




William from Texas schreef:

Hi guys!

Here is the short few-question interview I did with Jose, who is speaking at the open desktop day. What do you think? Feel free to edits. Jose also responds really quickly in case we need other questions.

I can publish this onto the GUADEC website but, Joe, would you distribute by other methods? (More sources the better.) I am still planning to add more GUADEC plugs into the article, maybe as a closing paragraph...

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OSS: Open Source in Spain

GUADEC 2010 sits down with José Félix Ontañón to talk about the 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 more than half a million desktops at 10,000 public schools and 1,600 community cybercenters, libraries and healthcare facilities.

The <a href="" href="http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalinfo#Plan_estrat.C3.A9gico_2009.2F2012" target="_blank">http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalinfo#Plan_estrat.C3.A9gico_2009.2F2012">current Guadalinfo plan</a> 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.

--- good quotes

"If you have good OSS, spontaneous collaboration is guaranteed."

"The common pitfall [for similar projects] is not adopting a development basis of "release early, release often, and listen your customers"."

---
--- interview

GUADEC: Politicians are often skeptical of free software. Where did the initial push for OSS in Andelusia come from?

Jose: 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 <a href="" href="http://juntadeandalucia.es/boja/boletines/2003/55/d/1.html" target="_blank">http://juntadeandalucia.es/boja/boletines/2003/55/d/1.html">72/2003 Law</a>, 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..

Jose: 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?

Jose: 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: With the government's help you have distributed your platform into the public sector. Are you seeing adoption in private non-IT sectors, e.g., mom-and-pop shops, businesses, NGOs, industry, etc?

Jose: 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 <a href="" href="http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centro_de_Gesti%C3%B3n_Avanzado#Evoluci.C3.B3n_del_proyecto" target="_blank">http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centro_de_Gesti%C3%B3n_Avanzado#Evoluci.C3.B3n_del_proyecto">more than 10,000 schools</a> 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 <a href="" href="http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html" target="_blank">http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html">"release early, release often, and listen your customers"</a>.

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