Re: GuadaLinex interview for Open Desktop Day

[Sanne te Meerman <sanne opensourceadvies nl>]

William from Texas schreef:
> 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.)
I see what you mean, I referred to the 740 cybercenters, but if you 
count the libraries as cybercenters as well, and the healthcare 
facilities too, I understand.
> 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.
Fine by me
> Last chance - any other questions we should ask a person who is really 
> driving OSS into his local community?
What puzzles me is the difference in support by governments. is 
necessity the mother of invention here? Countries with a lower budget 
are wiser with their ICT spendings? is it historical background? Why do 
some countries/regions perceive it as a trend only, and others perceive 
it as a fundamental issue? That's all I can come up with right now. See 
for yourself if you think it's interesting
> On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Sanne te Meerman 
> <sanne opensourceadvies nl <mailto: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="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...
>
>         ---
>         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="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="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="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="http://catb.org/esr/writings/homesteading/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html";>"release
>         early, release often, and listen your customers"</a>.
>
>         ---
>         ---