Re: GuadaLinex interview for Open Desktop Day



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>.

        ---
        ---






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