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Programming GNU is Not Unix IT Technology

Africa Source 2004 Wrap-ups 122

Posted by timothy from the no-need-for-windows dept.
Douglas Hunter writes "Africa Source 2004 has wrapped up and the last of the stragglers have packed their bags and headed home. Africa Source 2004 was a gathering of pan-African Free and Open Source software developers held in Okahandja, Namibia. Organized by Tactical Tech, All Africa and Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), Africa Source was a mixture of structured and semi-structured discussions with loads of good 'ole hacking thrown in to boot. With workshops ranging from i18n to wireless hacks to running a MOSIX cluster, there were plenty of hands-on sessions for folks to attend. The first ever Kiswahili spell checker was developed and released during the conference, a testament to the activity of those involved. For more information about Africa Source 2004, visit one of the blogs."
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Africa Source 2004 Wrap-ups More

Africa Source 2004 Wrap-ups

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  • Make the stand against artificial scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Thinkit4 ( 745166 ) * on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @06:10AM (#8712324)
    In a region where artificial scarcity of AIDS drugs (patents) kills--any sort of stand against "intellectual property" is a good thing.
    • True, but it's a shame that this is the method of doing it (and then it folds).

      Sadly for your example you can't imagine the drugs companies hearing of the open source initiatives and thinking 'shit, we'd better get our asses into gear, or they may do the same with our drugs!'.

      Sad but true.

    • Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Malaria kills more people than HIV/AIDS in Africa, so how about some cheap anti-Malarial treatments too? Please?

    • Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by azaris ( 699901 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @07:36AM (#8712536) Journal

      In a region where artificial scarcity of AIDS drugs (patents) kills--any sort of stand against "intellectual property" is a good thing.

      It's intellectual dishonesty to claim that Africa's AIDS problem is due to intellectual property rights.

      Lack of education, lack of free contraceptives and lack of a properly managed international effort to organize these things are what's causing the problem. And the US policy of only supporting programs that preach abstinence isn't helping either.

      • Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hachete ( 473378 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @07:49AM (#8712569) Homepage Journal
        The Americans didn't help by trying to reduce to a minimum the circumstances - proscribed by international convention - in which forced licensing could legally take place. So, whilst the original poster can be described as overstating their case, I don't see this as being "intellectually dishonest". Rather, I see your deflection in this light. The US drug companies were complete bastards in this respect and I can understand the feelings engendered by such a negative, hateful policy.

        h
        • The reasons Americans would do something like this is because most leaders in Affrica would rather get money instead of American drugs from the United States. So they spit out propaganda that AIDS was a construct of American Scientists in the first place developed to kill Affricans, and that AIDS is contained in the vacinations and drugs that are used to prevent other more simplistic problems.

          There is no "negative, hateful policy" but rather a wish to see the PEOPLE of affrica helped not the rulers. Consta
          • The US Drug companies dragooned the US gubmint into acting on their behalf, trying to force the TRIPS plus policy down the throats of the African governments. Only under extreme moral pressure did the US govt/companies relent. The US Drug companies only want to increase their profits, the US govt only want to see these profits increase. The African people are only coincidental to the whole things, so this callous dis-regard of life is disgraceful.

            Even worse, this policy circumvents the agreements of the WT
            • " your comment is short-sighted and plainly idiotic "

              My comment is not short sighted and it is not plainly idiotic. My comments are based on my beliefs after working in the peace corps in Affrica for a while, after seeing all factors available to me and examining the information i recieved, that is how i arrived at my "plainly idiotic" comment.

              I'm Surpised you were modded up, unless a friend modderated for you, your obviously a person who reads propaganda in circles all day and doesn't absorb unbiased
              • And my comments are based, in part, in visting Africa quite freqently in the past.

                I am not arguing for better aid, or any aid at all in the long run; I would prefer better trade agreements which didn't force wacky patent policies (whether it be the DMCA or the EUCD, although the US started it...) down the throats of poorer countries.

                h

      • Re:Make the stand against artificial scarcity (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        +4 insightful? comeon! This post is crap. AIDS in africa is not about lack of contraceptives. there is plenty. since long ago. oh, and africa is many different places with little in common sometimes. Lack of education? most casualties of AIDS are the educated elite, engineers, teachers, professors... There is no simple explanation to AIDS in eastern and southern africa actually. some of the poorest countries in africa have few aids cases, niger, CAR... no slashdot poster can articulate this topic well, so w
      • Educate yourselves. There are several common lies that you are fed by the news media.

        First, that AIDS is a massive problem in Africa. It isn't. The "crisis" is a product of completely bogus UN computer models, whcih are regularly diddled with when folks begin to figure out.

        Second, that second-hand smoke kills more than a few (if that many) people per year. It doesn't. The results come from fraudulent meta-analyses.

        Third, that silicone breast implants cause cancer. They don't, but they do pay tons of
        • Second, that second-hand smoke kills more than a few (if that many) people per year. It doesn't. The results come from fraudulent meta-analyses.

          There was an excellent website I found a couple of years ago which went into exactly why this whole 'second-hand smoke' thing is questionable, to say the least. It also included a general selection on how people can twist statistics to suit their story - and meta-analyses were certainly one of the things they mentioned.

          Unfortunately, I can't find it anymore. I s
      • Its also a lack of willingness to use condoms. Even in areas where people have been educated, condoms are cheaply available, they still refuse to use them for various reasons, from religion to saying they reduce feeling.

        Another is the adherence to old customs. For instance where if a man dies, his brother will "inherit" his wife and children. So if the man dies of AIDS, his brother will have it pretty soon too.

        Of course this is not the way it is everywhere in Africa. But in the regions where AIDS is most
      • Actually it's more than a little simplistic to think that any three sentence comment can in any adequate way explain the AIDS/HIV pandemic.

        How much time have you spent in Africa? How many people do you know who have died of HIV related illnesses who would be still alive "if they'd only had a condom?"

      • Add to that an excessive insistence on political correctness. I once heard from an African female that one of the reasons AIDS is so widespread between Africans was that culture of promiscuous polygamy where an African male would have a wife in the village, a mistress in the city... etc etc and would still frequent prostitutes. I heard that it wouldn't be uncommon for an African male to have up to 5 simultaneous sexual partners. It seems okay that the average life expectancy of some nations would drop down
      • And the US policy of only supporting programs that preach abstinence isn't helping either.

        That's not true. In fact, quite the opposite. Africans find the notion of condoms bizarre and offensive. Most Africans are religious and respond much better to the message of abstinence. African pastors are having a lot of success in reducing the spread of AIDS in their communities by preaching sexual abstinence before marriage.

  • Corporations vs. Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jabex ( 320163 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @06:10AM (#8712326) Homepage
    That's one of the I like about open source. Where a megalo-corporation would do it's best to stay away from a possible African market... people that have the resources the can work together to produce their own products.

    If only open source could produce food... hmm.
    • When Indian software industry is outsourced to Kongo, some capital may follow.

      Computers for developing for software next to nothing, at least compared to the starting costs of almost any other industrial branch.

    • Insightful? Hardly (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If only open source could produce food... hmm.

      Because as we all know, Namibia is suffering a huge food shortage. I have lived in the Southern African region for a long time (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana) and know of no such food shortage. (Ok, Zimbabwe is now an exception, but that is a man-made problem and also a fairly recent problem, historically Zimbabwe/Rhodesia has always had a large food surplus).

      • Re:Insightful? Hardly (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mks113 ( 208282 ) <{mks} {at} {kijabe.org}> on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @08:37AM (#8712718) Homepage Journal
        Almost all famine is caused by people. During civil wars (e.g. Sudan) any crops found are either confiscated or destroyed to prevent them from feeding the "enemy". Both sides do it.

        Africa is just beginning to get connected to the world. While the cities have had communication for a while, the rural areas tend to be very isolated.

        I think this is fertile breeding ground for open source. The problem is the microsoft is the only thing that seems to be known. With any computer training being "how to used windows" and pirated copies of windows readily available, it is hard to take a moral high ground, particularly in cultures where morality doesn't hold much sway -- read widespread corruption, AIDS.

        Open source has a place, but only as part of a wider campain to get internet to rural areas.

        And of course the question: Why do rural people need internet? I believe it is all about finding answers. If somebody wants to have a better life, they need access to information. Better farming techniques? Better building methods? How to avoid scams?

        I'm going to Africa later this year for two years. I hope to play some small part in giving people a better life through access to information.

        Michael

        • You might want to check out our project :-

          Wizzy Digital Courier [wizzy.org.za]

          Bypass the monopoly Telcos with a uniquely African solution.

          Cheers, Andy!

        • Re:Insightful? Hardly (Score:3, Interesting)

          by dabadab ( 126782 )
          "particularly in cultures where morality doesn't hold much sway"

          Umm, hello? Small communities are the places where morality is VERY important and often strictly enforced.

          Don't confuse "no morality" with "their morality has nothing against copyright infringement" (as most probably the latter is the case and that's no suprise as copyrigth is a concept that is far disconnected from the everyday realities of many Africans).

          • Re:Insightful? Hardly (Score:3, Interesting)

            by mks113 ( 208282 )
            You make a good point: Morality is relative to the culture in which you live.

            And that is the reason that westerners can not impose solutions on the third world. The best that the west can do is to provide the tools for the third world to come up with their own solutions.

            Internet connectivity is a tool. It does not come with moral baggage or western decision making. The users have to make their own choices. They can participate in a forum on agricultural practices, they can accept one-sided advice on
        • > particularly in cultures where morality doesn't
          > hold much sway -- read widespread corruption, AIDS.

          wtf has AIDS got to do with morality, or corruption?

          It's a disease. Oh, unless you mean 'dem homosexuals or 'dem drug addicts gone done something wrong

          You don't mean that, surely.

          so what did you mean?

    • It may be so that Open Soruce not will solve the problem of Aids directly, nor make foreign corporations invest in Africa. But, in a continent with loads of civil wars, and a problematic infrastructure it is very promising that people can get together and create positive things! As many of us will never set foot on the African continent all we can do is help out the way we can:

      Through Open Source projects the rest of the world can aid african Open Soruce developers in their efforts to bring Linux to the de

    • Re:Corporations vs. Open Source (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Where a megalo-corporation would do it's best to stay away from a possible African market

      This is not entirely true. Companies like Microsoft have a strong presence in the African market. Finding open source companies however is close to impossible

  • Those darn kids... (Score:5, Funny)

    by JohnGrahamCumming ( 684871 ) * <slashdotNO@SPAMjgc.org> on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @07:15AM (#8712483) Homepage Journal
    Damn you and your Open Source Kiswahili spell checker. Five years ago I poured my entire life savings into secretly building just such a spell checker. It was due to be released tomorrow and I was set to make my fortune by selling a copy to each of the 50 million Kiswahili speakers for $100.

    Damn you Open Source scoundrels!

    John.

  • Network latency... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @07:18AM (#8712489) Homepage

    One thing I would love to see being developed out of OSS would be some software comms stack work to develop a low-bandwidth, high-latency stack that can shift service and data load as required.

    Some architectural and design patterns that could be published on this would also help. I know from my experience of doing a global system for a large logicistics company it was a seperate system for Africa due to the restricted networks. Thus rather than shipments from South America to the Southern Middle East stopping in central africa they went to Europe as it was easier to track. Cost wise it would be better to use Africa, but without a decent infrastructure... or better yet a standard approach to poor infrastructure, it wasn't business effective.

    Africa has a real reason to concentrate on the wireless and mobile sectors. It could already be ahead of the US, and by coping with its infrastructure issues OSS could provide a real platform for new tech companies to come from Africa.

    The cluster stuff is cool... the dictionary is neat... but what here is going to make life better for people, and start bridging the gaps ?

  • Re: Africa Source 2004 Wrap-ups (Score:5, Interesting)

    by manavendra ( 688020 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @07:30AM (#8712520) Homepage Journal
    Its heartening to hear about pan-African open source initiative. The implications of this are enormous.
    • This shows there is a fairly large developer community, which is informed and competitive enough to be a part of the open source initiative, as against merely working to earn.
    • That, the efforts from these developers shall sooner or later bring revenue for the African economy. With the outsourcing initiatives already filling coffers of other econonomies all over the world, I don't see why stable African countries should not be benefited.
    • All such initiatives provide an example and direction to the youth - not all of them have the guidance and help they need, and such initiatives provide some inkling that perhaps there might be some prosperity in software.
    • This further chips away at the belief that Africa is about poverty, aids and civil wars only. I agree all these exist, but education can help eradicate these to a large extent.
    • Finally, such initiatives may prompt the government to provide more funding to the software companies association/education institutions to develop and promote the industry, attracting foreign investment (read outsourcing)
  • Africa has easily the most complex localisation problem of any market, with more languages than the rest of the world combined but a market that can hardly afford traditional localization costs (e.g. the top down model used by commercial vendors).

    Open source makes it possible to build entire packages - OS, Office, Web - for groups that are not even on the commercial software radar.

    It's true that for many educated Africans, a European language is a necessary skill - French, English, Portuguese. But for a schoolkid in Kasai, it has to be Chiluba or Lingala.

    Long after the problems of internetworking and materials have been resolved, open source will be the basis for widespread adoption of software in African society.

    • Re:Open source, localisation (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mks113 ( 208282 ) <{mks} {at} {kijabe.org}> on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @08:53AM (#8712781) Homepage Journal
      My experience has been with Kenya. There are about 40 different tribal languages. Business is usually conducted in English or Swahili.

      School children learn english and swahili at the same time, early in primary school.

      Status seems to be a very important thing in Kenya. It is seen to be "better" if you have a western education, and speaking english is part of that, so english has become the language of much of the establishment. You speak english to look good, you speak swahili to your friends, and your tribal language (in private) only to your close family.

      I wouldn't say that the tribal languages are dieing, but there is very little link between them and computers. I'm not convinced that that is a good thing.

      • Re:Open source, localisation (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What better way to introduce a community to computers and to educate a generation of kids than to translate - say - OpenOffice from Kiswahili into Kikuyu? After spending months doing this huge project, kids would both have learnt how to use PCs, and would know a lot more about what they can be used for.
    • As the prime minister (president? dictator? strongman? whatever) of Nigeria said only a few weeks ago, Nigeria has over 150 languages, LANGUAGES, mind you NOT DIALECTS. How the hell can you call yourself a country, a society or a nation when there are over 150 mutually unintelligible ways of communicating, each one supporting typically a few thousand speakers, and the vast majority not even written down! God bless 'em, aboriginals need all the help they can get.
    • Africa has easily the most complex localisation problem of any market, with more languages than the rest of the world combined

      Not at all [ethnologue.com]. In fact, Asia has more languages than Africa; though the distinction that page makes between "Asia" and "Pacific" is kind of sketchy, since Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are in different categories despite sharing an island...

  • heh (Score:1)

    by SinaSa ( 709393 )
    "...to running a MOSIX cluster"

    Imagine a beowu-- wait...hmm...

  • Glad to see more of the real Africa (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrIrwin ( 761231 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @07:55AM (#8712586) Journal
    Africa is a big country. National Geographic shows a lot of film of a few select nature reserves. CNN et al show us lot's of footage from a few troublespots.

    And yet I know there is a lot more to Africa than that. Africa is were the human race was born, and today there are millions of people who lead a very straightforward lifestyle where the biggest problems have been caused by outside influences.

    IMHO, Africa can make important contributions to OSS, not just use it as cheap software. And conversely I would hope that OSS will allow Africa to develop IT orientated to it's own requirements and objectives rather than being shoehorned into accepting what is there.

    I wonder how many of the /. posters reffering to Dictators and AIDS actually went to look at the links. What I saw was frustrated talent, they can do things but they don't no how to deploy it, or how to talk to thier own authorities about what they have to offer.

    It would be nice if /. er's could give them some positive encouragement and advice. Perhaps links to case studies of simple effective OSS deployment in areas that could be of use to developing countries were PC's are often community resources rather personal possessions.

  • "Africa is just war and famine"

    "Africans can't even stop killing each other, WTF do they need software for"

    "Clean water first, then software!"

    Even in 2004, some people still don't realize that humanity is largely identical, everywhere. There are tens of millions of African nerds who simply dream of getting their hands on PCs, software, Internet links, hundreds of millions of businessmen who are frustrated by the lack of modern communications, hundreds of millions of students who could contribute seriously to the world economy if they had even minimal access to the online libraries. If it wasn't for the curse of mineral wealth that encouraged local and foreign politicians to treat the continent like a slash-and-burn buffet, Africa would be stable and prosperous.

    To a large extent the population of Africa has been held hostage by war and violence waged by those who profit from the rape of the continent. Look at Congo, which until recently was occupied by the armies of no less than 11 different countries. These wars are sustained by keeping the populations intimidated, ignorant, and poor. No-one cares about the locals when the ground is rich with diamonds, oil, and other minerals.

    Technology like GSMs and open source are possibly the best chance that African civil society has of creating communities that can escaping and resist the trap of bad local and international politics.

    Kiswahili and Lingala are vital starting points because these two languages join the whole belt of central Africa from Congo to Kenya.

  • Problems with Swahili Spell Checking (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chris_notts ( 766655 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @08:07AM (#8712618)
    I'm surprised that the spell checking code in Open Office is flexible enough to cope with Swahili spell checking, given how different the european languages it was designed to handle are from the bantu languages (eg swahili) in structure. European languages generally have rather poor derivational morphology, and nouns and verbs inflect by taking a single suffix only. Compare this to Swahili, where verbal derivational morphology is quite rich, and the verb takes a tense prefix along with subject and object concord prefixes, and a mood suffix... I would have expected the spell checking code to choke when they tried to specify which prefixes a verb can take in which order, etc. An example to prove my point, with the english and swahili sentences broken down into their constituent parts: English: I read it (the book) Cannot be broken down Swahili: nakisoma ni-a-ki-som-a I:subj-simple:present-it:ki:class-read-indicative English: He who leaves He who leave-s Swahili: anayetoka a-na-ye-tok-a 3p:subj-present-3p:relative-leave-indicative And so on. There are very few english, french or spanish (languages I speak a little of as well) words which approach this level of agglutination, the obvious example being antidisestablishmentarianism.
    • Yes, but swahili is regular enough that the infixes can be readily isolated based on a few simple rules.

      On the other hand, I really question the need for a swahili spell-checker at all. Pronunciation is so consistant that if you can say it, you can spell it.

      Swahili has to one of the most exception-free languages in the world.
      • There are different dialects in Kiswahili. the pronounciation differs from region to region for example the Kenyan pronounciation differs from an East DR Congo (Zaire) resident or Tanzanian pronounciation. If everyone wrote what they spoke... "l"s and "r"s are mostly interchanged... reading such documents is time consuming for the different parties involved. I think the next best step would be too introduce regional versions of the dictionary.
      • On the other hand, I really question the need for a swahili spell-checker at all. Pronunciation is so consistant that if you can say it, you can spell it.

        I don't think that the only usefor a spell-checker is to "check" how a word is spelled if you don't know it, people also make mistakes when they type and it is nice to have a tool to spot those also.

    • A spell checker is just a dictionary with a few extra tools. Language semantics do not enter into it at all. As long as the spell checkers dictionary is reasonably complete, in that it contains all common words and their permutations, it can work for nearly any language that can be written in discreet words. I should think a spell checker for Kanji symbols would be much more difficult.

      A grammar checker, on the other hand, may be much more difficult in Swahili than in English if the syntatic rules are reall
      • Not necessarily... to take the example nakisoma "I read it", if the dictionary listed only the verb "soma" and the affixes "na" and "ki" separately, and didn't contain any information on how they were combined, then it would be fairly useless, since it either wouldn't recognise "nakisoma" as correct (since it doesn't know they can be glued together) or it would also recognise "kinasoma" which is meaningless (since it wouldn't know the rules about the order things can be fixed together). Any spell checker mu
    • You probably mean indo-european language family (French, English, German et cetera) not european languages. For example, Finnish and Estonian (which belong to the Fenno-Ugrian language family) have a pretty complex verb derivation rules.

      Ok, so I'm nitpicking, so shoot me :)

    • ...Death by bunga-bunga!

      Hmm?

  • I was there... (Score:5, Informative)

    by nicc777 ( 614519 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @08:34AM (#8712704) Homepage Journal
    ...to present the clustering workshop :)

    We actually played with ClusterKnoppix and CHAOS. I have made my presentation and other notes available at itfirms.co.za [itfirms.co.za] for those interested.

    I just want to say thanks to everyone for making it a great experience. I made a lot of new friends, and I look forward to the next event.

  • This is even more important from the OSS community perspective.

    Being the first to market, as they say in business, is half the battle. I don't know much about the software usage scenario in Africa, but if there is a fledgling open source initiative there, it will provide an early insight about the principles and thought process behind open source, the alternatives available to the mainstream (and sometimes expensive) commerical software and the presence of a worldwide, large, helpful OSS community.

    Wi
  • A Swahili "spell" checker? Its a joke, laugh.

  • Some Pointers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tupambao ( 764994 ) on Tuesday March 30, 2004 @10:04AM (#8713206)

    Everytime the topic of Africa crops up I always realise how many people are ignorant of Africa. To borrow a line from this site [qantara.de] which I would recommend for anyone who wants to know something about africa to read first,

    "By concentrating on Africa, we hope to correct the predominant image of a uniform, monolithic landmass wholly lacking in perspectives. We want to help break down prejudices and to show the positive developments in Africa. At the same time, however, we do not intend to remain silent about the problems facing the continent."

    So please guys, Africa is NOT a country but a continent!

    There are conflicts at the moment I only know of 3 actual ones being covered by the media: Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Ivory Coast. The interesting fact is that you can travel to the capital cities of this countries (for example Khartoum [bbc.co.uk] in Sudan) with the same risk involved as travelling to Tel Aviv in Israel.

    There are other places with a history of ongoing conflict mostly natural resources propagated or land and border disputes and at the moment are enjoying some sought of peace: Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ethiopia-Eritrea and the Central African Republic, Angola, Mauritania and Algeria. Then there is the politically motivated violence here at the moment only Zimbabwe is experiencing this. Then there is the lawless Somali. All this countries add up to 11... Africa has 50 countries and a little math leaves 39 countries WITHOUT conflict. Are we now to say that this countries are not safe to visit or invest in?

    There are 300 million Swahili speakers in the world. That is far more than the German speakers. Swahili qualifies as an International language [fitug.de]. It makes sense to create Swahili software translations.

    Instead of shouting about the conflicts, famines and drought we should be looking at Africa the Indian way. India has an ongoing conflicts; border disputes and religious tensions, has a huge poor population, but is able to send satelites to space and create software solutions that are recougnised worldwide. This is so because no one keeps on rubbing their noses and holding huge placards infront of their faces with the conflicts and poverty problems everytime they want to try developing technical solutions!

  • While I understand the low amount of attention this story is getting since most /. readers are not African and don't care too much about the continent or its people except in the standard humanitarian fashion, I find what is being posted here borders on appalling.

    A few here have actually mentioned the fact that people across the world have a love of technology and communication and therefore Africa Source 2004 is a very cool happening.

    I personally look at events like this with keen interest. The people of
  • Another developing place to offshore jobs to!
  • That's nice seeing some news from Africa that's positive for a change. All you ever hear about is murder and carnage from all over the continent. Nice to see some sort of get together where learning and sharig is involved. It is amazing that so little good is said in the news for such a large part of humanity!

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