Back to the topic of application of FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) in the country. To start off its worth to note the lack of awareness of OSS (Open Source Software) and its benefits, specially at the grass root level. Its worth to note the following point that of all the countries in South Asia except Maldives, Open Source has been applied in the field of education.
Unlike the neighbors and most countries, the Government of Maldives neither seem to have any policy on Open Source nor any government backed projects are running on Open Source. If we look at our neighbors the case is very different. Example; The federal Government of Pakistan has allocated a budget of US$ 1 million for Linux development and US$ 3 million for other open source projects. The Ministry of Science & Technology under Technology Resource Mobilisation (TReMU) has formed the Task Force for Linux for outlining strategies, seminars and planning with regard to Linux [www.trmu.gov.pk].
Moving on closer, Volunteers from Lankan Linux User Group (Lk-LUG), Lanka Software Foundation (LSF), Virtusa, ICTA and other organisations working on Open Source like Eurocentre, hSenid etc. launched an open source disaster management system, ‘Sahana’ (meaning peace or calm in Sinhalese). The system has been implemented and authorized by Centre for National Operations (CNO) of Government of Sri Lanka to help relief work in Tsunami affected areas. I've personally worked along with companies like hSenid and they are developing and exporting solutions based on OSS implementations. The Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka is the single apex body involved in ICT policy and direction for the nation. It is wholly owned by the Government of Sri Lanka. ICTA recognises Open Source and is a strong supporter in the development of FLOSS in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has been a strong contributor to OSS projects like the Apache Project.
The Indian Government doesn’t rule out the use of proprietary software in favour of open source software. However, there are government agencies like Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), National Informatics Centre (NIC) and other Indian states like Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal etc. who are extensively using and advocate the use of open source. Back in 2002, the Government of India has announced that all government tenders would stop specifying Microsoft or any other vendor's name, while floating software tenders. Thus this will open ways for Linux vendors. It plans to set up special interest groups, which will include people from academia, and industry, which will explore means to deploy Linux in e-Governance, defense and education.
The policies Maldives has on OSS are unknown and doubt if there would be any , ever. I guess we cannot blame the government for this. An initiative has to be taken at an individual level first and moved on. So far the Maldives doesn’t seem to be undergoing any major open source movement except for the existence of the Maldives Linux user Group (MLUG). This too is mostly or totally inactive. There is no official recognition of the organization nor an effort has been made to make it official. The reason maybe the lack of interest.
Reference http://www.csdms.in/csdms/pdf/FLOSS_draft_rpt.pdf
Unlike the neighbors and most countries, the Government of Maldives neither seem to have any policy on Open Source nor any government backed projects are running on Open Source. If we look at our neighbors the case is very different. Example; The federal Government of Pakistan has allocated a budget of US$ 1 million for Linux development and US$ 3 million for other open source projects. The Ministry of Science & Technology under Technology Resource Mobilisation (TReMU) has formed the Task Force for Linux for outlining strategies, seminars and planning with regard to Linux [www.trmu.gov.pk].
Moving on closer, Volunteers from Lankan Linux User Group (Lk-LUG), Lanka Software Foundation (LSF), Virtusa, ICTA and other organisations working on Open Source like Eurocentre, hSenid etc. launched an open source disaster management system, ‘Sahana’ (meaning peace or calm in Sinhalese). The system has been implemented and authorized by Centre for National Operations (CNO) of Government of Sri Lanka to help relief work in Tsunami affected areas. I've personally worked along with companies like hSenid and they are developing and exporting solutions based on OSS implementations. The Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) of Sri Lanka is the single apex body involved in ICT policy and direction for the nation. It is wholly owned by the Government of Sri Lanka. ICTA recognises Open Source and is a strong supporter in the development of FLOSS in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has been a strong contributor to OSS projects like the Apache Project.
The Indian Government doesn’t rule out the use of proprietary software in favour of open source software. However, there are government agencies like Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), National Informatics Centre (NIC) and other Indian states like Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal etc. who are extensively using and advocate the use of open source. Back in 2002, the Government of India has announced that all government tenders would stop specifying Microsoft or any other vendor's name, while floating software tenders. Thus this will open ways for Linux vendors. It plans to set up special interest groups, which will include people from academia, and industry, which will explore means to deploy Linux in e-Governance, defense and education.
The policies Maldives has on OSS are unknown and doubt if there would be any , ever. I guess we cannot blame the government for this. An initiative has to be taken at an individual level first and moved on. So far the Maldives doesn’t seem to be undergoing any major open source movement except for the existence of the Maldives Linux user Group (MLUG). This too is mostly or totally inactive. There is no official recognition of the organization nor an effort has been made to make it official. The reason maybe the lack of interest.
Reference http://www.csdms.in/csdms/pdf/FLOSS_draft_rpt.pdf
In the recent times, Linux has dominated the movie making industry, with moves such as Titanic, Blade, Star Wars, Final Fantasy, XXX, Harry Potter , Load of the Rings , Shrek and many more high profile movies. Studios such as Disney, Pixar , Sony Pictures, Dream Works and ILM has been known to widely use Linux in there productions.
Here is a useful list of Free and commercial related tools for Linux
Linux is the most popular operating system for big budget feature film animation and visual effects, with more than 95% of the servers and desktops at large animation and visual effects companies. People outside the film industry, and even inside the industry sometimes, don't realize that Linux is so big at large studios. Linux is the norm in Hollywood and considered the state-of-the-art. In this upside-down world where Windows and Mac are minority operating systems, Linux evangelists would be hard-pressed to find anyone left to convert. The free operating system built by the people for the people has been embraced foremost by film studios. - Robin Rowe
Here is a useful list of Free and commercial related tools for Linux
- ATI - workstation graphics drivers and GPU
- Baselight - grading and finishing
- Boujou - matchmove
- Conform - editing system
- DaVinci Revival - color correction
- Deadline - render queue
- Flint - visual effects
- FrameCycler - playback
- Gelato - renderer
- Houdini - animation and compositing
- Maya - animation
- Massive - crowd simulation
- Mental Ray - renderer
- Mokey - stabilization
- Monet - motion tracking
- NUKE - compositing
- NVIDIA - workstation graphics drivers and GPU
- Photogenics - HDR painting and retouching
- Piranha - editing system
- Platform LSF - render queue
- qube! - render queue
- RaveHD - DDR playback and HD conversion
- RealFlow - water modeling
- RealSoft - 3D modeling, animation and 3D paint
- RenderMan - renderer
- Rush - render queue
- RushPlay - digital dailies
- Shake - compositing
- SoftImage - animation
- Smoke - editing system
- SpeedGrade - color correction
- SteadyMove - stabilization
- US Animation - cel animation
Free Animation Software and Modelers
- AniTMT - animation with POV-Ray
- Blender - modeler
- Celestia - spaceflight simulation
- FL-Inventor - 3d toolkit
- flow - particle animation
- GTO - geometric data format and Maya plug-in
- K-3D - animation
- KPovModeler - modeler for POV-ray
- libGLOOP - particle simulation
- MakeHuman - humanoid animation
- Moonlight3d - modeler
- POV-Ray and MegaPOV - modelers
- TerraForm - terrain simulation
- TrueVision - POV-ray modeler
- VEE - particle animation
- Wings3d - modeler
Free Audio Software
- Ardour - multitrack recording/editing
- Audacity - audio editor
- LADSPA - audio plug-ins
- Sweep - audio editor
Free Cluster Software
Free Editors
- Celtx - Screenplay (text) editor
- Cuisine - DV NLE (Development abandoned due to employer)
- Kino - DV editor (A really simple editor based on the vi interface keystrokes)
- Shotcut - DV NLE (A new FLTK-based editor)
Sometimes people are looking for Linux and open source, but other times people are just looking for free. A nice free editor for Windows/Mac is Avid Free DV.
Free Linux Distros for Multimedia
Free Movie Playback
- CinePaint - flipbook
- Mplayer - AVI, Quicktime, MPEG
- VPC Movie Player - AVI, Quicktime, MPEG
- Xanim - Quicktime
- Xine - AVI, Quicktime, MPEG, DVD
Free Paint/Retouching
- CinePaint - painting and retouching
- GraphicsMagick - batch image conversion
- ImageMagick - batch image conversion
Free Renderers
- 3D Delight - Renderman-compatible renderer
- Aqsis - renderer
- BMRT - removed as part of legal settlement with Pixar
- Cug - equation renderer
- fluxus - animation from sound
- Pixie - RenderMan compliant renderer
- Radiance - renderer
- Surf - equation renderer
- YafRay - renderer
- zRcube - renderer for POV-Ray
Free Render Queues
- BlenderWebRender - tiny Perl render manager
- Condor - render queue
- DrQueue - C-based render queue with Python
- g4u - network hard disk cloner (uses NetBSD)
- ImpFarm - small Perl render queue for POV-Ray
- Maui - render queue
- OpenPBS - render queue
- Platform Rocks - render queue
- Sun Grid Engine - render queue
- SuperConductor - small Qt/C++ render queue
- Torque - render queue
Free Shader and GPU Tools
Free Titler
There's nothing comparable to Apple Motion that's free. Here's a simple Python program called ReelTitles.
Odd Free Tools
Often recommended by those who've heard of them but never used them personally, people enthusiastic for these tools aren't working at studios.
Source http://linuxmovies.org/
Surely its not the future of Maldivian ICT. I don't know why NCIT thinks that Kiosks will be or should be something very important. Even if we decide that the need for information access is urgent and important, then ministries like Min. of Information should be the party who should be taking interest in these Kiosks not NCIT. Its another story about the infrastructures which will be provided for such projects. Anyway whats the big deal about these Internet Kiosks? I have no idea at all. Most Maldivians today now have the access to internet, and soon almost everyone will have it. The GSM networks and other telecommunication infrastructures already has made this a reality. This is one area where Linux has proved itself here in the Maldives. We could today proudly say the Maldivian Internet domain is powered by Linux (Thanks to a few open minded individuals).
The e-Government project mainly talks about portals and connectivity. The questions which should be asked might include, the cost factors, being future proof, security and alike. There is so much things to be considered when it comes to building such a huge network. Laying the cables is just 2% of the work. Having a physical medium and border routers does not get anything solved. I guess very important factors will be things like storage management, application frameworks and redundancy. How will the so called portals be hosted, and what will be the platforms. Will they be outdated in 2 years after implementation? How much will they cost? How secure are they? These are all questions that pops up to ones mind. What about the hardware, the processing powers? Will we need to purchase new servers, etc every year? Is there proper planing done on them? Or just the latest trends have been followed without thinking into the future and cost factors? There is so many questions and most will be answered with experience and knowledge. Other important issues like once we setup the hardware infrastructures what about the software or the applications? Who will develop them? What will be the costs, etc. My obvious guess is an external party will be given the contract for developments. Huge amounts of money will be dumped into these developments. Anyhow it will be interesting to watch how these projects progress and the end results. My obvious guess is, we should not try and reinvent the wheel. Meaning we would not be the first country who would be implementing such a solution in the world; so there is so much to learn from. Anyhow it all comes down to policy making and how well the teams know their subjects. Just by attending a few workshops conducted by UN won't give the required skill and the expertise, but we need a lot more help and consultation. We won't even need to look too far out , countries like India and China already have gone through these stages and are key players in the technology world. I hope the foundations of our countries ICT won't be like the old Majeedhee magu, which was laid out with cement floors which took little time to crack.
I sure hope they would not be M$ .NET (dot NET) based, then it would be such a big joke but its very highly likely that this would be the case. It would be really sad to see such options being adopted while proven and OSS technologies like JBoss exist. As for database servers, Oracle might be the obvious best choice.
The e-Government project mainly talks about portals and connectivity. The questions which should be asked might include, the cost factors, being future proof, security and alike. There is so much things to be considered when it comes to building such a huge network. Laying the cables is just 2% of the work. Having a physical medium and border routers does not get anything solved. I guess very important factors will be things like storage management, application frameworks and redundancy. How will the so called portals be hosted, and what will be the platforms. Will they be outdated in 2 years after implementation? How much will they cost? How secure are they? These are all questions that pops up to ones mind. What about the hardware, the processing powers? Will we need to purchase new servers, etc every year? Is there proper planing done on them? Or just the latest trends have been followed without thinking into the future and cost factors? There is so many questions and most will be answered with experience and knowledge. Other important issues like once we setup the hardware infrastructures what about the software or the applications? Who will develop them? What will be the costs, etc. My obvious guess is an external party will be given the contract for developments. Huge amounts of money will be dumped into these developments. Anyhow it will be interesting to watch how these projects progress and the end results. My obvious guess is, we should not try and reinvent the wheel. Meaning we would not be the first country who would be implementing such a solution in the world; so there is so much to learn from. Anyhow it all comes down to policy making and how well the teams know their subjects. Just by attending a few workshops conducted by UN won't give the required skill and the expertise, but we need a lot more help and consultation. We won't even need to look too far out , countries like India and China already have gone through these stages and are key players in the technology world. I hope the foundations of our countries ICT won't be like the old Majeedhee magu, which was laid out with cement floors which took little time to crack.
I sure hope they would not be M$ .NET (dot NET) based, then it would be such a big joke but its very highly likely that this would be the case. It would be really sad to see such options being adopted while proven and OSS technologies like JBoss exist. As for database servers, Oracle might be the obvious best choice.
Why Government Should Really Choose Open Source
0 Comments Published by chopey on Sunday, May 06, 2007 at 12:52 PM.
Recent years we have seen a lot of adaptations of OSS in the governments across the globe. The reasons are obvious, being the cost factor and the open nature of the applications. Which give a big advantage. Countries such as India, China, Brazil, Russia, Germany and Taiwan were among the first countries who adopted Linux a few years back. Its not just the cost factor that drives this change, its got a lot to do with awareness of technology in the policy level as well. Which we unfortunately lack a lot here in Maldives.
I guess the strength of NCIT in Maldives is very poor and limited. Notably I guess the organization lacks experienced and enthusiastic individuals. We have heard of expensive networks been laid, and buildings go up with a very few or null results thus far. Mostly my guess is the expertise is imported and not very well applied. Also the FUD factor within the local policy makers restricts a lot of development. For example the recent ICT policies which were published a few years back, is already outdated before even they were implemented. I guess NCIT needs to be more proactive and also think outside the box. Having a good ICT foundation will contribute a lot to countries such as Maldives.
I really get frustrated when expertise is imported and applies from other countries, when locally we have them. Its a lot of money which is being wasted. This is very common within the enterprises and is really a bad news. The justification which will pop up next will be that we o not have such expertise or resources within Maldives. My answer is why? This is where NCIT should step in. Even if we think economically developing a strong ICT infrastructure will greatly benefit us. We don't need oil or diamond mines to develop this sort of economy. But its very sad to know these things will never be discussed or seen seriously. Basically to conclude there is not much future for the Maldivian ICT industry thanks to the policy makers and economists. Selling just a few thousand PC's per year does not make us a technologically aware country. Fact is though so many people carry PDA's in there pockets, we are far far lagging behind and no action is being taken to improve it.
Encouraging OSS developments and smiler projects will definitely change things and creating opportunity for individuals and local companies can be a start. But the basic foundation is at the educational level. Anyway, this is just my view. There might be things that I don't know or fail to see.
to be continued ....
I guess the strength of NCIT in Maldives is very poor and limited. Notably I guess the organization lacks experienced and enthusiastic individuals. We have heard of expensive networks been laid, and buildings go up with a very few or null results thus far. Mostly my guess is the expertise is imported and not very well applied. Also the FUD factor within the local policy makers restricts a lot of development. For example the recent ICT policies which were published a few years back, is already outdated before even they were implemented. I guess NCIT needs to be more proactive and also think outside the box. Having a good ICT foundation will contribute a lot to countries such as Maldives.
I really get frustrated when expertise is imported and applies from other countries, when locally we have them. Its a lot of money which is being wasted. This is very common within the enterprises and is really a bad news. The justification which will pop up next will be that we o not have such expertise or resources within Maldives. My answer is why? This is where NCIT should step in. Even if we think economically developing a strong ICT infrastructure will greatly benefit us. We don't need oil or diamond mines to develop this sort of economy. But its very sad to know these things will never be discussed or seen seriously. Basically to conclude there is not much future for the Maldivian ICT industry thanks to the policy makers and economists. Selling just a few thousand PC's per year does not make us a technologically aware country. Fact is though so many people carry PDA's in there pockets, we are far far lagging behind and no action is being taken to improve it.
Encouraging OSS developments and smiler projects will definitely change things and creating opportunity for individuals and local companies can be a start. But the basic foundation is at the educational level. Anyway, this is just my view. There might be things that I don't know or fail to see.
to be continued ....
For centuries we have been struggling with this problem. Aham! well for years actually... The support for NTFS partitions had always been an issue. Often I get asked about it, the solution has been around for years too, but never stable and not really how we want it to be. Now for almost a year we had had a new driver called ntfs-3g which provides full read/write support for all NTFS partitions. (in lamemens terms, lets access your Windows partition from Linux)
For Ubuntu, follow the following instructions.
edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list at the end of the file add the following lines.
For Ubuntu EDGY :
deb http://flomertens.free.fr/ubuntu/ edgy main main-all
deb http://ntfs-3g.sitesweetsite.info/ubuntu/ edgy main main-all
deb http://flomertens.keo.in/ubuntu/ edgy main main-all
Note: For the users of 7.04, execute the following and can skip the next 3 instructions.
Next execute the following code
Then ...
Next do the following
and...
Or you could just have launched it via the system tools menu.
If you are a Fedora user, just execute the following (assuming you have yum installed)
For Ubuntu, follow the following instructions.
edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list at the end of the file add the following lines.
For Ubuntu EDGY :
deb http://flomertens.free.fr/ubuntu/ edgy main main-all
deb http://ntfs-3g.sitesweetsite.info/ubuntu/ edgy main main-all
deb http://flomertens.keo.in/ubuntu/ edgy main main-all
Note: For the users of 7.04, execute the following and can skip the next 3 instructions.
sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g ntfs-configNext execute the following code
wget http://flomertens.free.fr/ubuntu/givre_key.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -Then ...
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Next do the following
sudo apt-get install ntfs-config
and...
gksu ntfs-config
Or you could just have launched it via the system tools menu.
If you are a Fedora user, just execute the following (assuming you have yum installed)
sudo yum install fuse fuse-libs ntfs-3g ntfsprogs ntfsprogs-gnomevfs