News

The Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA) participated in the "FOSS in Arab World Meeting" organized by the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) in the American University in Cairo (AUC) on June 1st, 2010.

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The meeting was held to discuss the state of Open Source development and adoption across several Arab countries and to determine the most significant challenges and difficulties software freedom faces in the area.

Issa Mahasneh, from Jordan Open Source Association, gave a brief overview about the current public and private sectors initiatives to adopt Open Source in Jordan, stressing the last agreement between the Open Source DBMS provider Ingres and the Jordanian Ministry of Information and Communication Technology. "This is the first agreement between an Open Source company and a government in the world to implement Open Source software in the public administration and to train public employees to use and gain benefit from Open Source", said Mahasneh.

According to the agreement, training centers will be opened in Jordanian universities to teach Open Source technologies and the government will take into consideration Open Source as valid alternative when purchasing software.

Jordan had also different pioneer Open Source projects that make it one of the leading countries in this sector in the area, according to Mahasneh. These include two projects developed by Ministry of Water and Irrigation and licensed under GPL, in addition to mass adoption of Open Source in the health sector, as the e-health team of the Royal Hashemite Court opted to implement the Open Source system VistA on a nation-wide level.

Nagla Rizk and Sherif El-Kassas from the American University in Cairo stressed that Jordan has a unique situation in the Arab World, where Open Source software found its way in both the private and public sectors and where there is a stronger law enforcement regarding Copyright and Intellectual Property.

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Participants from other Arab countries reported several difficulties in adoption of Open Source in their countries. Bassem Jarkas from Syria said that his country is still suffering from the US embargo, and FOSS software like MySql or Redhat Linux cannot be sold or given to Syrians. Slim Amamou from Tunisia reported several censorship cases that negatively affected the spreading of Open Source in Tunisia, in addition to the good relation between Microsoft and Tunisian authorities that hurts Open Source. The last point was also mentioned by Mohamed El Sahli from Morocco, who added that Moroccan Minister of Technology was a Microsoft employee for seven years.

Other points were common to different Arab nations, like an educational system which is based on proprietary software, corruption, lack of IP laws and lack of knowledge about Open Source, which becomes a relevant factor in countries like Saudi Arabia where huge software projects are delegated by the government and companies which use Open Source technologies have no chances to win tenders, as Nawaf Badie and Abdulaziz Alhassan said.

The meeting aims to start a panarab research about Open Source software adoption and use in the Arab World and to explore the different realities in these countries and which are the main factors that slow down or block companies and government from using or producing Open Source software.