SOFTWARE | The recent Open Source Seminar was an opportunity lost by Jordan’s IT industry, says Ahmad Humeid.

(Note: This article was first published in Jordan Times, hence the ‘explanations’ about what open source is. I write for a general audience)

There is a global revolution in the software industry that has been going on for years. It’s causing the re-invention of software as we know it. The revolution is called “open source” and our IT industry seems to be missing the opportunity to be part of it.

Open source software, can be described as freely distributed software written ‘for the people, by the people’ in a spirit of community cooperation and volunteerism. The code of such software is openly modifiable, allowing members of the community to change and improve it, as long as they make their changes openly available to the community (see box).

From China a to Germany, and from hackers to Fortune 1000 companies, open source software is spreading. On corporate networks, in the server room, in web hosting companies and even on the desktop. Governments, universities and even corporations are enthusiastically adopting all kinds of open source software solutions because for the savings they can make (no software licence fees) and the freedom to modify software according to their specific needs.

Open Source: A primer

What is open source anyway? And how is it different from the common, ‘closed source’ software that we all use?

Let’s use a rough analogy. Your car, can be considered an ‘open source’ vehicle. You can ‘open’ the hood, look at the engine and, if you have the knowledge or have a good mechanic by your side, fix something if it’s broken. Now imagine driving a car with a hood that cannot be opened, except by its original manufacturer! That’s closed source. And that’s how a most of our common software is conceived. Sure, you can run it on your computer, but you cannot see its original ‘source’ (the language it was originally written in), modify it, improve it or fix it.

Open source is also connected to the free software movement. It’s free as in freedom (to fix and modify), not as in ‘free lunch’, although a lot of free and open source software out there is actually free of charge.

Imagine the implications of open source: The most famous example of open source software is Linux, a free operating system (OS) that was brought to life by Linus Trovalds in 1991, who, at the time, was a 21 year old computer science student in the University of Helsinki. He gave out his creation to a world of computer ‘hackers’ like himself to try out, add to and fix. The OS that started with a few hackers is today used by almost 30 million users worldwide (according to estimates). The Linux community of developers comprises thousand of programmer worldwide who continue to evolve the system.

Is Jordan missing out?

With all the exciting and strategically important developments happening around open source worldwide, one would have thought that the seminar held on open source by the Information Technology Association of Jordan (int@j) and sponsored by IBM and USAID’s AMIR program would have drawn hundreds of enthusiastic developers, especially that it hosted a number of really good international, regional and local speakers.

Sadly, the contrary was true. The event, which was expected to be attended by a modest audience of 150 people, ended up being attended by 100 people at most. Even the lunch buffet in the hotel ended up being too big for such a number of people!

Some members of Jordan’s open source community complained that they have not been contacted or that the registration process for the event was cumbersome. Yet int@j representatives maintained that invitations were sent out to thousands of people, including formal invitations for int@j member companies. The fact that a substantial number of registered users did not even show up was especially disappointing.

What Jordan’s IT community missed out was a number of important presentations, covering open source concepts, global trends and implementation examples. The presence of IBM in the seminar, should have been a signal to our local IT companies that open source is not some fringe phenomena that they can afford to ignore. Bashar Kilani, IBM’s software group manager for the Middle East and North Africa presented a number of exciting projects in the region being implemented using open source technologies as well as opportunities for further work in the field. Interestingly, IBM is in close cooperation with Jordanian developers on open source projects in the region.

Other speakers included technologist and author Tom Adelstein and Harvard Law School’s Research Fellow Ethan Zuckerman from the US, Professor James Dalziel, Director Macquarie E-Learning Center of Excellence in Sydney, Mr. Olivier Bérard, Head of OS Consulting, Devoteam ME in Dubai, Mohammad Sameer, Co-founder of the Egyptian Linux Users’ Group (EGLUG) & the Arabeyes Project, Mr Kifah Issa, founder of FreeSoft in Jordan and Ammar Ibrahim, a young Jordanian open source consultant.

Open source represents a real opportunity for Jordan to develop an innovation-oriented, home-grown technology industry. Because of its openness, open source software encourages developers to look under the hood and understand the inner working of the tools they are using. Today, many of our IT graduates and workers are merely advanced users of ready made technologies. While this is not a bad start for the industry, real intellectual capital can only be built by people who innovate their own technologies and tools.

The seminar also touched on the point that Jordanian universities should become serious about open source. One student in the audience told me how his university professor had him redo his Linux-based graduation project because “none of the professors had knowledge of Linux”!

Open source is both a business opportunity for Jordan and an innovation opportunity for our IT community. Will we ever see a Jordanian Linus Trovalds?


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4 responses to “Is Jordan missing out on the open source revolution?”

  1. Ammar Ibrahim Avatar
    Ammar Ibrahim

    What really kills me, is that the participation level of techies was so low. I don’t get it, don’t people in the univirsities know what opensource is? Don’t they read anything! people who work in companies aren’t they interested in knowing other alternatives? It’s SO depressing

  2. Al-Faisal El-Dajani Avatar
    Al-Faisal El-Dajani

    In my opinion the problem is plain stereotyping. People like to go with the bigger company, they like the false sense of security they get when they hear the name of a large corporation, and most importantly people are afraid of change. Nobody in their right mind would leave the computing environments that they know and the market demands, to something although it may be better not desired in the work market. And, since you can get closed software almost free of charge thanks to piracy, people have no NEED to find other alternatives. The only way out of those loop, as i see it, is to introduce the concept of open source to students early on in their education and let them choose what they want to do. After all, the current situation is offering them only monopolistic options, and do we really want our next generations to grow with THAT on their minds??!

  3. Ala'a Ibrahim Avatar
    Ala’a Ibrahim

    The thing is, when you look at the Jordanian IT market, (and also the gulf), which are the targets for all the IT students and employees, you can clearly see that microsoft is in all the way (.NET and Windows SERVER), I think that that being a regular human, why would I be intrested in something that doesn’t make money, even other non open source products can be hardly seen in Jordan, for example the Apple thing, really only a little have seen a mac, the one’s who know what mac is are useally Graphic designers, not IT’s, also SUN, only a few companies need a few for them.
    Alternative in Jordan and the Gulf for Microsoft are SUN JAVA, and Oracle, that’s all, and they also work it on Widows Platform.
    So if you really want people to be intrested in Open Source, you should make the companies intrested, you should tell them that open source brings more money (as this is the only thing they are intrested in), and I guess this is not an easy process.

  4. Eyas Taifour Avatar
    Eyas Taifour

    Heya,

    Finally a tech blogger from Jordan, that’s great!

    Well, as for the opensource matter, people here are un-educated, and brainwashed, no flaming or pun intended.
    I’ve been teaching in a Microsoft CTEC for 3 years (no, i m not proud of it), and all the students that i dealt with were always interested in Microsoft technologies. I admit that the latter knows how to market (or at least have enough money to spend on trial and errors!).

    Why would anyone be interested in OpenSource, if it is always thought of as an ‘alternative’. Think of ‘Y’ as an alternative, then internally you must be thinking of a baseline against which you could compare this alternative to.
    The Open Source line in Jordan is not clear. I know a lot of ‘IT pros’ that can not differ linux from opensource as a matter of fact.

    The main implanted stereotype is that linux/OpenSource is free… considering the piracy levels, and the fact that you can get Visual Studio .NET or Windows Server 2003 enterprise edition for .25 JD in downtown, it will be hard to communicate basics to those peeps.

    That’s a large subject to discuss in a blog, though i just wanted to add my comments to your article, that i really liked.

    I ll be reading this blog more often! Keep up the good work.