Free Open Source and Linux in Vietnam

A Vietnamese governement delegation represented by Mr. Nguyen Trung Quynh, Mrs. Nguyen Thuy Nhi y Mr. Luu Van Khang has arrived to Badajoz, city of the province of Extremadura, Spain, the most advanced city involving Free Software in my country. In the photo we can see how Julio Fuster, town councillor of Merida (Extremadura’s capital) is gonna be their tour leader these days :-). I’m sure he will show them the beauties of that Region.

The interest of VietNam in this province is to see the initiatives of the Information Society and Free Software started in Extremadura.

Extremadura was one of the poorest region of Spain involving technology, but when in 2002 they took officially the decision of migrating everything to Free Software , the environment changed completely. Now all the eyes pay attention to this province and make very jealous the others(which still have price-agreements with Microsoft). Regions in Malaysia, UE, and now VietNam try to follow their steps. How to make a poor region become one of the leaders in Information Society and Software development, quickly answer: Free Software Open Source.

Extremadura created an linux distribution called gnuLinEx installed in all the governement computers, schools, etc. With the money saved in licenses, it has been possible to have more computers per student (2 per each) than any region in Europe.

During two days they will be discussing about strategies to be followed, agreements, etc. We’ll keep an eye on them. I hope VietNam governement will reinforce their bet for the OpenSource and decide to migrate all their minds to OpenSource. Let’s remind them than there are a lot of local Linux Distributions to be taken (Ubuntu-vi, Vubuntu, etc) available in Vietnamese language.

Totally 20.000 computers will migrate to OpenOffice suite instead of starting to pay the Microsoft licenses which in VietNam represents a lot of money saved.

Their reasons are mainly economical, but also they will enjoy some extra features:

A fantastic localization/translation of OpenOffice to Vietnamese and the SpellChecker in Vietnamese.

Original new here. http://english.vietnamnet.vn/tech/2007/09/739409/

In order to create a very good rich and extensible VN-EN dictionary (and other languages in the future for sure) I made a research of the current open source environment.

Dictionary formats(rich text, XML metalanguage):

We pretend our dictionaries to be extensible by the community, kind of wiki style, in order to do that, the dictionaries must be well formatted so we can recognize units like NOUN,VERB, DEFINITIONS,EXAMPLES, etc

XDXF (XML Dictionary Exchange Format) is one of the best and well structured languages. This format is good to make the computer understand what is each element and that way transform them to specific colors, sizes, etc. I hate to see the dictionaries in boring plain-text all the time.

The second advantage is the extensibility of the dictionaries by the communities,let’s see this example:

Let’s say that somebody wants to add the meaning for the “play” when used as a verb, so instead of messing the content adding new lines, change the colour, etc , the dictionary software should have the necessary tools(buttons) to allow the user to add new XML structures to the content.

StarDict format The structure is not XML, all byte-coded, it can contain Images,Audio,XDXF,HTML,Wiki links, I don’t really like this because it’s being created from StarDict and almost all the dictionaries are just plain-text not profiting this features.

Here there is a list of other formats.

Engine dictionary (compression,memory usage):

DICT It’s widely used because the StarDict files are compressed using this engine. Info,Index and Content are separated in different files. StarDict project has optimized the engine creating some extra files (cache, collation,etc)

Sdictionary. Info, Index and Content is compressed in the same file. There are tools to create files using HTML content.

Both engines allow a minimum usage of memory because only the index is loaded in memory and only the requested content is being taken by the compressed file.

Open Source Software dictionaries containers:

Our decision: If nobody changes their mind, I think we’ll go for the XDXF/Sdictionary/Jalingo combination to create the VN-EN project.

Last Sunday at Stella Cafe we had the collaboration of Thai Le Quoc and Nguyễn Tú Trinh , both JAVA experts and free software enthusiasts.
We talked about which strategie should we follow in order to create a very good content for a VN-EN dictionary, the main points were:

-Where to get the content.

-Which dictionary format(rich text, metatags) and Engine(compression, memory usage) should we follow.

-Which opensource dictionary container software should we use: (Jalingo JAVA, StarDict C++, QStardict C/QT )

I will publish a extended comparative of all that in my next post.

Here some photo of the meeting.

My spanish friend Luis Gomez produced and directed an excelent documentary about the homeless children in HCMC.

Street children and, in particular, the kids of one shelter in Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam, are the protagonists of this documentary; no one is more
aware of life in the streets of this city than they. So at this time
we are not the teachers, but the observers of their own reflections
and experiences.

His work is copyleft licensed for sure. Here the links:

http://www.archive.org/details/RunningAwayToBeHappy (AVI file good quality with English Subtitles)
http://www.archive.org/details/HuyendoParaSerFeliz (AVI file good quality with Spanish Subtitles)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-818178417051943991&hl=en (Online stream with English Subtitles)

Now Luis is traveling around Vietnam with his Minsk showing us his photos and his adventures. Finally he’ll try to come back to Spain BY LAND from Vietnam. This guy never stop surprising me all the time.

Leave him a comment on this blog.

After a big rain in HCMC

ME: left side , LUIS : right side

I must recognize that I feel jealous because the Hanoi GNU/Linux community is much much much more organized than us. They have their Coffee Friday meetings to reinforce their social-links and commitments. Because of that I would like to start also a habit of meeting in any coffee-shop or restaurant in HCMC with the same purposes than the community in Hanoi:

-Discuss about the situation of GNU/Linux in HCMC-Vietnam and how can we help to make it grow up.
-Technical support with our GNU/Linux in our laptops. I’m sure that the a full-direct help is better than any GNU/Linux online forum.
-Talk about the Software Freedom Day in HCMC.
-many things more you can propose.

If nobody propose some place better, I do. Let’s meet at the STELLA coffe-shop at 121 Bui Vien Street District 1 at 18h on Friday. They have good tables and chairs to use laptops and good Wi-fi connection.

Those having only ethernet connection on their laptops let me know in advance so I can bring my DDWRT-flashed Linksys WRT54G to make a wifi bridge and connected them with RJ45 wire.

I hope to see you all there and some of you translate and spread the new around the blog waves.
No need to leave a comment if you will come but I would appreciate.

I am very proud of the decision I took few years ago about not giving Free support to Microsoft when some friend ask me to fix their Windows or install some drivers, etc. I remember I coudn’t say no during my youth and I spent a lot of my times helping them to love more that operating system.

Since that day I only give give free support installing and fixing Linux systems, and what I like the most is to do brand new installations in laptops because I can contribute to write guides to make other people in the future to install linux on the same model. That way I don’t feel I’m only helping my friend, but all the people with the same model who check the guidelist.

Few places to write or read that Laptop/Hardware guides are :

The Ubuntu LaptopTestingTeam , here there is an example of laptop that I wrote yesterday.
TuxMobil, here there is an example of my wife’s laptop I wrote one month ago.
Linux-Laptops

If sometimes we must write this guides it’s because Ubuntu don’t detect everything, the most common problem is the non-support of Wifi native drivers so it must be done using Ndiswrapper(some linux-talibans won’t agree emulating Windows drivers). The 2nd most repeated problem is the screen resolution in new laptops and graphic cards.

What I normally during I write the guide is to post all the bugs founded to Ubuntu Launchpad , explaining which model I’m using, reporting the lspci, xorg and dmesg outputs. That way I’ll make sure that nobody will find that issues in the next versions of Ubuntu.

I personally like more the UbuntuLaptopTesting Wiki because everybody can modify or subscribe to any wiki-page(the owners of that laptop-model for example) and see all the progresses making that model become 100% functional.

So, everybody willing to install linux on their new laptop in HCMC, please leave a comment and I’ll be glad to meet him to take a coffee and help him with the process.

Education for Development is the first NGO in Ho Chi Minh City to have
an implementation program for Free OpenSource-Linux systems in the
office. We believe the considerations we made as a part of that
decision apply equally to other NGOs:

•      Security

•      Reliability/Stability

•      Open standards and vendor independence

•      Reduced reliance on imports

•      Developing local software capacity

•      Piracy, IPR, and WTO

•      Localization

During the last few months, some infrastructure around Linux has been
developed and it is now affordable to start using OpenSource programs
and to migrate to OpenSource Linux operating systems.

There is already a Linux user community in Saigon:
http://www.saigonlug.org/ as well as many other sites related (
http://www.vinalinux.com/ , etc),  In addition, there is a company
that supports and provides implementation services for
OpenSource-Linux that has a specific branch dedicated to Social
Organizations: http://www.openlink.com.vn.

With this email we would like to encourage other NGO’s in Saigon, in
Hanoi (http://blog.hanoilug.org/) and elsewhere in Vietnam to break
with some stereotypes around Linux (i.e. it is difficult, it is not
compatible with other operating systems, etc.) and consider the
possibility of migrating to Open Source-Linux systems.

The attached dossier explains in more detail the reasons for
implementing Open Source-Linux and the ways to implement Open
Source-Linux in Vietnamese NGOs.

Best Regards

Luis Gomez
Web Manager Volunteer
——————————

Yesterday friday in the afternoon we had the so waited videconferencing with Mark ShuttleWorth, organized by the OpenLab in HCMC. We gathered all at HDLC and at 3pm, their installations were really great, 2 big videoprojector and an IP cammera controlled by one of the ladies responsible of the conference. The camera had a great zoom and resolution, it almost looked as a Tv Show.We connected via H.323 to the Mark’s London office (I must guess).

We also connected with the community in Hanoi (after they solved some IT problems) and we could have a very pleasant chatting with Mark. I must thank you to Dr.Minh from OpenLab his efforts to make that possible. I guess Mark is a very busy man with thousands of mails per day so agree to spend 1hour and a half with us is a good great thing.

I think that he gave us more information than us, he answered clearly to our questions about Ubuntu in Vietnam, OpenDocument vs OOXML standardization. He also told us how he began from zero from CapeTown in South Africa, a place really very different from Silicon Valley.

After the conference with Mark, HCMC and Hanoi communities keep talking (this time in Vietnamese, unfortunately , but I met a a good Vietnamese ubuntu friend who translated me). They discussed about how to join efforts to create an Ubuntu based distribution together, how to get resources support from the government or the OpenLab, etc.

Some photos of the event:

I had been waiting long time to create my own blog since I arrived to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), here in Vietnam since 4th October 2006.
Finally I bought my domain ivangarcia.org and borrowed from a friend a little bit of hosting space.
With the help of the open source software Wordpress I managed easily to set up my personal weblog.

My name is Ivan Garcia and I’m originally from Xeraco, Valencia, SPAIN, (I hope my hometown becomes popular because of my blog).
I arrived to Saigon in a agreement of the University of Valencia and United Nations Development Programme to be a 6-months volunteer constructing a new website for IOM Vietnam.

Along this blog I will tell my life and work experiences.
For the moment I will talk about Vietnam and how I’m trying to push the Open Source community in Saigon to make GNU/Linux become something known around Vietnamese.

The goal is that some day, who knows, the government will decide to take the decision of installing a Vietnamese Linux distribution for the administration, schools, etc, proving that it’s a big mistake paying millions of dollars for buying proprietary software in English.