ICTD News for 21 March 2007

[ICTD Newsmaster <ictdnews@undp.org>]

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CONTENTS

OPEN SOURCE
	Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software
	OSS used in fight for human rights
	Pakistan offers open source training toolkit

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
	Digital lock's rights and wrongs




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OPEN SOURCE
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---- Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software
After reading the diverse chapters in this book, I remain fascinated but still skeptical about how important open source actually will be in the long run and whether, as a movement, it is raising unwarranted excitement among users as well as entrepreneurs and investors. On the development side, I can sympathize with the frustration of programmers such as Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, or Eric Raymond in not being able to improve commercial software and thus determining to write better code that is free and available.
http://www.sdnp.undp.org/perl/news/articles.pl?id=9354&do=gpage



---- OSS used in fight for human rights
The Human Rights Data Analysis Group have deployed Analyzer at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Campaign for Good Governance in Sierra Leone, member non-governmental organisations of the Human Rights Accountability Coalition (HRAC) in Sri Lanka, and the Boroumand Foundation for the Promotion of Human Rights and Democracy in Iran based in Washington DC. Analyzer was used for data analysis for the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR by its Portuguese acronym). 
http://www.sdnp.undp.org/perl/news/articles.pl?id=9356&do=gpage



---- Pakistan offers open source training toolkit
Pakistan is the third largest low-cost IT-enabled and offshore business processes outsourcing services provider in Asia after India and China. The country's Open Source Resource Center (OSRC), a project of Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology, has developed and released a FOSS resource kit entitled "OSS Training Toolkit," originally put together in order to facilitate OSRC's own training workshops in Pakistan.
http://www.sdnp.undp.org/perl/news/articles.pl?id=9355&do=gpage




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INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
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---- Digital lock's rights and wrongs
In the 80s, according to record companies, home taping was killing music. Fast forward some 20 years and the devices we use to listen to music may have changed, but the recording industry is still claiming that the illegal copying of their product harms future production.
http://www.sdnp.undp.org/perl/news/articles.pl?id=9353&do=gpage




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