Francis. Glad you found this. I checked out your site and there are really nice resources there and my favorite so far is the free download of the BBC documentary on open source. I think your initiative about reducing piracy as a motive to get schools moving is a great concept. Be interested in any action plans that you folks have to offer. Thanks! Roger

Hi Roger! I'm Rtn. Francis Sarmiento III, Director for public image from the Rotary Club of Mandaluyong Uptown (RI District 3800) and currently program manager for Southeast Asia of the International Open Source Network ASEAN+3 based here in Manila, Philippines. Please visit our website at http://www.iosn.net for our various initiatives and activities. Our club is planning to launch projects using Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) in schools after realizing that most of the schools within our district are users of pirated software due to the exorbitant cost of proprietary software. While Rotary has computer literacy projects, we find it inappropriate to be doing such while tolerating software piracy. Thus, we have strongly considered adding a new dimension to these projects by promoting the responsible use of ICT through the use of F/OSS and at the same time, provide accessibility to technology to other schools devoid of any computers due to the reasons stated above for proprietary software. As part of my professional affiliation with the IOSN ASEAN+3 and my role in Rotary to be a model especially for the youth, we would really need of partnerships with groups and individuals to carry out projects of this nature. In fact, in a few hours, I am speaking before Rotaractors in their annual district assembly to emphasize the importance of their role as Rotaractors in promoting legal use of software and in the process setting a good example to their fellow youth and to the community as a whole as well. Our club would highly appreciate your assistance by exploring the possibilities of partnerships and linking us up also to other Rotarians who share same sentiments and ideals in the promotion of good values among the youth and providing further access to technology through the use of F/OSS. Thanks and Mabuhay (Long Live) form the Philippines! Francis ---------... "Francis" E. Sarmiento III, MD Program Manager for Southeast Asia Interna

This is nice!

Very keen to get involved in this with you. I'm a heavy user of Linux, OpenOffice.org and various other open systems, and I intend to be helping my club in due course with setting up machines which will be sent to Africa. The finer points still need working out, but I'm sure Open Source is the way, here, whether the boxes are licensed for Windows or not. You've got to think about interoperability, and Open Source is a better route to go down, in my view. Please keep me informed if you can, and let me know how I can help in the UK, if at all. Warm regards, J.

Hi Roger, Great article and Great project! Keep up the good work, I am sure this will be a hot topic here. Best regards Magnus G. Moderator Digaria.com

Roger..have you had a chance to sync up with Scott yet? by the way I am a technology adviser to a local foundation outside of Rotary that serves a school district here.. www.sanjaun.edu that has population of over 30,000 students and I am interested in your project for that as well.

Please let me know on how we can be able to make it happen. Am Dann from the Philippines and there are also groups here that advocates open source. Dann D.

One other thought in response to Jesse and the article about Microsoft. Whether the end user has the Microsoft OS installed or Puppy or Ubuntu whatever, there are lots of advantages of using open source software regardless of OS. And programs like Open Office, the GIMP (Photoshop clone), Thunderbird for mail etc. are not dependent on any one OS platform.

Wow! Thanks for the enthusiastic feedback. Have checked out the websites and will follow up on the contact. Would like to develop an action plan after we get a core working group. I have played with all sorts of simple-to-use bootable OSes including and most enthusiastically Puppy Linux at www.puppyos.org. The neat thing about Puppy is that it will boot from a CD or flash drive, has lots of software options and is so small that it will run in 128k of ram and because it always resides in ram after loading, is fast even on slow old machines. And you can save your work to either the CD or the flash drive -- no hard drive needed. So it works great on all the old machines out there. Of course, Edubuntu http://www.edubuntu.org/ has a new version out and is tailored for a K-9 or so audience does most of the above at a loss of speed but with greater software options. With free word processing, graphics editing, browser, video editing on the way etc. But the education to the publics affected needs to be the first step here with some sponsorship involved that will get that public's attention. Rotary and/or IBM seem like likely possibilities if we can get them excited....

Oh, that is awesome, you should connect up with Digarian Scott Johnson, go check out his site: http://www.gnuveau.net/

Hi Roger, this sounds fantastic! I have seen some commercial companies try to get this done, but they are just selling their own closed systems http://tailrank.com/1759391/Microsof... I'm encouraged by the use of Ubuntu, which is a community developed linux-based operating system. I know it is crude today, but what can't be done with the world's minds working on it? Adopting it and spreading it helps this goal and grows its user base. Same is true of all kinds of software - Google does a great job of providing basic software via the internet without charge and that's important too. Keep us posted and maybe we should form a fellowship for open software?