The past two days I have been attending a workshop of the African Internet Exchange Point Task Force on the setup of an Internet exchange point for Burundi. Two days where technical people and decision makers come together to decide on the setup of an Internet exchange point and get the technical knowledge to so. A good technical workshop where all technicians from the Internet Service Providers from Burundi are taken through the complete procedure to set up the Internet Exchange Point.
One can say that Unix/Linux and Open Source Software have become the core of the Internet(working). Reliability, scalability and robustness are key architectural characteristics for the building any system that we design without knowing the final dimensions. The Internet is a typical example of such a system and also if we build an Internet exchange point. On top of that, in the developing world the need to use low cost tools for this is evident. The Internet Service Providers in countries like Burundi are struggling in a market with little customers, high costs for the international (satellite) Internet connections and regulators who require huge amounts for licenses. In the past two days I have heard that we find this situation all over Africa.
Open Source Software on a Linux platform is the best solution when starting an Internet Exchange Point. The instructors, also members of the AfriNIC (from Kenya, Congo (DRC) and Benin) agree to this point. "Yes, Linux is giving the stability that you need for an Internet Exchange Point", "Sure, Internet Exchange Point should be build with license free software. This improves the sustainability" say the members of the board of AfriNIC. However when they become instructors, a completely different story is told!
The last two days can be best characterized as a 'happy hour sponsored by Microsoft and Cisco'. I have seen no Free or Open Source Software, I have heard nothing about FOSS, but instead we had to do all the exercises on the Microsoft platform, with the MS and Cisco tools. Presentations were made with MS Office, Webpages were shown in Internet Explorer, Screensavers (useless on laptops anyhow) where showing the Windows Logo and my annoyance reached peak levels when one of the instructors was checking constantly his email with Outlook Express while his computer was on the projector.
Saying that Free and Open Source Software is good for development has become the mantra of the Development Business. But why do all these people not practice what they preach? Why are they only using proprietary software? Is it so difficult to do your presentations with Open Office, your web business with Firefox, your email with Thunderbird? You can even do that when you are using Windows as Operating System. Is it so difficult to use request System Administrators to configure a router on Linux (we can even use Ubuntu there to show that we have a beautiful African distribution for that). It becomes increasingly difficult to take the message of these people serious.
I will continue my migraton to FOSS/Windows now that I have seen that I am on the right track. Windows is what I have been taught in the last two days. If I had money I would buy all their products today!

When looking for Free and Open Source Source Software an interesting world of Freeware, Shareware, Testware, Demoware, Tryware, and Buyware is opening up. I am just starting to explore it.

Let me look at the software that I am using for writing and posting this text: w.bloggar written by Marcelo Leal Limaverde Cabral. A nice piece of software with a simple and most likely selfwritten software license. It states that the software, as usual, comes with no warranty at all (who is BUYING things without warranty? You must be mad!). On the issue of open source the license states that: "It is prohibited to change any part of this SOFTWARE, including changes or eliminations of messages or windows. Reverse engineer (decompile) or disassemble of this SOFTWARE is prohibited." So, the software is proprietary software. On the other hand, there is no license fee (as far as I know), however at the same line there is nothing stated that you may share the software with your friends and/or colleagues. Interesting to read that Marcelo refers to a project BlogBuddy (http://blogbuddy.sourceforge.net/) that is published under the GNU/GPL license (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html). Here Marcelo got (stole?) his inspiration! BlogBuddy, contrary to w.blogger is very explicit: "blogBuddy is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. This means you are free to redistribute it modified or not." Clear and unambiguous. As a consequence of my goal to install a FOSS/Windows computer this means that I will get away with w.bloggar and install BlogBuddy (let's hope it is good).


When searching for software for my Windows machine, A world of eager young software developers and small companies is emerging all trying to convince you of the quality of the software. You can try it, sometime use it for longer periods, but in the end you are requested to pay (voluntary or not). What a difference with the FOSS world on Linux. They almost never ask you to pay, they ask you to participate in the development in order to get better products. It looks like the FOSS spirit has not inspired software development in the Windows World. Social Software Development, Free Software 4 All, the slogan of EACOSS (www.eacoss.org) is not the dominant paradigm. I hope I am mistaken.

When you are migrating from Windows to Linux, there is not a lot of choice. Most of the software that you have to chose from is Open Source Software and most of it is Free. When there is not FRee alternative available, there is always someone interested to build one. We Linux people we like free things, and most often as in Free Beer. That is also the argument that that is most dominant in the Developing world: The people in Africa first need the Freedom relating to the political climate, corruption etc.. Before they can even thing in the Stallman conception of Software Freedom. At the moment things need to be free so that I can use the money to feed the children. Maybe more on this issue in a later date.

How far will I migrate? Will I use MS Office to replace my Open Office, will I use MS Access or SQL Server to replace my MySQL? Will I start to program in Visual Studio, and abandon PHP? Will I become totally dedicated to Proprietary software (as I was a converted and convinced user of FOSS only)? I would be an interesting experimentation, but for the moment not feasible. I do have the money to buy all this software and since I have hardly any proprietary software friends left, also no access to illegal copies. In Uganda you can just buy all the illegal software that you want and like for about $10 per CD Rom at Owino Market in Kampala, but here in Bujumbura this does not seem to be possible (yet). On top of that, now that I am already migrating from the best operating system to an inferior OS, should I also take risks with the applications (I will go insane when I have to use Internet Explorer in stead of Konquerer!)

So this is the plan for the moment: I keep the Windows Operating System (XP SP2), since it came with my new Dell X1, and build a complete Open Source Software system on top of that. I will also be very serious in this effort in that I do not want any proprietary software on my machine (also not software at secret and hidden places that pop up when you do not want or need it (like IE, Media Player, Outlook Express etc)). I think this is going to be a massive task! I am still contemplating whether I will have to replace the GUI (for it is extremely ugly and these seem to be FOSS alternatives for that. I have to investigate that further). Also, I want to migrate a much as possible of the data and information on my Linux machine to the new 'FOSSonWindows' machine. Are the software standards all the same - I do not know. Many things to be investigated (and that on that slowest Internet connection imaginable (unreliable modem connection by Burundi's main telecom provider that seldom gets beyond 33kbps and breaks off almost every 20 minutes).

After about 4 year of consecutive use of Linux and Open Source Software I have decided to migrate to windows. There are several reasons underlying this decision. In the first place, I get the feeling that I am missing something since not all people are using Linux and Open Source software. If it is so good as I always say, why are not all people using it? Then there is that goodfriend of mine, Reinier, he like FOSS a lot, but doesn't want to migrate to Linux. Open Source on Windows that is his tune. There is also my colleague James Wire, from the East African Center of Open Source Software (www.eacoss.org), he is consider to be the FOSS preacher of East Africa, but his computer is running windows... There must be something interesting in this software. Something that I seem to miss since I am only using Linux and FOSS!
Of course there are also the FOSS wannabes who are using Mac OS, but this I tried and there is nothing special in Mac if you know what you are doing in Linux.

Secondly, I like to know how it feels to migrate. My last migration was done in more than 4 year ago and I need some thrill now. One of the most important reasons for people not to switch to different software (read M$) is that the migration is so difficult. Is this really thie case? People do not have problems to change the brand of their cars, or their wives (if you read the statistics),but software, this is all different! Once used to MS word, it is so so difficult to move to something else! Outlook, Explorer, all the same. Is the software so good that that all the alternatives are mediocre at best? Knowing the reputation of MS in the Linux world, I really cannot believe this. But let me try and experience it.

Thirdly, changing from Linux to Windows is UNcool. Good reason to see why people think this way. The rationale between the people in the wondows world and the Linux world is totally different. Recently I met a Belgium Know-It-All here in Bujumbura who told me that Linux users prefer to do things the difficult way. But then he did not seem to to have any other then Click-and-Pray knowledge (on top of that Belgiums always know things better than the Dutch). Maybe that is the thing: Linux is for real men and Windows for the Granny. We do not want to be a Granny, do we?

Enough for the moment. I am going to keep you nformed about the progress of the migration.

Today I convinced at least one person that Open Source offers an alternative