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!