Slides used during my talk at Pakistan Open Source Summit 2018 on April 20-21, 2018 at Margala Hotel, Islamabad, Pakistan

1. Challenges for Open Source Movement in
Pakistan
Ata ur Rehman
ata.rehman@gmail.com
April 20-21, 2018

2. Sequence of Talk
 Introduction: Open Source Movement in Pakistan
 Challenges:
 Basic Computer Education
 Capacity Building of LIS Professionals
 Documentation / Localization
 Cloud Computing / SaaS
 Corporate Control of FOSS Projects
 Budgets
 Q/A
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3. Introduction: FOSS Movement in LIS, Pakistan
 Micro CDS/ISIS (Developed in 1980s) was probably the first Free Software
used in Pakistani Libraries in 90’s  Library Automation Management
Programme (LAMP) – 1991-96 (First commercial library software in
Pakistan)
 In-house build software – Late 90’s to early 2000s
 FOSS Movement in Library Science in Pakistan – 2005/06
 UN Digital Library, Pakistan – Greenstone Digital Library Software
 National Workshop on Resource Sharing and Networking of Libraries and
Documentation Centers (April 11-15, 2006) at NARC – Idea to use Zebra
Indexing Server / LOC Z39.50 Gateway
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4. FOSS Movement in LIS, Pakistan (Cont..)
 1st National Workshop on GSDL, RIU, Islamabad – 24-26 June 2006 by
PakLAG
 Koha - UMT, NRSP-IRM (First OPAC published)
 1st National Workshop on Koha ILS, 30-31 May 2008 at AIOU
 Koha is a favorite ILS of Pakistani Library Community (According to all
new surveys)
 Demand of Koha experts for library jobs is increasing day by day
 Dspace is largely being used for Institutional Repositories including HEC
 Hundreds of trainings have been conducted on Koha, Greenstone and
Dspace throughout Pakistan
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5. FOSS Movement in LIS, Pakistan (Cont..)
 Large number of university libraries adopting Koha
 IIU, AIOU, UET-Taxila, UET-Lahore, IUB, UOS, UMT, IBA-Khi, HEJ-Khi, Isra-Hyd,
QUEST, PMC, NUST, etc.
 Legislative Assembly Libraries
 Senate of Pakistan, National Assembly, Punjab Assembly, etc.
 A big breakthrough - Total Library Solution (2011)
 Free Live DVD with pre-installed Koha, Dspace, CMS software suite
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6. Challenges
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7. Computer Education
 Commercial Software are being used for basic computer education at
school level in Pakistan – MS Windows, MS Office, PowerPoint etc.
 Alternates: Unix Based OS, Open Source Office, LibreOffice
 Proprietary Programming Technologies: ASP, dotNet, etc.
 Alternates: PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, C/C++
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8. Capacity Building of LIS Professionals
 Role of Library Schools
 Role of Professional Bodies
 Role of LIS Professionals
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Don't be embarrassed by your old clothes
but with old thoughts - Albert Einstein

9. Documentation / Localization
 Documentation of Free and Open Source Software
 Translations  Urdu and other local languages
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10. Cloud Computing/Software as a Service (SaaS)
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11. Corporate Control of FOSS Projects
 Volunteers  Funding by Corporate Sector
 RedHat, Intel, Oracle
 MySQL – Acquired by Oracle  fork project MariaDB
 OpenOffice – Acquired by Sun Inc.  fork project LibreOffice
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12. Budgets
 Free and Open Source Software
 Free: for freedom --- may be free as free bread
 Hidden Costs
 Hardware
 Maintenance Cost
 Upgrading
 Capacity Building
 Troubleshooting
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13. www.facebook.com/ataurrehman
ata.rehman@gmail.com
www.twitter.com/ataurrehman
Questions
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