Date: 06/04/2009. Source: ONSFA

Currently, Dr. Khansari is an Assistant Professor at the School of Science and Engineering, Sharif University Technology International Campus (link to http://kish.sharif.edu)

Can you describe briefly the history of your organization?
AICTC was founded by Prof. Dr. Hamid R. Rabiee in Feb. 2001 as a research center affiliated with Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran.
AICTC has five research groups in the fields of Enterprise Software Solutions, Multimedia Systems, Mobile Value-Added Services, Wireless and P2P Networks and Bioinformatics. At AICTC world class researchers with extensive experience in North America and Europe are committed to perform state of the art research and to produce and localize cutting edge technologies. AICTC has over 65 Members of technical staff and 12 private sector corporate partners. We also act as a consultant to the major government agencies and private sector corporations. Our consulting staff cooperate with major international corporations such as Intel, Microsoft and British Telecom.
AICTC has initiated and managed a number of national projects including Iran Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) project; The National OS project based on GNU/Linux localization, The National Fuel Smart Card Project; The nation's largest ICT project, The Design of Tehran Scientific Network and Iran National Network, Disaster Management Portal, Enterprise Portal and Pre/Post Paid online E-Commerce system for MCI; the largest mobile operator in the nation, E-banking, M-Banking (OTA/STK and USSD), Security solutions, EMV POS, ATM and Card Issuance & VSDC Personalization for major Banks, and E-Learning Projects. AICTC products which are based on Open Source software solutions, include Multilingual Enterprise Portal, E-Learning Portal, E-Commerce Portals, Multilingual Search Engines, Multimedia Set-Top-Box, Telematic System, Thin Clients and Embedded Multimedia Information Kiosk, Multilingual Mobile Content & Catalog Generator, M-Payment System, GIS/GPS based tracking systems and more.
AICTC also offers advanced and standard ICT training courses (in-class and online).

What are the objectives and aims of your organization?
AICTC vision is to become an internationally known Center of Excellence in emerging information and communications technologies (ICT); specifically, in the areas of Multimedia Systems, Enterprise Solutions, Mobile Services, Wireless and P2P Networks and Bioinformatics; by performing state of the art research, prototyping cutting edge technologies, offering consulting, offering advanced training courses & workshops and cooperating with international research centers. The technical strategy of AICTC to attain its vision is based on “Openness” philosophy.

Why are you promoting Open Source?
FOSS has many benefits at the national level for Iran such as long-term economic benefits, vendor independence, boosting domestic software industry and reducing software piracy.
Regarding these benefits, as a university research center affiliated with the first ranked Iranian technical university (Sharif University of Technology), AICTC considers FOSS promotion as one of his missions to advance the country in the field of ICT. We think awareness about FOSS is the key for development of self-dependent ICT industry in Iran. We have started the GNU/Linux localization project (Farsilinux) in Feb. 2003 in order to tackle Persian language problems in GNU/Linux. The project aimed to set the ground for an alternative operating system in Iran based on the localization of GNU/Linux and has been successfully completed in 2007. During the project we have done some promotional activities such as publishing books and newsletters, dissemination of news and information on FOSS through the media and web and holding workshop and seminars. Now, there are several local GNU/Linux distributions with good Persian language support and both people and government awareness have been increased to a good extent. We think at this point the promotional works should be continued and increased with more emphasis and AICTC can play an important role with more than five years of experience in this area.

What are the benefits of Open Source in the public sector in Iran? Can you tell us about ongoing activities in this fields?
Open source have several benefits for Iranian public sector which includes reducing the costs by software reuse and sharing the development costs, preventing from vendor lock-in, ease of finding local support and training and having a higher quality software compared to closed source counterparts.
Most of the Iranian public sector Internet infrastructure is based on GNU/Linux and FOSS. A localized version of a FOSS portal has been produced and distributed among various government offices. Moreover, customized content management systems such as PostNuke, Joomla, Mambo, and PHPNuke is widely used by public sector. The idea of sharing initial development costs of a software to produce an open source software solution from scratch that can be used by all investors in the public sector has already been introduced and is under study.

What are the benefits of Open Source in the private sector in your country? Can you tell us about ongoing activities in this fields?
For the private sector, the main incentive to use FOSS is a better quality software and not necessarily the lower price. As with the public sector and individuals, they usually don't pay software licenses for foreign proprietary software products and have no notable cost benefit to use FOSS. Ease of customization and localization plus existence of local support are among the benefits.
There are several software companies that have based their business on FOSS support. They offer customization and support for the localized version of FOSS. As an example, there some good localized version of open source Enterprise portals, CMS, work flow engines and more. One of the key localization problems are Iranian official calender (Jalali Calender) and problems related to Persian scripts, which is written from right-to-left. Many Internet Service Providers run GNU/Linux for its high security and efficiency in various functions especially Internet services. There have also been companies that have made some products for certain uses including Set-top-box, Firewall, and Information Caching Systems by customizing Embedded Linux.

b>What are the benefits of Open Source for the citizens in Iran? Can you tell us about ongoing activities in this fields?
Actually, tangible benefits of open source for Iranian citizens in general is not too much. The main reason is that Iran is not a member of WTO and therefore there is no obligation to observe international copyright law for foreign software. Although there are good regulations for domestic produced software copyright but not for the foreign ones.
Regarding this fact, a few people are currently using FOSS. It is mostly used by students for educational purposes, and software development companies to speed up the software production and special purpose applications.

Do you think open source will increase innovation in Iran ? Why and how?
Actually, the openness can be the key for innovation of the new generation in the field of ICT. We have witnessed many cases in Iran on how the access to the source code fostered development of new ideas in youths. Owing to open source development within the universities, students in the computer engineering and science disciplines are able to learn from great open source software repositories and capture year experience of these software in a short time. Furthermore, They can also examine new ideas and create new softwares. The students not only can contribute to the open source software, but in some cases they customize/localize open source software and established their own local companies, specially in incubators, to provide services to the Iranian IT society.

How you can conceive a promotive and innovative society without access to the knowledge?
In the field of software engineering, the main knowledge is embedded in the source codes which are publicly available by open source software. These sources plus the community tools such as forums, mailing lists, etc provide the basic support for innovation.

What is the state of art of open source in Iran and what are your predictions of open source in your country?
The strategic plan for development of FOSS in Iranian government has already been prepared and is under final review for approving at the highest level in the government. There are also some consideration for legislative FOSS support in the 5th Iranian development plan. These two important activities, when happen, make the Iran ICT ready to embrace FOSS with more emphasis and officially obligate some of the government bodies such as ministry of ICT to support and promote FOSS.

Something else to add?
Thank you for your interview. Free/Open Source Software is an area which has left a considerable impact on the growth and advancement of Information Technology worldwide during the last two decades. I think the open paradigm will capture the future world of information technology. If you haven't pay special attention to this paradigm shift in your country, regardless of how much the country has been developed, you may witness more gap between people both inside and outside of the country, I mean the digital gap. Openness is one of the most important empowering factors of countries in the future world.