BANGLADESH: VARIED EXPERIMENTS, USEFUL SOLUTIONS - IN SOFTWARE, LOCALIZATION AND INFORMATION SHARING THE CONTEXT Bangladesh or the People's Republic of Bangladesh, lies in South Asia - surrounded by India, Myanmar and the Bay of Bengal - and is among the most highly and densely populated countries in the world. Currently, Bangladesh grapples with the challenges of development and economic growth. Its per capita income in 2004 was US$440, and many other economic indicators were considered poor by world standards. Yet, as the World Bank notes in its July 2005 Country Brief, the country has made significant progress in human development by focusing on increasing literacy, achieving gender parity in schooling, and reducing its population growth. [See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh] Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is already showing its potential in a country that needs access to affordable information and communication technologies (ICTs?), and like its South Asian neighbours (India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) clearly has the skills to master it if the technologies are easily accessible. The interest is visible from the level of activities, and the work put in by expatriate Bangladeshis - including in related non-software but volunteer-created areas such as the Wikipedia. At a presentation made in September 2005 at the AsiaOSS? Meet [http://www.asia-oss.org/sep2005/presentation_material.html]?, it was pointed out that Bangladesh's literacy was less than 30 percent, electricity had reached about the same figure, under 15 percent of the population had access to the Internet, and there were only 650,000 land phones, as against 4,500,000 cell phones. Other figures noted inlcude: three international trunk exchanges, 120 Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs?), 62 Internet service providers, and four satellite earth stations. Much of the 'development' was centralized in the two cities of Dhaka and Chittagong. Bangladesh's software business was seen as being hampered by 'high piracy', vendors have a conflict of interest, low local demand for ICTs?, a shortage of skilled manpower, and low investments. In this context, a handful of FOSS websites and networks have emerged and some have been very active in promoting and developing FOSS applications. Bangladesh's GNU/Linux mailing lists have a fair level of activity. In diverse parts of Asia, mailing lists have played a crucial role in building communities, and promoting knowledge-sharing in a cost-effective and scalable manner. Bangla, the language of Bangladesh and neighbouring West Bengal in India, is one language where South Asia has shown its ability to work together to find solutions to computing. Ankur [http://www.ankurbangla.org]? is a Bengali localization team. Its website gathers several sub-projects aimed at developing input methods and applications supporting Bangla on GNU/Linux and other systems. The success of local-language computing is reflected in various blogging initiatives such as http://www.somewhereinblog.net and http://www.sachalayatan.com. WEBSITES, NETWORKS AND MAILING LISTS Bangladesh Linux Users' Alliance (BLUA) - http://www.linux.org.bd ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- This is a community of GNU/Linux and UNIX users and enthusiasts dedicated to promoting Linux, FOSS and open standards in Bangladesh. BLUA aims to promote the use of GNU/Linux at both the user and enterprise levels, as well as support the ongoing FOSS movement in Bangladesh. BLUA has a mailing list for members [http://mail.linux.org.bd/mailman/listinfo/members_linux.org.bd]?. This is a low-volume list which is periodically used to send out announcements, notices, updates and news. BLUA NSU is a special mailing list for the members of BLUA North South University chapter. Bangladesh Linux User Group (BDLUG) - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bdlug and http://www.bdlug.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------- BDLUG is an active, non-profit volunteer-based network where Linux users, fans and followers can meet and exchange information. It was founded in May 1999 and has 836 members (as of 1 October 2007). Bangla Innovation through Open Source (BIOS) - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biosforum ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------- BIOS is a mailing list that promotes FOSS awareness and use. It was founded in June 2002 and has 107 members (as of 1 October 2007). Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN?) - http://bdosn.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- BdOSN? is a non-profit, voluntary initiative of the Bangladesh Fundamental Research Institute to promote Open Source (OS) and Open Content in Bangladesh. It was initiated as an umbrella organization of different OS groups and organizations in Bangladesh and now evolves as one of the coordinating hubs for OS-related activities in Bangladesh. BdOSN? is led by Munir Hasan. Open source networks affiliated with BdOSN? include: SUST_OSN - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/sust_osn BUET_OSN - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/buet_osn RUET_OSN - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ruet_osn CU_OSN - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cu_osn JU_OSN - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ju_osn Linux Bangladesh - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/linux_bangladesh ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------- A platform of Linux people who 'think Linux, do Linux and make people (go) for Linux'. It was founded in May 2002, with the intention of increasing the numbers of GNU/Linux users, developers and distributors in Bangladesh. There are 31 members as of October 2007. For more information, email S.M. Zobayer Hossain [linuxbangladesh@gmail.com]?. Linux Warrior - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/linuxwarrior ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- This mailing list discusses Linux and other FOSS applications. It also provides news, useful links and articles on FOSS. It was founded in August 2006 and has 114 members (as of 1 October 2007). Ubuntu Bangladesh - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BangladeshiTeam and https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bd ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- This is a network for Bangladeshi Ubuntu users, developers, translators and volunteers. Most of those active in the field of Ubuntu in Bangladesh can also be found on Freenode #Ubuntu-BD. LANGUAGE ISSUES AND RESOURCES Providing language solutions in Bengali (or Bangla) is an important issue. With some 230 million native speakers, Bengali is ranked the fourth most-spoken language in the world. It is the main language spoken in Bangladesh and the second most-spoken language in India. Ankur - http://www.ankurbangla.org, http://www.bengalinux.org and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankur_Group ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------ Ankur, a Bengali localization team, is working toward supporting Bangla on GNU/Linux and other systems. Most of Ankur's projects are focused on XFree86?.org's XServer?. Some of its projects are platform independent and add language support to other operating systems. The group is also working on providing Bangla support for some major XServer? applications such as office suites, databases, development tools, and desktop environments like GNOME and KDE. Ankur's intention is to develop FOSS applications for Bangla-speaking users and provide a functional, user-intuitive localized desktop that is easily usable and deployable. Initially, Ankur started as the bengalinux-core mailing list. This later became the nucleus for Ankur. Taneem Ahmed, the founder of Ankur, was developing and maintaining the http://www.bengalinux.org website - a one-stop site for Unix-based Bangla FOSS applications. He was also the author of the bn_BD locale for glibc (the libc of GNU-Linux). This established him as a key figure in the Bangla FOSS community. In October 2002, he launched the bengalinux-core mailing list. This list became popular among Bangla-speaking FOSS enthusiasts. In January 2003, Ahmed announced the GNOME Bangla Translation Project and began recruiting for the project. The recruitment call was taken seriously and the project began to expand. After some discussion on a group name, 'Ankur' was proposed by Kaushik Ghosh. On 3 March 2003, the name Ankur was officially adopted. Major achievements of Ankur include: - Creation of the first Bangla graphical desktop in any GNU/Linux distribution. - Design and release of the first Open Type font (Akash) which made possible the use of Unicode-based Bangla. - Organization of Bangla-speaking FOSS developers (Unix-based) under a single platform. - Release of the first Ankur Bangla LiveCD? in 2004. Ankur coordinates the following projects: 1. GNOME Bangla Translation Project - http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/gnome 2. KDE Bangla Translation Project - http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/kde 3. OpenOffice?.org Bangla - http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/ooo 4. Mandrake/Mandriva Linux Bangla Translation Project - http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/mandrake 5. Red Hat/Fedora Linux Bangla Translation Project - http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/redhat 6. SUSE Linux - http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/suse 7. Bengali Google - http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/google 8. Bengali Dictionary - http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/dictionary 9. Archive of Bengali literature - http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/archive 10. Free Bangla Fonts Project (to create Unicode-compliant Open Type Bangla fonts) - http://www.nongnu.org/freebangfont. Four Open Type Bangla fonts have been created. 11. Pidgin 12. Debian Installer 13. Ankur Bangla LiveCD? (running a localized version of GNOME 2.4) - http://www.bengalinux.org/projects/distro 14. Release of an install version of Bangla GNU/Linux distro based on Ubuntu in August 2006. As of 1 October 2007, it has been downloaded more then 1200 times from Ankur's website. http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=43331&package_id=20046 7&release_id=438957 15. Lekho (a plain text editor designed to take in phonetic input from a standard US keyboard and transliterate it online into Bangla text. The text is stored as Unicode (UTF-8) and can be read by any Unicode-aware application) - http://lekho.sf.net Ahmed says the Ankur group has focused its development efforts to create programs for end users, such as the transliteration program - Lekho, on QT; bspeller, a Bengali spell-checker program based on aspell and gtk; and xponjika, a Bengali calendar with a daily diary that is a hack version of Xdiary. "Lekho is actually a multi-platform program," Ahmed says. It can produce HTML or LaTeX? files and has limited spell checking capability. Bspeller is a lightweight text editor with aspell's powerful spell checking and suggestion capability. It is also capable of printing and generating PostScript? files using Open Type fonts, a feature missing in all the mainstream text editors. In an interview, Ahmed said they were also trying to work out an understanding with BornoSoft? to help create a Bengali XIM for GNU/Linux using BornoSoft?'s writing scheme, which would then be made free for Linux. "Personally I think this would be a great step toward using Bengali in Linux, but we will see what happens," says Ahmed with cautious optimism. For a list of related mailing lists, please refer to http://www.bengalinux.org/new/content/blogcategory/15/28/ Ekushey - http://ekushey.org ----------------------------------- Ekushey is a Bangla computing and localization project for the Bangla-speaking community. Ekushey works on Bengali computing issues such as the Bengali Unicode fonts, and input systems for different platforms. Bangla l10n - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bangla_l10n ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This mailing list is meant for those dedicated to localizing FOSS into Bangla. This list was founded in June 2006 and has 82 members (as of 1 October 2007). BENGALI WIKIPEDIA http://bn.wikipedia.org and http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bangla_wiki/ FOSS and its culture of volunteer-created, shared resources has obviously influence other spheres of importance in Bangladesh, while these might not be, strictly speaking, FOSS projects. In 2006, it was noted in the South Asian media that the Bengali Wikipedia had crossed the 10,000 articles figure. It became the 50th language worldwide to do so and only the second from South Asia. Telugu Wikipedia was then on the top spot with over 15,000 articles. Ragib Hasan, a student at the Department of Computer Science in the University of Illinois said, "there are 20-25 active volunteers editing Bengali Wikipedia on a regular basis. These editors are mainly from Bangladesh and West Bengal (India)." The main networks behind the project are BdOSN? and the Bangla Wiki. They have raised awareness, involved the media and recruited editors to work on Bengali Wikipedia. Wikipedia - now among the top 20 most-visited sites worldwide is an unusual venture that harnesses the work of worldwide volunteers to build a sharable and copyright-unencumbered field of knowledge. It tries to do so in diverse languages. Wikipedia exists as a 'wiki' - a website that allows any visitor to freely edit its content. Source: http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1206718.php/Bengali_Wikipedi a_crosses_10000_articles See also 'Wikipedia, People's Encyclopedia', a speech by Ragib Hasan at the Third Zohurul Haque-Abdullah Al-Muti Sarfuddin Memorial Lecture on 15 January 2007. This is a combined description of Wikipedia and efforts for Bangla Wikipedia. Published: 4 June 2007. http://bdosn.org/news_snaps/wiki_memorial_speech.pdf (Bangla). OTHER RESOURCES Mohammed Muquit has an interesting page on FOSS, including Bangla fonts with Linux groff, an LDAP authentication module for Apache Web server, MasterMind? for Linux, a simple PPP dialer for Linux (mppp), mxconsole, and lots more. http://www.muquit.com/muquit/software/software.html There have been references to the use by non-banking financial companies, like Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, suing GNU/Linux and Linux-based applications which 'are emerging as a preference for micro-finance'. Source: http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/pressnews/packaged-software-sales-for -bfsi-seg-to-cross-305mn07/285176 D.Net has established knowledge centres (or telecentres) known as 'Pallitathya Kendra' in four remote areas of Bangladesh for understanding its impact and creating viable models for replication. Each telecentre has a service kiosk using GNU/Linux, Mozilla and PHP/MySQL?. As part of this project, D.Net builds capacity of local information workers and creates livelihood contents in Bangla. Source: http://www.asia-oss.org/sep2005/presentation_material.html 'Free and Open Source Software in our Language and in our Independence', by Munir Hasan, is a short article on the impact of FOSS in Bangladesh. The article provides a vivid description of how the movement 'Need Bangla in Computer' became the movement of 'Bangla Computer'. The article also explained the need for Open Content in Bangladesh. Published: 2 March 2007. http://flossinbangla.notlong.com (Bangla). Compiled by Frederick Noronha, with inputs from Jamil Ahmed Edited by Christine Apikul