Free software boom forecast in Armenia

Founder of the Free Software movement Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement, and the status and history of the GNU operating system.

I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place. Richard Stallman.

November 11, 2010

PanARMENIAN.Net - Richard Matthew Stallman is the founder of the Free Software movement, the GNU project, the Free Software Foundation, and the League for Programming Freedom. He also invented the concept of copyleft to protect the ideals of this movement, and enshrined this concept in the widely used GPL (General Public License) for software.

Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award, and the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates.

He launched the development of the GNU operating system in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today.

The GNU Project constantly struggles against two widespread mistakes that undermine the effectiveness of their work: calling their work "open source", and calling the GNU operating system "Linux".

“The Free Software Movement and the Open Source Movement are like two political parties in our community. I founded the Free Software Movement in 1984 along with the GNU Project; we call our work "free software" because it is software that respects the users’ freedom. The Open Source Movement was founded, in 1998, specifically to reject our idealistic philosophy - they studiously avoid talking about freedom,” Stallman says.

Armenian specialists do not give up attempts to localize creation of distributions on the basis of GNU/Linux.

“The movement for free software started in Armenia in late 1990’s. One of the first attempts to localize Linux was Spitak Linux project,” programmer Aleksey Chalabyan recollects.

However, according to him, Linux users are not many in Armenia, some 1-3% of the total number.

“Poor awareness and fear of possible inconveniences are the main reasons behind it,” he says.

The joint laboratory of Russian Armenian University and Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences started development of Nur Linux operating system in 2009. The final and updated version of the OS will be ready in six months. Laboratory manager Vahram Martirosyan says Nur Linux will be created anew, with the laboratory’s system programming development included.

According to him, Armenia will witness a free software within next two years.

“State and business structures in China, Russia and European countries are actively using free software. Armenia will not fall behind,” Martirosyan assures.

According to laboratory fellow Biayna Mahari, Linux operating system is gaining popularity in Armenia. “The era of unauthorized operating systems is coming to an end. Today, computers with installed GNU/Linux or Windows can be purchased in shops,” she says.

Instigate company has recently developed a new Arax operating system, which is based on the famous GNU/ Linux OS.

“Arax will be available for free use and distribution, however, it would be more convenient for companies to pay for maintenance, which is much cheaper than similar foreign solutions,” Arax co-author Norayr Chilingaryan says.

The OS is localized to Armenian, Persian, Georgian, English, German and French. It identifies other file systems and offers various interfaces as well as translation and spell check of Armenian texts.

Arax was demonstrated during DigiTec annual exhibition attended by Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan.

The government is currently one of the major consumers of licensed software in Armenia. According to the latest data, Microsoft authorized products are installed in 30 percent of the total number of computers in Armenian state institutions.

“I hope that Richard Stallman’s visit will help popularize free software development in Armenia, as Stallman is a charismatic personality. Armenia pays Microsoft for software, although we can have our own distribution,” Aleksey Chalabyan says.

KASA Swiss Humanitarian Foundation will host Richard Stallman in Armenia, where he will give speeches in Yerevan and Gyumri. The speeches are titled “Free Software: Ethics and the Internet”, “Free Digital Society” and “Free Software and Your Freedom”.

Gayane Mirzoyan / PanARMENIAN News