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| International Training Centre of the ILO | ||
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DELTA (Programme for Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications) | |
menu > free software solutions > free software at the ITC-ILO [Version Française]
Free Software at the ITC-ILO
Definition of Free Software ("Free as Freedom")
Free Software is a kind of software whose code is “free” to
be read, copied, analyzed, studied, modified and made available to other users,
according to specific licences.
In other words, this means that open source software may be totally free of
charge, depending if it is directly downloaded from the internet or bought on
CD-Rom included in a possible book.
Such software is developed
through the internet - according to the aims defined in a specific project
- by independent individual collaborators and companies with no
necessary immediate and direct profit.
This is a very efficient way to develop software, since many collaborators (they
can be as many as thousands) can join in with their own personal motivation
and work as a group, giving their single contribution to be checked and debugged
by the others. Some Web sites are used to host those projects as SourceForge
and Freshmeat
.
Free Software Market
Some most famous Free Software projects are GNU/Linux,
Apache, Mozilla,
Openoffice, Sendmail,
Zope.
For the Centre the first venture is the Coursereader
developped in partnership with Canada's TeleLearning National Centre of Excellence
(TL-NCE) Virtual
U Project.
Today in the world, many
companies - public and private organizations and bodies - already utilize
or are considering the use of free and open source solutions to communicate
and to manage resources. Some of the most popular applications are:
We are at
the beginning of a new socio-economic phenomena based on ICT innovation
and “open source Internet revolution”, where market potential and
social impact are very importants but not clearly defined, evolving on a daily
basis.
However several open source business models have emerged to:
Other economic models regarding software will arise in the future, as through open contents and university or educational open contents in general, as well as for hardware too.
Digital Divide, Free Software and the ILO
Free Software market originates from the developed countries,
with collaboration coming from some developing countries, but generally the
latter are suffering what is commonly identified as the Digital Divide. When
the economic situation is having a negative impact on the use of ICT and where
technology transfer is difficult to be implemented with western crafted intellectual
property standards. The new intellectual property management model of Free Software should
be a good alternative for the developing world.
The preamble
of the Constitution of the ILO states “Whereas universal and lasting
peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice. And whereas
conditions of labour exist involving such injustice hardship and privation to
large numbers of people as to produce unrest … an improvement of those
conditions is urgently required…”.
In addition to that:
art. IIa) of the Declaration concerning the aims and purposes
of the International Labour Organization (Annex to the ILO Constitution) affirms
that lasting peace can be established only if it is based on social justice,
which can be obtained among others, with promotion of equal opportunites;
art. IIb) states that “the attainment of the conditions
in which this shall be possible must constitute the central aim of national
and international policy”;
art. IIId) shall be interpreted that a just share of fruits
of progress shall be ensured to all.
In light of the above, we can strongly affirm that the reduction of the digital
divide not only complies with the mandate of the ILO, but today shall become
one of its objectives.
Opportunities for the International Training Centre of the ILO
Many opportunities
may be considered, although the staff is not yet fully aware of Free Software potential.
We will summarize such opportunities as follows:
To be used by the ITC-ILO
Presently, two servers are available to offer Free Software solutions for the following
everyday activities:
a) Computing platform: many productivity applications
shall be considered as openOffice or similar packages (both on Windows or Linux).
The Centre should be able to provide the appropriate training both for staff
and participants who need it.
b) Intranet: Open source solutions already
exist or are being considered in many public organizations. The Centre should
experiment those opportunities to facilitate the workflow and procedures both
internally and externally.
c) e-Learning and Knowledge Management: After a first wave
of proprietary
learning management systems as Learningspace, WebCT, BlackBoard, many Free
Software learning management systems are available today: DELTA is permanently
surveying this domain in order to be able to identify the major trends both
to develop and deliver training programmes in these new areas and to advise
other programmes of the Centre in the development of their projects. The Centre
is starting to implement some of these Free Software based e-learning solutions
for different training projects.
d) Communication: Internet and Free Software based communication
and telecommunication services are very popular and cost effective. The Centre
should consider such opportunities to improve quality communication and services
at lower costs.
To be promoted by the ITC-ILO to reduce digital divide
On top of being an excellent Free Software internal user, the Centre shall have the mission
to promote it to help partners in reducing the digital divide they are experiencing.
a) e-Learning. Developments carried out by the Centre on e-learning
based on competences should be “interoperable” and “reusable”
available on Free
Software based learning management systems in order to be shared with our
partners. Training performed at the Centre should integrate Free Software issues.
b) e-Government. The Centre should provide training activities
and promote e-Government
and e-Democracy.
c) Economic development. The Centre should integrate Free Software opportunities
and, more generally, technological
issues related to social and economic
development in its different programmes in the different
regions of the world.
d) Technology transfer. Today, intellectual
property management standards are hampering technological development in
developing countries. The Centre should provide training activities to contribute
facilitating this process in collaboration with those specialized agencies that
are institutionally focused toward these areas.
Reactions, comments, suggestions and new ideas to improve this page are welcome.
Claude Martin: c.martin@itcilo.itIf you are interested to discuss and share information and ideas about issues presented in this page you are invited to subscribe to Free_software@itcilo.it mailing list.