Anas Tawileh is a post-graduate student based in Cardiff, Wales in the United Kingdom. Yet the 29-year-old is doing an unbelievable job of promoting Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in his home country of Syria. FLOSS is a freely available alternative to dominant software such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, and other operating software.

Tawileh said FLOSS users have a point to make in Syria, which is currently under a technological embargo from the US. Syria cannot legally obtain the license for any kind of software, including Windows 95, Windows 98, or server applications, he said, "because these things are considered as 'high-technology.'"

Tawileh gave an example of a person who won a personal computer through his subscription to a magazine via the Middle East. However, the magazine refused to ship the computer to him because it would violate US export law.

The existence of such laws leaves countries, such as Tawileh's, with only two options. One option is to pirate (illegally copy) software, but those who take this route would not be able to access the much-needed technical support available to users of proprietary software.

The other option, Tawileh pointed out, is FLOSS. Currently working on his doctorate on FLOSS, Tawileh is also the founder of the Syrian GNU/Linux Users Group (SLUG). His doctorate looks at information assurance in FLOSS communities, which Tawileh explained as "looking at how you can trust information produced in the (FLOSS) community."

Tawileh said it was equally important for the everyday user and for buyers to believe in their work as much as FLOSS communities did. In Syria, Tawileh hopes to foster a highly active community that provides governments, businesses, and universities with their software needs. This would eliminate the need to play around the US export laws simply by providing solutions based on FLOSS.

With this objective in mind, Tawileh and his group started "many initiatives," the most important of which is the Syrian Linux User Group (SLUG). GNU/Linux User Groups (LUGs) are private, generally non-profit organization, that provide support and education for GNU/Linux users, particularly inexperienced ones. Such groups meet both in person and through online communities.

SLUG was founded in February 2002, said Tawileh, adding that "when we started, it was only me." Growth was initially slow, "but we kept insisting on our mission until now we have almost 700 members, and it's growing everyday. People are contributing to what we are doing," he said.

Initially, decision makers gave him the cold shoulder. Tawileh tried to convince decision-makers, arguing that after they build a certain capacity, the local community could support them, and that they would be self-sufficient with respect to their software needs. "We initially encountered lots of resistance, because most of the people in decision-making positions are relatively old. So they're not that open-minded to new ideas," he said.

Tawileh also faced resistance from potential allies in the field of software technology. "Those guys were trained on proprietary software," said Tawileh, "So they were not willing to retrain themselves and adapt to the new technology landscape."

Tawileh and his determined team kept networking by organizing awareness programs, free training programs, volunteering programs, and even some recreational activities such as picnics. These activities reinforced the relations within the community.

SLUG was lucky to have found people who were influential and well-known enough for others to pay heed, said Tawileh. "They believed in our mission, particularly the community, and the strong ties among members of our community. They said, 'Something's happening there. Let's look into it,'" recalled Tawileh.

In 2004, SLUG hosted their first international event, which was the Free and Open Source Software Workshop. The event was successful, attracting the attention of both local and international media. Many ministers attended the workshop, and the recommendations went to the government. "That was pretty cool," said Tawileh.

Within a year, between 2004 and 2005, Tawileh said they were able to make a significant difference. "We did a lot of activities, we trained people, and we collected money from donors and raised a lot of funds. We put that into the community, mainly in training and capacity-building. By that time, the government and officials were more open to what we were saying," said Tawileh.

Syria is surrounded by Jordan and Lebanon, both of which are "dominated by Microsoft for so many reasons," according to Tawileh. While there are many people working on FLOSS, at the country-wide level, decisions were made to go in for proprietary software, Tawileh noted.

In Syria, however, said Tawileh, "We don't have that, we can't have that. Microsoft, or any other American company for that matter, can't get into the country. This gives us an advantage as FLOSS advocates in Syria."

This advantage operates in strange ways. Once when the country wanted to implement a very large project, relating to the public data network, Sun refused to sell Syria their Solaris operating system.

After many debates and negotiations, the decision-makers asked for assistance to change the design from Sun Solaris to a GNU/Linux-based system. That was one of the major victories for FLOSS and came in late 2004 and early 2005, said Tawileh.

Challenges

According to Tawileh, FLOSS is facing a critical state in Syria currently. "If the momentum that was created by all the previous activities could be sustained and stepped up further, the country could be the pioneer for the use of FLOSS in the Arab World and the Middle-East. But if we fail to achieve that, then I see it natural for FLOSS to fall apart from the future of the software industry in the country," he said.

Tawileh expressed the need for greater contribution in the community, "We translated the LPI (Linux Professional Institute) training materials within the user-group. But still, and it's not only a problem on the Syrian level but an Arab world-wide problem, we don't contribute code. I believe that until we contribute code, we are not really contributing."

Work needs to be better coordinated too, said Tawileh. "I see people simply translating the interface of PostNuke (an open source content management system that makes it easy to update websites). They think they've done something amazing. Actually, it's only a kindergarten job. It's not coding," said Tawileh.

Syria is only at the brink of the movement of open-source software, according to Tawileh. "We don't have the proper understanding of the mechanisms of this movement, so we still magnify our achievements ... one organization might install FLOSS on a web-server, and then say, 'We use FLOSS.'"

Frederick Noronha is a Goa-based freelance journalist, who is interested in the developmental potential of IT. He is the co-founder of the BytesForAll, an initiative which looks at how IT and the Internet can help the commonman in South Asia. Your emails will be forwarded to him by contacting the editor at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net.