Is open source green?

After the recent event by local linux users group we had some interesting discussions with newcomers about language choice of open source developers, why we're doing such event etc. And there was thought provoking question, which is 'Is open source green?'. Quick answer is yes, yes for sure. But how? Here I want to discuss how is it green.

Usually people write code to solve a problem or to accomplish something. If the code is open source we'll just use it to solve same problems elsewhere, or similar problems with a slight change. If it's closed we would write code from scratch or reinvent the wheel. That would require electricity to power a computer, time to write a code. Or maybe we need to work to make a money for a license. Using open source software and contributing to it you are saving your and people time, money and saving the Earth. So open source is so green for sure.

Now, I'll try to prove it by some numbers. According to Wikipedia, David A. Wheeler studied Red Hat version 7.1 which was released in 2001. He found that it consists of 30 million lines of code, which would have required 8,000 man-years of development effort and would have cost over $1 billion to develop. A similar study was made of Debian version 2.2 and found 55 million lines of code, which would have required 14,005 man years and $1.9 billion. So Debian version 5.0 is 324 million lines code or 6 times larger than 2.2 version. And it's safe to assume that it would have required 84,000 man year and  $12 billion. Do you know how these numbers are changed in 2011?

Man year is a estimate amount of work that would take a year for a average worker. Then it'll take 84,000 years for a developer to make Debian 5.0, or 84 years for 1000 developers. Open source today is a result of small contributions from millions of people. And it's available to you free of charge for every purpose. You can even change the source code. It allows us to save millions of watts electricity, such an amount of coal and save everything. So are you convinced that open source is GREEN and SO GREEN?

Knowledge saturday

In Mongolia, we have local FOSS community since 2007, and we've been organizing events for non-FOSS users and beginners. But some members of our community were asking for real and practical knowledge sharing than mailing list, forum, wiki etc. We've been discussing how to fulfill this demand, which was more than required to become more attractive for non-beginning users. Now, we have Knowledge Saturday.

Knowledge Saturday is event where volunteer members teach about 3 or 4 topics and it's hold on last Saturday of the month. And within 2 hours will have grasp and practical understanding of 4 topics. First event held on 23th Oct 2010, and the topics were 'How to install Ubuntu 10.10', 'Git - version control system', 'Python 101'. Last was on 26th Feb 2011, and topics were 'Unix file system basics - File owner, group, permission', 'Drawing with Inkscape', 'Symfony - web development framework'. And we're preparing for March 2011, which will be held on National University of Mongolia.

First steps were a bit difficult, because we needed to volunteer speakers, venue and some technical resources. We didn't had chance to record talk during first few events, now we're trying to record talk and make them available on Vimeo. Now it's getting a lot easier because people understand how it's important to have open knowledge, open knowledge sharing. People want to share their knowledge.

Boerte - Gobi

Just enjoy Mongolian music, song and nature.

Mongolian Karmic testers

With release of Ubuntu Karmic Alpha 5 version some community members switched to it. Some of them just did fresh install, and others upgraded from Jaunty. All of them really like how it's fresh and looks good. But they encounter problem, discuss about them in mailing lists. For me, it's just nice too see how they are developing. learning how to test software, report bugs and collaborate on a problem.

Software Freedom Day 2009

Yesterday, we've celebrated SFD 2009 and Linux InstallFest 2009 event with help of 2 professor's team from School of Computer Science and Management. For short, it was real success with more than 400 attendees.

During the event we gave 5 talks about Linux and it's history, migration from windows, open source development, localization and our Linux user community. After localization talk people were asking about how to participate in it, how they can help and so on. Soon we're going to restart localization effort and doing preparation work. In the end, we gave away Ubuntu CD's to every attendee and showed how to install it on their computer.

Thank you FSF, thank you Linus, thank you GNOME project, thank you KDE, thank you Ubuntu. Without you all, there wouldn't be such event.

Moving Ubuntu mirror server

Most of GNU/Linux users of Mongolia use Ubuntu. Because it's easy to install, use, and because we have our local mirror server here, which makes package installation and updating process more than ten time faster. It's up and running since 2006, and hosted by Adsolux Mongolia LLC. Up until now it was running on HP server, but now it's running on more powerful Dell server. This upgrade made it possible to serve more Ubuntu users, and support FOSS community here.

Why do you use linux?

A member of our local community today asked me 'why do you use Linux?'. I was thinking about it to find some useful answer for him, but no luck. I use it everyday, every hour and every minute. It's just became part of my life. It was very strange, but very thoughtful question for me.

First ever community newsletter

Following traditions from global open source community, people from our local Linux user group prepared and published first ever newsletter. This monthly newsletter will feature group's internal events, blogposts from the planet, discussions from Google groups, and also news on Linux and open source software.

Helping to prepare this document I've found some interesting numbers. Created back in late December, our members on Google groups count for 129, topics we've discussed count for 159 and during these discussion we've exchanged 1752 messages. We opened our wiki site in Feb, now it contains about 60 wiki pages. It's great.

You can read it here http://wiki.limnux.org/wiki/Newsletter/Issue1, but it's in mongolian. So I'll try to summarise it. Up until now, we had no structure, just crowd. It was ok. But when the number of members grow it became difficult to maintain infrastructures in working state, keep information organized. To solve this problem we decided to create Moderators Team. Some of our community members were talking about need for localization and doing it 'right'. So we created Localization Team. Now, team are not so formalized yet like GNOME or some other long living FOSS community. But we're working on it.

Do we need l10n?

In my mongolian blog, I've posted my thoughts on l10n, and asked whether we need l10n or not. In it I've tried to summarise reasons why we need l10n, what problems we faced during these years, and how we can solve it. Most people expressed that they need it and it's essential to our IT development. It will expand our computer users base, make them more active users. But some people were concerned that localization will slow down english learning, thus we'll have big gap between developed countries when we're trying to closely follow them. In the end, most people endorsed the idea and we decided to form localization team within our Linux user group. From now on we won't talk about whether we need it or not, but how to do it right.

I think that I need one more post on this topic and prove that l10n is essential in our IT development and encourage people to participate in it. Then I need some info on what was changed and what was achievement when you had localized open source software stack, GNOME for example. Thank you in advance. Stay tuned...

Mongolian new year

Today is last day of this mongolian year. Tomorrow, new year will begin. It's named as bull. During this coming year our local community is planning to re-initiate localization efford and to have almost complete localized GNOME by the end of the year. Also Linux InstallFest in May, most successful, and biggest Software Freedom Day in our history in September. And much more.

I wish that this year would be just beginning of active and successful years of FOSS in Mongolia.

Hello world, again

Hello world and Planet GNOME.

I started this blog back in 2007, and stopped posting after 3 posts. Most of my english blog readers come from Planet GNOME thanks to Jeff. From now on I think I should post news about Mongolian FOSS community to make world know how are we active.

Mongolian FOSS community is active since 2003. We started with GNOME localization in 2003. In 2005 we formed Unix User Group, and then LiMNux or linux user group in 2007. From 2007 some of local universities and tech schools use FOSS tools to teach programming, and computer usage. In 2008 part of our community, OpenMN team, completed localization of OpenOffice.org. And in 2009 everyone, even our government, is talking about FOSS adoption.

To be continued...

preparing for InstallFest 2007

Talks about Linux InstallFest 2007 begun about two months ago, and preparation a month ago. We held several meetings on how to organize, promote and whatever related to our second Linux InstallFest. Linux InstallFest 2007 will be held on 27th May, and message will be "Linux is desktop ready, and we have another option".


During 17-21th May we participated ICT Expo 2007 that held at the biggest exhibition center of Mongolia to promote InstallFest 2007, Linux, FOSS. On the closing ceremony organizers were saying that there were about 20000 visitors, great though :). Still, we have a lot to do. Thank you guys from liMNux for doing great job when I was on vacation.

Here is little video from the exhibition:

Closing Ubuntu mirror server

Sorry that I'm posting bad new. But unfortunately that's the reality. Few days ago we decided to close it due to some limitations, and constraints. First, server hard drive run out of space. Second, server wasn't collocated in ISP, so it's overloaded internet connection of a organization. That's why we decided to close Ubuntu mirror server for a while until we buy brand new server and collocate it at a ISP.

We were thinking about how we could support FOSS, and speed up its adoption. And found out that we could create and maintain mirror server for one of the most popular Linux distros, it was Ubuntu. That would reduce time required for system update, package installation, image download. It took more than a month to sync all the packages and images from the main server. At the same time we were participating and competing with others on SFD2006. We lost the competition because we hadn't complete mirror server. Nevertheless we were continuing syncing, soon we had complete and official mirror server. It did it's job. It was 10 times faster on low speed connection. Mongolian Linux and Ubuntu users grown that 2MB/s of line was overloaded. And organization who rented us server declined to support us anymore.

It was very bad news and very bad decision while we were preparing for Linux InstallFest 2007 on 27th May. I talked to ISPs, they are ready to collocate our server, but we don't have server to collocate. So I'm here to ask for help and support.

Hello World

Hello world. This is my first blog post in English and I want to introduce myself. My name is Dulmandakh, 22 years old. I work as president of Mongolian Open Source Initiative NGO and leader of liMNux. Mongolian Open Source Initiative is non-governmental, non-profit organization that will support FOSS development or we will promote, organize communities, cooperate with government and companies. And liMNux is our linux user group, maybe you noticed that name don't use linux.country-code.org convension.

Sorry, my english is not good, so I may make some mistakes. But through this blog I'll try to share my thoughts, findings and latest news from Mongolian FOSS community :).