Free Software & Free Content in the Islamic World

Against the escalation towards war in Iran, wos provides space for dialogue. What does openness, freedom, FLOSS, IP ownership of culture mean in a Muslim context? What good does IT, free software, blogging, free expression do to improve the position of individuals and civil society? What can the non-Islamic world learn from a different culture? How can collaborations improve dialogue and reciprocal understanding?

Magriet de Moor, novellist: There can be no enlightened Islam.

If war breaks out and Iranian speaker/s cant come, stage an empty chair.

Moderator: Iran / Islam Expert
Mohammad Khansari, Head of the national GNU/Linux project, Teheran
Hossein Derakshan, http://hoder.com/ exil-blogger, in Engl. and Persian
Malaysian FLOSS, CC scene.
APC woman from Denmark doing a project in Jordan
Palestina
Muslim former Russian countries
other Asian Muslim countries

-> Call for Papers

The Arabic Unix Project

Arabic Wikipedia

Arabic Linux

Arb Linux

LinuxFocus.org Arabic

Iran

http://www.iosn.net/country/iran Shi'a Muslim 89%, Sunni Muslim 9%

10% using Internet. PC in 24% of housholds. PC for 100-200$, because of embargo, no brand-names, so people assembel cheap parts. High percentage of population is young. More than 700,000 blogs.

Shabdix GNU/Linux hosted by berliOS

linuxiran.org

Mohammad Khansari, Head of the national GNU/Linux project, Teheran

khansari@mehr.sharif.edu http://mehr.sharif.ac.ir/~khansari/about.html

Ich bin Direktor von Iran National Betriebsystem basirert auf Linux. Letzes Jahr ich war fuer eine Forschung im Deutschland (noch fuer 4 Monate). Ich habe Ihres Buch heist "Freie Software: Geschichte, Dynamiken und gesellschaftliche Bezüge" im Internet gefunden

FSF Iran

Since 1983, developing the free Unix-like operating system GNU, so that computer users can have the freedom to share and improve the software they use. http://www.fsf.ir/

Hossein Derakshan, http://hoder.com/ exil-blogger, in Engl. and Persian

Video of presentation by Hossein in Stockholm in Febr. 2006 http://www2.humlab.umu.se/video/060209_hoder.ram

February 24, 2006 Hossein Saffar-Harandi, the most fundamentalist minister of culture and Islamic guidance Iran has ever had, has not only publicly endorsed blogs, but also announced plans for including them, as well as websites, within the purview of a new government office that used to oversee only the press. Given Iran's strict new policies against cultural products that promote "western" ideas such as feminism, liberalism, nihilism and humanism, the recent endorsement of blogs seems contradictory. The flourishing of blogs, estimated at more than 700,000 worldwide, has created a new space for self-expression on political and social matters. In a speech during the closing ceremony of the first Festival for Islamic Revolutionary Blogs and Websites, co-sponsored by the ministry of culture, Mr Harandi celebrated the fact that everyone in Iran could now comment on current issues and "speak like a president". http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/015035.shtml

Riverbend, eine pseudonyme irakische Bloggerin wurde mit dem mit 50.000 dotierten Samuel-Johnson-Preis für non-fiction ausgezeichnet.

Berichtet seit Sommer 2003 aus dem Irak. Ich bin 24, eine irakische Frau und habe den Krieg überlebt. Mehr müsse Sie nicht wissen." (3.4.06)

Orkut is huge in Iran.

Indymedia Iran?

Malaysia

http://www.iosn.net/country/malaysia/ Muslim: ??%

FOSS Country Report; Malaysia: a well-organised, well-publicised, well-supported FOSS movement http://www.iosn.net/country/malaysia/country-report

The Consumers International Copyright and Access to Knowledge report released on 20 February 2006 examines copyright law in 11 Asian countries. It finds that all 11 countries, including China, India and Malaysia, have given copyright owners far more protection than the intellectual property treaties they have signed up to require.

Egypt

Hindawi Publishing, a successful open access publisher in Egypt that offers 25 of their journals at no cost through a Creative Commons Attribution License (Paul Peters <paul.peters@hindawi.com>)

Egypt LUG

Afghanistan

Sunni Muslim 80%, Shi'a Muslim 19%

Nazir Peroz, TU Berlin, is IT Coordinator of the afg. govenment: all-out open source.

Pakistan

http://www.iosn.net/country/pakistan/ Sunni 77%, Shi'a 20%

Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan "TPFOSST 05" 1st National Conference on Trends and Practices of Free and Open Source Software Technologies, August 18, 2005 http://www.fossfp.org/tpfosst05 TPFOSST?05 Conference Chair Contact: Dr. Anwar-ur-Rehman Pasha FOSSAC ' 2005 Secretariat Punjab University College of Information Technology University of The Punjab, Allama Iqbal (Old) Campus The Mall, Lahore-54000, Pakistan Phone #: 92 (042) 111-923-923 Ext: 27 e-mail: tpfosst05@fossfp.org