[dgplug-users] FOSS and the Digital Divide

[Abhishek Mishra]

Wikipedia says that the "Digital Divide" is the gap between people
with effective access to digital and information technology and those
with very limited or no access at all. You should think of this word
whenever you feel great about "Technology being an enabler". The
Digital Divide is an essential roadblock to that dream. For,
technology can't be a true enabler unless it is in reach of everyone.

So what is reach? Reach is not about being able to purchase a
technology. I know for sure that even an auto-wallah can purchase a
cell-phone and benefit from technology, but I'm sure many can't reach
my blog even though many have enough money to avail a cyber-cafe for
an hour. It isn't more than Rs.20/hr if I am correct. That alone
doesn't ensure whether they can utilize it well or not. This is where
Digital Divide comes into picture.

Now coming to the software side of it. We all have observed that
majority of all software that we've ever since, was either in English
or in some other major languages in use, but not in our own. There are
reasons for that, if a software company A wants to push their product
B into the French market, only then would they bother about spending
resources on its French translation. Business is not always about
doing good for others. McDonalds won't change just because your kids
have grown obese eating they burgers with extra cheese.
Something similar happens in a closed-source proprietary software
scenario too. Consider this example - You purchase a software X for
$YYY.YY, no cut that, you get a closed-source shareware for free and
the license says that "you're free to share it with anyone, provided
you retain the copy of this license... bla bla". That's just half of
the story. Think a little more over the sharing part, you will realize
that you can share it only with a fraction of people. The fraction
that understands the languages that software X supports. Maybe you got
it for free. Maybe you thought you were free to share it with others.
But all that freedom was so incomplete!

But FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) on the other hand solves this
problem in a very practical manner. It invites people to make changes
to it, so as to suit their needs. Code being open source, you're
always free to midify and customize to great extents. To that, many
people reply back with this - "Okay, so the average Joe still can't
get this working in his own language for his non-english cousins."
Well, friends that's a question fair enough, but one thing I learnt
from my experiences is that you should not deny anything unless you've
thoroughly explored its deniability.

Let me show you how easy it is to translate a free software to your
language, even if you're an average Joe. All you'll ever need is some
free time to do something good, to bring a change in the world of
many. Enter Launchpad.net - An open source code hosting and software
collaboration platform by Canonical Ltd. It lets developers and yeah
not just them but everyone collaborate over software projects and
improve them, be it bug tracking, be it translation, feature request,
anything at all. So in this context we would take a look at the
translation part. Here's the tour for it which gives an overview -
https://launchpad.net/+tour/translation
Let's say you're running Ubuntu as I do, and happen to use 'GNOME Do'
a lot. Wouldn't you like to make it easy to use for people of your
native language?
First, make an account on http://launchpad.net. Once done, head on to
https://translations.launchpad.net/ and search for "GNOME Do". This
would take you to translation page for GNOME Do -
https://translations.launchpad.net/do/+translations
You can see an informative report on what progress on translation has
already been made in different languages. Look for any untranslated
entries in your language, click on the language to contribute.

I will take Hindi as an example. So once you've selected the language,
you're presented with a list of required translations. The English for
is presented on the top, below you have other suggestions submitted
previously by users. Now the beauty of collaboration comes out when
Launchpad suggests translations from other projects. That is, there
are some commonly used words like "Close", "Open" etc, Launchpad is
intelligent enough to pull off their Hindi translations into
suggestions list for me. There's a big difference in outright
crowdsourcing and crowdsourcing done right in Launchpad's way.  You
can also mark a suggestion for review if you're unsure of anything.

Okay one important aspect I forgot to talk about, how do I type in my
language, I use English usually as I happen to know it? As for Hindi,
you can use Google Indic
(http://www.google.co.in/transliterate/indic/) to type out and
Shabdkosh to find definitions you're unsure of. However a smarter
method, which works for any language, was suggested by a friend - SCIM
(Smart Common Input Method). Checkout Ubuntu Community Documentation
for SCIM (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SCIM) to know more. or
just do a 'sudo apt-get install scim'
That's it, by going one phrase a time you've actually contributed into
translation of a project which is used my many people, and in fact by
your efforts yet many more people are going to use it! After sometime
your Launchpad profile would show an increase in your Karma ranking
and show your contributions in "Most Active in" heading.

Amazing isn't it, instead of sitting idle and getting bored you can
actually help free software and your own community, even if you aren't
a geek.
All the best.

Mon Aug 24 01:57:19 IST 2009