[Chapter-delegates] Checking status for project "Khmer OS Software Initiative"

[Norbert Klein]

On 9/18/2013 4:00 AM, Ilda Simao wrote:
> Dear Norbert,
>
> As I am cleaning up the Community Grants data base, I noticed that the 
> project "Khmer OS Software Initiative", for which the Cambodia Chapter 
> received a grant in 2005 has an incomplete status. I believe from 
> previous discussions that this project was completed, however the 
> final reports are missing and that may explain this status. Would you 
> mind checking if you still have the project final report and send it 
> to me, so that I can change this status.
>
> We have recently changed the Community Grants Rules, and anyone 
> (Chapter or Individual member) with an incomplete project status, is 
> not eligible to receive a new Community grant. I would like to prevent 
> this situation in case the Cambodia Chapter decides to apply for a new 
> grant.
>
> I look forward to hearing from you.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Ilda Simao
> Community Grants Coordinator
>
Dear Ilda,

thanks for your mail -- it is interesting that this question comes up 
just now -- in 2013 relating to a grant towards the Khmer OS Software 
Initiative in 2005, for which I had asked in the name of the ISOC 
Cambodia Chapter in the early stages of its formation: not for an ISOC 
program, but to support something important for the whole country.

I take note of your information that no chapter and no individual member 
(?can these also receive ISOC grants?) is eligible to receive a new 
grant that has an incomplete project status - " in case the Cambodia 
Chapter decides to apply for a new grant" as you informed me.

Had ISOC HQ informed me sooner after 2005 that you have incomplete 
records, we surely would have tried to clarify this earlier.

As the records at your office surely show, our Chapter had our Inaugural 
Assembly only in 2010.


Let me give a detailed report, including the context and subsequent 
developments, as the original seems to be missing.

I write from memory (while traveling to a place where I have Internet 
access -- where I live now there is none, because all "line of sight" 
signals are prevented to come in by the surrounding mountains).

At that time I was working in the Open Forum of Cambodia, where we had 
achieved already in 1994 to create the first access to the Internet in 
Cambodia -- only via UUCP with slow and expensive international phone 
line connections to San Francisco, then in 1996 I created the ccTLD .kh 
and administered it for three years before handing it to the Ministry of 
Post and Telecommunications. Then in 1998 or so, I took the initiative 
and was for a long time the only person in Cambodia trying to get the 
Unicode consortium to work with native Cambodian speakers, and in 
Cambodia, and not only with outside experts, in codifying the Khmer 
script. After Khmer was codified (in a way which disregarded the - by 
then created - Cambodian government commission's opinion), a new 
competent colleague -- Javier Solá formerly active in the Spanish 
Internet Users Association - joined the Open Forum of Cambodia as a 
volunteer, and early in 2004 we started to create Unicode based, 
localized, Khmer Open Source software, which could run both on the 
Microsoft Windows and on the SuSE Linux platforms. By now, also Ubuntu 
Linux software has been localized in Khmer. A wide variety of localized 
applications in the Khmer language for office use and for communication 
is available since several years.

The grant you refer to now was helpful in addition to the personal and 
institutional resources with which this care for the use of the Khmer 
script and language had begun earlier on, and continues until today.

In 2008 the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports of Cambodia was happy 
to accept what we had done over the years, and it is now the official 
software for the Ministry, the teacher training colleges, and of course 
for the schools under the Ministry that have computers, and the same 
software basis is used widely in government, industry, commerce, and NGOs.

Have a look here at the Ministry's website:

http://moeys.gov.kh/

The**site for the English versionof the *Master Plan for Information and 
Communication Technology in Education, 2009 to 2013 **(*downloadable) says:

http://moeys.gov.kh/en/policies-and-strategies/73-policies/92-master-plan-on-ict-in-education.html

*In alignment with its Education Strategic Plan 2009-2013, MoEYS is 
introducing various initiatives to make better use of information and 
communication technologies (ICT)... to produce a workforce for the 
country both technologically productive and able to think critically.*


The software in this Master Plan is based on the software development by 
the Open Institute (the Open Forum had come to an end in 2006 -- I doubt 
that any documents of this defunct organization are left), but the 
relevant staff moved on into the newly created Open Institute, and we 
continued the work there.

I point to some sections of the English translation of the *Master Plan 
for Information and Communication Technology in Education*of the 
Ministry of Education which may be of interest also to others, where 
there are concerns, shared by Civil Society in many countries, which are 
important to make information and communication technology tools easily 
available where economic resources are scarce. So I share this report 
also with the Chapter-delegates list. The detailed Maser Plan says among 
others:

- Students will learn to recognize which software they can use freely 
and share (as in the case of Free and Open Source Software), and which 
software is proprietary, requires payment for the use of a license, and 
cannot be shared with others...

- Only applications that have been legally procured will be taught in 
the education system, and manufacturers must show that their software 
cannot be easily attacked by viruses or malware.

- Software will be licensed either through the GNU General Public 
License (GPL) or the GNU Lesser Public License (LGPL). Content will be 
licensed through a Creative Common Attribution License, allowing 
commercial use of the materials (to encourage private development of 
better materials...)

- The use of standards is the key to scaling the use of ICT. National 
and international standards will be used in the deployment of this 
Master Plan. These include the Unicode character encoding standard (ISO 
10646). The NiDA Standard Unicode Keyboard V1 defined by the National 
ICT Development Authority in 2005, or later standards, but only if they 
are fully compatible with the prior one. The Open Document international 
(ODF) standard (ISO 26300:2006) will be used for office documents

- The Ministry will tend to use Open Source Software whenever possible 
for its own databases and back-office.


Let me say in closing that the Khmer OS Initiative became operational 
before it received support from ISOC for it expansion, and, as it had 
during several years about 20 full time staff, the ISOC support was 
important during an early stage, but it covered only a small portion of 
the finances applied over the years.

If there are any further questions, please let me know.


Norbert Klein
at present a member of the ISOC-KH Chapter Executive Committee

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