Hindrance on the way to a brighter future in technology era

In Pakistan, currently people, businesses, varsities and the government; all are using ages old; proprietary software; which according to them, has best performance, output and are rich in features (They are believed to be perfect 😜) and of-course they don't mind using the pirated ones.

In fact if someone has come-up with an idea to sabotage the check; and to slide-in-to a crack; It is assumed genie (or genius). Most of the people; even in the tech community don't have common understanding of copyright. Piracy is thriving; though they came-out of Floppy Disk hangover 😉 but that's another story.

Off course the proprietary technology or the commercial software have something good beneath the hood (I believe that is why they are safeguarding it) or perhaps they are encashing the fallacy; as it is wrongfully perceived "if it's free... it's not good" anyhow.

But the real problem is, people are shown only one side of the picture; they are not acquainted with full truth; they are not made aware of the fact that there is a world beyond this kind-of proprietary software, they are not well-aware of FOSS universe; it's tragic.

Whereas, if we dive deep enough; it boils to the point that the FOSS or open technology is equally better or even sometimes it outperforms anything before; you just have to look into the right place with a curious mind and will. Look at these; The Linux Kernel, Fedora Project, WordPress and you can find even more.

But in Pakistan; the scene in different, besides WordPress, PHP and similar tools; we can hardly find a major deployment of the FOSS; especially our Government agencies or the Academia is almost solely (if not totally) inclined towards the proprietary software. Roll of P@SHA is not promising.

College and/or university pupils are taught the closed source software; so they don't have the knack of knowledge of behind the scene workout; they are merely rote learners; but in real life they are unable to do anything practical. Sorry to say but these varsities are producing Jerk-minded people. Innovation is lost somewhere, but when these people face the real challenge of a real life, they feel 💔 betrayed.

But the question remains; how to change this; how do we do it now? we need a kick-starter.... and blah blah blah blah.....

First of all try to switch your OS; ditch your Windows 10 or Windows Server or any other EULA OS; and to dive in, just start using Linux, try Fedora it comes with the cutting edge technology. And the best part is it's Free And Open Source (FOSS); (Note: i am personally involved with Fedora Project 😃) Switch to LibreOffice; it is your all-season document processor, spreadsheet editor and makes fancy presentation slides like this. Try to lurk around, and if you feel comfortable please try to get involved with the back-office; you can start here. Off-course you can contribute to whatever project, or whatever activity you find useful, but after sometime you would without hesitation say "Not really bad..." for 🆓 gratis.

Your best companion would be your favorite web search engine; and to be more precise to know what the FOSS world has to offer try to look in your software repository. A "repository" in this context is a public server hosting install-able software packages. A Linux distribution provides a command, and usually a graphical interface to that command, that pulls the software from the server and installs it onto your computer. It's such a simple concept that it has served as the model for all major cellphone operating systems and, more recently, the "app stores" of the two major closed source computer operating systems.

You can even contact me; please feel free to raise your queries; i would definitely try to redirect you to in the right direction. If you feel that since all of these things costs nothing to use and alter; then you are right; but developing these things costs real hard cash, most of the development in FOSS world is done by volunteers (Just like me 😎) and they rely on donations from individuals and companies to continue their work for good, they are supported through monetary donation given to them using platforms like PayPal and Patreon, and they also receive physical computer hardware like servers, workstations, laptops and peripherals. I'm also open to donations, you can support me through Patreon, or buy me a PKNIC card or buy me a laptop computer; choice is upon YOU, i would humbly accept your contribution.

Now you are aware of an alternative route; and you have the decision making power; simplest thing in the start is to do some advocacy for FOSS/technology. If you feel you can do some more; try to persuade your inner circle, your friends, family and work colleagues. If you hold a responsible or decision making position in government, then you definitely have to do something. Believe me this path is rewarding and full of fruits on the sidewalks.

In the first step implement the open source technology and make the websites of government agencies opensource, look at this archived copy of  a government website (I've made a snapshot so, they don't change it in real quick 😜) it looks really weird, they completely forget about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) of W3C or maybe they were not aware of standards though; I have a good reference of sweden.se look at the website and you would definitely notice the difference. My argument is that we Pakistanis can also achieve similar results.

I have proposed a similar idea in the past, the government agencies took benefit of suggestion, similarly they can apply that same formula here. Only addition to this is to host the code on a public Git repository, and make it open to everyone so, anyone can contribute.

In the next step government agencies may host or share source code of other applications they use on regular basis so, it could be audited and improved by the public; i believe almost all of government' digital assets must utilize the FOSS technology, the instant benefit is cost reduction/elimination, and byproduct is that the people working on these would become educated and skilled.

Some varsities are already hosting these things, but the issue is they are only a few, and pathetically in real world they actually don't use this. DigiSkills program brought an excitement, but the courses they offer actually don't add real value. Why don't they offered some advanced courses on Artificial Intelligence, Block Chain, Linux and kernel development, virtualization, why they don't run a crash course on Dart programming language, why? Why don't they tell them to develop websites using Jekyll and reStructuredText, Why? Please get rid of Ratta culture, and teach them real skills for free.

Upto this day we are not able to develop a good web friendly & open source Urdu font, Why? (The most of Urdu fonts that we use are developed by either Iranian or Indian programmers/companies).

Our people don't know; whether they want to become enabler/achiever/educated/degree-holder or they just want to have lots of money.

Somebody told me that, we don't have good coworking spaces in small cities, so real-estate tycoons/property owners, try to help the small freelancers by setting up these, Please.

I am ending with an open ended discussion; please spread the word and try to make an impact.

If you have any question(s) you can send me an email at me@shehroz.pk.

Shehroz