Khmer Open Source

In preparation for tommorrow's iLaw, I reviewed some cyberstrategy for third world countries links I've collected.   I came across this one for Khmer Open Source Project.  Here's the description of the project purpose from the site:

The KhmerOS project was born from our dream for the state of computer technology in Cambodia in three years. We envision, in 2007, a country where Cambodians can learn and use computers in their own language, a country that does not have to change to a new language in order to use computers! Databases and applications will be developed directly in Khmer, with  easy, standard ways to handle names and data.

Here's the link to the draft of the master plan for implementing open source in Cambodia.  The project just received a grant from the Internet Society for $10,000 "for the training of teachers in schools and private training industry, so that they can teach the use the Internet in Khmer language all over the country, effectively reducing the digital divide." 

There was a link to some background information, including this post from apc.  I also emailed Dirk Slater to find out what he knew about this project: 

 

Its really interesting how Open Source is taking off because of localization issues.  Microsoft is either not going to translate intolanguages that are spoken by smaller number of people, or they are going to charge a lot for the language module when they do - so there have been many cases where local folks are taking open source software and localizing it because they can, and then its getting much wider usein that region than the proprietary stuff. 

I was just in Tajikistan where they have translated Mandrake into Tajik
and are working on localizing Open Office and Firefox.

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Comments

[sokheng]

It's fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!!