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The government has provided training to more than 500 professionals under a programme launched to reduce the software piracy rate in the country. The programme which is expected to be completed by 2009, around 30 workshops regarding major open source applications in all major cities of Pakistan have also been conducted.
Talking to APP here Monday, an official at Ministry of Information Technology said in the first phase of the programme, 10 awareness-raising seminars on open source, piracy and copyright have also been arranged in public sector universities and colleges in different cities.
He said the high cost of licensed software has prompted the need of this project in order to assist the software industry to migrate from licensed software platforms to open source solutions. Through this project titled Open Source Resource Centre (OSRC), a resource centre has been developed to cater to the queries and issues related to Open Source Software. The resource centre provides assistance to companies who want to save the cost of buying licensed software and shift to open source software solutions.
The project team also assists the organisations interested in migrating to open source solutions. The objectives of the programme are to further enhance the network of open source developers and compile, develop and edit content for a course on open source for the Higher Education Commission, to be adopted by universities as part of their curriculum.
The other aims include conducting a survey regarding the rate of software piracy within federal ministries and departments, co-ordinate with the Intellectual Property Organisation (IPO) and to participate in conferences, seminars and workshops organised by the IPO and to migrate IT set-ups of eight organisations from proprietary to open source.
The official said as a result of the projects activities in the first phase, the government and the private industry has saved a total of more than Rs 35 million by deploying open source solutions.
He said according to the World Bank and Business Software Alliance (BSA), Pakistan's piracy rate has decreased in the last two years and added the project's achievements have been appreciated by the local industry, as well as by international agencies such as UNDP-APDIP, CICC, Japan, among others. The project team has been invited to participate in various international conferences, exhibitions and open source seminars, he added.
Talking about the scope of the project, the official said there is a lack of intellectual property protection in Pakistan. It is very easy to obtain pirated low-end software packages in the market.
Those who do manage to develop their own software package find it extremely difficult to compete, in price, with the pirated versions of the foreign software packages. The low purchasing power of a general computer user encourages this trend. Low per capita income also does not allow the majority of the population to opt for expensive proprietary software.
The grooming of an open source software culture within Pakistan is an effective solution to this problem which will help to reduce the software piracy rate and also help provide Information and Communication technologies (ICT) to those who cannot otherwise afford to use them.

Copyright Associated Press of Pakistan, 2007

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