Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) has provided training to over 8,900 participants through 124 workshops and awareness-raising seminars in the country under its Open Source Resource Centre (OSRC) project. The basic objectives of the PSEB-executed project is to raise awareness by presenting open source software as a security-rich and a more economic alternative to expensive proprietary software.
Its team of experts helps organisations develop an indigenous pool of open source professionals. A concerned official at PSEB on Wednesday told newsmen that about 23 computer network migrations of OSRC had helped the organisation to save Rs 36 million which would otherwise had been lost to expensive proprietary software.
The official said the OSRC was South Asia's first government-owned initiative and its other objectives were to provide expert advice and support to the government, private sector, non-profit organisations and the academia, and to combat piracy by raising awareness about Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues at various seminars, workshops and forums, and migrating computer networks from pirated proprietary software to open source.
He said the OSRC also networked with open source organisations world-wide in general and in the Asia region in particular, which included the National Competency Centre for the Application of Open Source technologies (CENATIC), Centre of the International Co-operation for Computerization's (CICC) Asia OSS, Bellanet, OSS Watch, South Asia Partnership International (SAPI), SAP Nepal, and the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) International Open Source Network (IOSN).
Enumerating more achievements of OSRC, he said it had represented Pakistan at 34 international conferences, and formed linkages between Pakistan and newly emerging open source markets in Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, UK and USA. A member of the Open Document Format (ODF) Alliance, the OSRC's efforts from PSEB's platform have also brought together Pakistan's IT industry and the open source community, the academia and various government agencies, to debate and develop an informed national consensus on the future of open standards.
The official said the OSRC's also contributed to US-based One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project and provided Urdu language support and desktop applications. The OSRC is also helping OLPC to establish working relationships with various stakeholders in the Asian region.
He said Pakistan had produced a total of 36 Red Hat certified professionals during last four years. The OSRC's Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) and Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) Training programme was also launched to increase the number. Six students passed the RHCE exam while seven students passed OSRC's RHCT exam.
The official said in another pioneering achievement, the OSRC had developed three freely downloadable training toolkits which were used as the basis for training workshops. This toolkit has been released under open source licenses and is intended for individuals and organisations interested in deploying or migrating from proprietary to open source networks.
The OSRC has also fulfilled the IT industry's growing demand and pioneered Pakistan's first-ever Asterisk training programme in four cities for free. Asterisk is an open source PBX, telephony engine, and telephony applications toolkit. The OSRC also launched free-of-cost Open Source Security Programme to develop awareness regarding the basic concepts in IT security, with a focus on using open source security tools.
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