Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Poverty and Its Discontents

Poverty doesn't make the world go round. It creates the dreadful chasm that separates the haves and the utterly-deprived. I recently came across a TIME article which talks about world leaders finding solutions to "fix" terroristic mindsets around the world. The issue touches upon sensitive subjects including US foreign policy issues, and it makes much more sense, in that the world's most powerful nations should gather together and find a solution to alliviate the sufferings of third world nations, such as providing better education systems, deploying food aids, educating the public on health, closing in the gap between the rich and the poor, public facilities etc. Absolute poverty brings about desperation, mental breakdown of moral character, dysfunctional mindset, lack of willingness to understand right from wrong. While Abraham Maslow might have suggested the theoretical approach to the solutions to such problems, the practice is yet to be tested on. Countless efforts had been made to create a higher number of middle-class population in third world countries, attempts have been partly unsuccessful, due to the extreme difficulties facing aid workers, non-profit organizations in assisting those countries to fix the basic dilemnas of their own misjudgments.

The rich and poor cannot possibly have the same mindsets. What the rich considers a need, is beyond the wildest imagination of the poor. Take for example, the Internet. Why would the poor need internet access for? It is not in their best interest whether they are able to have it or not. It's the rich who needs it to trade shares on the stock markets, book plane tickets and go on luscious vacations in remote tropical islands, do research on the newest 6.0L SUVs available on the market. Another is; financial stability. How the heck are they supposed to grasp the concept of what an investment is when their level of education is somewhat meager, or minimal at best. What matters most to the poor is food, water and basic shelter. If even those basic needs are not within their reach, the list of other things coveted by the rich would be rendered useless. They are compelled to have such narrow mindsets, and it is literally inevitable. Their impulsive reluctance to differentiate the wrong from right deepens that chasm, which automatically sets the stage for barbaric, primitive and inhuman acts inflicted upon others in their society. Poor countries don't provide social welfare to the population, let alone education. For the most part, they need to rely on themselves to survive. Pollution-laden and heavily-congested streets elevate the stress level of the poor, as they commute to work each day not by cars, or buses but by bicycles and motorcycles thus exposing themselves to direct contact with the toxic and hazardous air (for the record, vehicles in third world countries don't require exhaust filters or catalytic converters to be installed in order to be street-legal). Time devaluation is another drawback in poor countries, they are just not as well educated to grasp the fundamental ideas of time management. Put it this way: You wouldn't be thinking of a dream house, or a dream vacation when you're constantly in survival mode, somewhere in the Amazon jungle for life ! That's almost how I figured it.

The sheer phychological pressure (and deprivation) exerted on individuals in these countries, somewhat catalyses, if not amplifies, the tendency to go to the extremes. These include joining Madrasahs, Jihad-oriented groups, religious sects teaching all sorts of terror tactics imaginable. Terror groups thrive in poor countries, largely because of state breakdowns, governments unable to even supply the basic needs of the people; clean potable water, decent transportation systems (roads, railways), financial stability, justifiable political system, fair trial of criminals, justice, equality and the list goes on. These undoubtfully contributes to how a person reacts to the allurement of getting involved in a Jihad, or terrorism war.

Open Source As a Mainstream Alternative

Why does Open Source matter? Is Open Source really free? Would proprietary software be entirely wiped out from the face of the earth in, say, fifty year's time? These are the questions that come tumbling upon the people of the IT Industry.

For me personally, Open Source has contributed a great deal to our organization's systematic approach to software usage, whether they be user-based applications or back-end server sides. I feel the organization has benefited immensely from such an undertaking. Open source software successfully delivered what it promised, from easy-to-use interfaces, to full-fledged functionality packed in those binary packages that's never before imaginable (considering it's developed by a community of enthusiasts, part-timers, and downright hobbyists).

While I'm not promoting Open Source in any way, it does speak the truth, for itself. Plain free software, most fully-functional and even comparably more useful to its payware counterparts (not to mention some perform better than their proprietary counterparts). No gimmicks, no frills, just plain good, working software. You'd never had to worry about violating copyrights, incriminating licenses, or the imposition of additional fees when using them (this being limited to usage, while some fees are imposed if you're a developer and want to sell for a profit. The licenses themself are usually under various Open Source licenses, GNU GPL (General Public License), BSD and Apache being the norm of some examples).

Open Source communities are getting larger and larger and they seem to appear by the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Creativity, innovation, and radical improvements are added to the already feature-packed softwares, benefiting millions across the globe. Patches are more frequently updated, as developers from different parts of the world, working from different time zones contributing to the software tree (as opposed to a few developers working to fix that decade-old bug)

The passion to develop helps create this phenomenon, some wanting recognition from the developer community as a whole would turn to open source as a staging monumental step to elevate status. Many such developers eventually work for well-known, high-profile dot com companies such as Google and eBay.

Software giants such as Microsoft, had begun undertakings to promote and sponsor Open Source conventions, seminars and conferences where permissible. This is a no surprise, if the world's moving in that direction, wouldn't it be also right to say you need to move in that direction too? Strangely enough, news had gone around, Microsoft asking some Linux distributions to join in a pact to co-develop a branch of Open Source operating system. While many of the Linux distributions rejected Microsoft's idea, some are still pondering if the joint-venture would be worth the effort.

While the idea has been around for decades, only in recent years does open source gain popularity as it's developer base increases exponentially. After all, would Steve Jobs be right when he said (quoting from Alan Kay) "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." ?

The propensity to say "I believe so" lingers in my mind.