I have been thinking lately about the future of Free and Open Source business and of potential business models that may suit the currently emerging (and apparently gigantic) economic sector. Until recently (and I am here taking the risk of entering into heated debates!), very few businesses have been established that generate most of their revenues by capitalising on F/OSS. Why?

While reading Rami’s blog about yet-another-fork in the GNU/Linux community, which coincidently came across while I am reading The Long Tail, some ideas started to emerge in my mind about a possible scenario for the future of F/OSS business models.

Today, a new resource for VoIP for Development is released to provide practical hands-on knowledge for ICT and Telecom practitioners working in the development field or aiming to build low-cost voice communications infrastructure.

The new guide explains the essential principles of voice communications over the Internet Protocol (IP) and is packed with practical cases and examples that will take the reader into real world issues and scenarios. This approach aims to develop practical skills that are particularly useful in developing regions. The Primer is available in four languages: English, Arabic, French and Spanish.

The Primer is freely distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license and can be downloaded from the following website:

http://www.it46.se/voip4d/voip4d.php

The official press release is available here:

http://www.it46.se/voip4d/pressrelease_voip4d.php?lang=en

For any information or comments about the Arabic version, please contact me: anas (at) tawileh (dot) net

I just came back from the Health Challenge Wales seminar which seeks to identify the negative effects of excessive alcohol consumption in the UK and find appropriate solutions that might mitigate these bad effects. The setting was excellent, three reputable, highly regarded researchers presented lots of interesting research results and survey data suggesting that the situation is actually bad and its getting worse!

Although the whole seminar was highly interesting, what struck me was the discussion afterwards, and the last five minutes in particular. Just before the seminar closing, in what was supposed to be a quick, informative remark, one of the researchers noted the results of one of his recent surveys, concluding that alcohol consumption among teenagers and consequently alcohol related violence are positively correlated to the excess income available to the teenagers. However, the other researcher did not seem very happy with that conclusion. Actually, he asked one of his assistants who were attending about the exact results of another study they did, which they claimed showed a negative correlation between teenagers disposable income and excessive consumption of alcohol.

I came back from the North African Wireless Networks Workshop with lots of memorable moments and a successful experience in using local language to deliver technical content.

This workshop is the last in a series of events organised by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and supported by the Canadian International Development Research Center (IDRC) and the Open Society Institute (OSI) to build capacity for Community Wireless Networks in Africa.