Re: Contextualized software, cost of download

Hi Janusz,

> My reading of the article is that there are two kinds of issues
> 1) end users pay a lot for the download time
> 2) limited bandwidth, affecting more-or-less everybody: "Businesses and
> institutions also struggle; universities, for instance, need to block sites
> such as Facebook, iTunes, and YouTube in order to keep their Internet
> bandwidth available for scholarly research".


that's indeed a good distinction to consider, and workaround both are 
essential.
However the big difference i see is that very few people people are 
considering the first point.
There are lots of global actions focusing on extending the bandwidth for 
e.g. sub-saharan africa. Those are huge infrastrucutre project, but very 
few work are done about how to reach the end-user, particularly how to 
deploy content on mobile phones, because it is considered as the role of 
mobile operators.
So at high-level, people believe that deploying content to end-user is 
easy, overlooking the cost aspect, which is a "detail" for them, but 
that's what create a big divide between what is possible and what's 
happening imho. Therefore, i believe it is essential to show that yes 
deploying content to users is an issue, and there are workarounds.

> Let's talk about  the second point here.  If institutions suffer from
> b/w bottleneck, will they be willing to donate some b/w to downloaders?
> I can (just about) imagine a university  being happy for its students
> to obtain free software over its internet connection, particularly if 
> it is related (even vaguely) to the curriculum, but why should external 
> users be allowed to use a scarce resource?

Lots of university i know in Africa are largely involved in trying to 
help rural communities, developing projects and so on. so i'm sure that 
such a kiosk solutions would surely be of primary interest for them.

> What about a 'caching toaster'? I mean  a CD-recorder at the back (or
> may be at the front...) of  some sort of a web cache, aka a 'popular free
> software repository'.  It makes no sense to 
> download the same program over and over again each time another
> user wants his/her own copy. Ok, this makes the 'toaster' more
> complicated and expensive, but in places with  existing IT support
> (universities, larger libraries) this should not be a major issue.

caching is indeed a potential solution. But well, this is a 
technological answer to a larger problem which is the lack of local 
content. Why the international bandwidth is so expensive in e.g. Africa ?
First of all,  because of the unbalanced aspect of the communication 
(content going from one side to the other always the same direction).
So if there were more local content, not only it would be more adapted 
(contextually, culturally,...) to the local needs, but it would reduce 
the need of the international bandwidth. At the end, it might also 
happen that the communications would be more balanced, decreasing the 
cost of the bandwidth.
So i believe that it is essential to understand what would be an 
enabling context, that would trigger the development of content and 
services locally.
Education is one aspect for sure, but not the alone one.
Understanding what kind of content and applications, how to make it 
accessible (again physically, culturally,...), how ot deploy it...
My hope is that this group will work on identifying these different 
aspects that would create an enabling context.

Cheers
Stephane
> Janusz Lukasiak
> freelance IT consultant
> janusz@eumx.net
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Stephane Boyera		stephane@w3.org
W3C				+33 (0) 4 92 38 78 34
BP 93				fax: +33 (0) 4 92 38 78 22
F-06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,		
France

Received on Monday, 23 June 2008 08:38:44 UTC