[Icommons] Ubuwiki broadening the commons in Africa
David Lewis
davidrobertlewis at yahoo.co.uk
Mon Nov 3 14:14:45 EST 2008
Ubuwiki for Africa offers a global solution
A localisation of the popular Wiki format
could be the solution to low bandwidth in the developing world says an
intermediate technology group that is calling for greater offline
accessiblity and knowledge sharing.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEPRLog (Press Release) – Oct 14, 2008 – "A traveller through a country would stop at a
village and he didn't have to ask for food or for water.. Once he stops,
the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu
but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people
should not address themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going
to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to
improve?” - Nelson Mandela.
Ubuwiki Offline is a unique open source and intermediate technology solution for Africa
where low-bandwidth and high-cost of internet make communication
unaffordable for the majority.
"Think of Ubuwiki as an MP3 for files and data -- If the only
digital music available was via streaming audio, computer users would
naturally rebel and find a way of saving the information offline," so says David Robert Lewis, the brains behind the Ubuwiki distribution.
"Luckily we have the international WoaS community to thank for this
development that could provide Africa with a solution to its
communications deficit in which computer users are constantly
frustrated by the lack of offline resources."
"We believe Ubuwiki is the answer to the digital divide, since it
allows users to edit and build pages ‘offline’ in situations in which
there is no internet readily available, and in keeping with the spirit
that is the basis of Ubuntu, the application is shared by the
community."
Ubuwiki users are encouraged to make use of the popular
Ubuntu Linux operating system and the package is intended as a way the
broader ubuntu community may stay in touch with each other, sharing
knowledge and information in a practical, concrete way.
In the face of the digital divide, Ubuwiki contains a digest of information – Ubuwiki Live - to get users
of the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system started. Wikipedia has
already announced plans to migrate to the popular Ubuntu platform.
Ubuwiki is in reality an alternative distribution of the XHTML/Java platform
created by the open-source Wiki on a Stick (WoaS) project, which exists
entirely in a self-contained file, allowing users to edit and change
live content to suit their individual needs.
The Indlovu Project responsible for the South African WoaS
localisation and distribution, has called for greater offline
accessiblity of web-pages, and knowledge sharing that does not rely
solely on expensive high-tech computers or dependence upon costly
highspeed internet and agrees that WoaS-type digital bundles are the
way to go in terms of offering computer users an format that respects
the needs of human-beings.
You can download the package from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuwikioffline/
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