BBC Documentary Tonight on Open Source Software

The first part of this 2-part documentary airs tonight.  Sorry for the late notice, but I just learned about this.  Many thanks to Alan Runyan for the heads up.

I'm such a proponent of open source software and all that goes into creating and supporting it, and all that is enabled as a result.

I'm looking forward to seeing this documentary.

Below is some detail from the promo about it.

Tom

The famous digital divide is getting wider. A two-part documentary, "The Code Breakers," to be aired on BBC World starting 10 May 2006, examines whether free/open source software (FOSS) might be the bridge. 

FOSS contains 'source code' that can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction. It has been around for over 20 years but most PC owners are not aware that the Internet search engines and many computer applications run on FOSS. 

"It's not that FOSS has had a bad press, it has had no press because there is no company that 'owns' it," says executive producer Robert Lamb. "But we found that in the computer industry and among the afficionados, it is well known and its virtues well understood." 

The crew of the independent producers who made the film went to nearly a dozen countries around the world to see how the adoption of FOSS presents opportunities for industry and capacity development, software piracy reduction, and localization and customization for diverse cultural and development needs. 

Stories from "The Code Breakers" include computer and Internet access for school children in Africa, reaching the poor in Brazil, tortoise breeding programmes in the Galapagos, connecting villages in Spain, and disaster management in Sri Lanka. The documentary also includes interviews from key figures around the world. 

Intel, IBM, Sun and Microsoft all seem to agree that FOSS is a welcome presence in computer software.

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tags: BBC World|  open source