“This being said, virtually no Iraqis know anything about the
debate over open versus proprietary software. Since Iraq never
signed on to the copyright conventions common in other countries,
Iraqis have no sensitivity to the issue. They believe that all
software costs 2,000 dinars, or roughly one dollar, the price
software sellers charge for any copied CD. But this will change
soon. Iraq’s basic laws are being rewritten right now, largely with
the help of US government advisors. And, without counter-advocacy,
it seems all but certain that Iraq will soon have some of the
strictest DMCA-like codes in the world.“I am an American reporter, the Baghdad correspondent for the
public radio business show Marketplace and a Linux user. I’ve
searched around and have found precisely two Linux advocates in all
of Iraq. Ashraf Tariq and Hasanen Nawfal have created Iraq’s only
Linux User Group and are, to date, its only members. (Another
group, iraqilinux.org, is made up of people outside of Iraq, hoping
to encourage Linux use in the country.) Ashraf and Hasanen are
quite impressive. They are young graduate students at the
until-recently named Saddam University…”
Related Story:
Linux
Journal: Letter to the US Department of Commerce on Exporting Linux
to Iraq(Dec 17, 2003)