NewsForge: Saudi Open Source Conference Opens Minds

“It was a small, one-day conference aimed at government and
industry IT heads. I counted a maximum of 127 men in the
auditorium. A few women attended, but in accordance with Saudi
tradition they were in a separate room, watching through
closed-circuit TV. Two easily-identified Microsoft trolls were also
in the main auditorium audience, asking the same questions
Microsoft hirelings ask at open source conferences all over the
world, but they didn’t make much headway.

“This was the fourth in a series of government-sponsored
discussions that are supposed to help develop a national IT plan
for Saudi Arabia. I was invited to speak by Dr. Khaled A.
Al-Ghoneim, CEO of Al-Elm Information Security, president of the
Saudi Computer Society, and co-founder of the Saudi Linux User
Group, which is part of the Computer Society…”

Complete Story