Open source in Kosovo

The first project in open source in Kosovo was the adjustment of Open Office Packet in December 2003. On 28 July 2004 the Albanian team, users of Linux (GGSL), was one of the first public organizations for the purpose of getting information about the field of open source. This conference was called "Software Freedom Day". Software Freedom Day is known as the first initiative about FOSS in Kosovo in the level of conference. The purpose of that conference was to promote the free and open software. Some of the issues that were discussed were about Linux, what is free software and open sources in general. Another issue that was discussed in that conference was about the operative system Linux and its benefits. KDE and GNOME were the last issues that were discussed in conference. Ati-Kos has made some surveys in five municipal assemblies of Kosovo in May 2005. According to this survey about 98.6% wanted software box in mother tongue, in Albanian. In another survey, the majority of the participants believed that a software box like Open Office would help in increasing the productivity in different fields because of the interface in Albanian.

FLOSSK (Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova)

James Michael DuPont (right) and Giuseppe Maxia

Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova (FLOSSK) FLOSS Kosova is a non-governmental organization which was established in March 2009 that promotes free and open-source software. This initiative was undertaken by James Michael DuPont in association with volunteers from Kosovo. The first results of this organization have been seen in August of that year in the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where was held the first conference of this organization.

The conference became a tradition and was held every year. The conference, which resulted in being the biggest conference in the region, was called “Software Freedom Kosova 2009”, which promoted free and open-source software, the growth of knowledge and maps.

The active members are:

• James Michael Dupont Co-Founder, Executive Board Member
• Shkumbin Brestovci Co-Founder, Executive Board
• Ardian Haxha – President of Executive Board
• Valon Brestovci – Executive Board Member
• Taulant Ramabaja – Executive Board Member

and other members around Kosovo and abroad.

Open source projects and trainings

The first course of Linux

In February 2009, the first person who started teaching lessons about operative system Linux in Kosovo was James Micheal DuPont. These courses were held in IDI and were mainly concerned about the basic elements of using Linux and its benefits with other systems. In June of that year, some of the students continued to teach lessons about Linux.

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap is one of the projects which contributes mostly for Open Source in Kosovo. Many members from the Open Street Map community have worked on this project – companies like 'LogisticPlus ' and other companies as well. Its beginnings have been seen in map which was made for the Brod town. It was about "Brod" town which was endangered from environmental damages on them mountains of Sharri. This project was introduced by Joachim Bergerhoff who told to Flossk that UN-HABITAT has project for them. Flossk helped in the development of this project.

Shkodra, Albania

The map which was created by community included cities and towns as : Brod, Gjilan, Gjakovë, Ferizaj, Prizren, Pejë, Prishtinë.

An interesting project was also the project for Shkodra, when in 2010 community had helped the survivors of flooding to find the streets.

Kumevotu.info

The project 'kumevotu.info' is a project of the youngsters of Flossk for less than two weeks. The duty of this project was to help people to find the place where to vote. This project was held until 12 December 2010 and was dedicated especially for the elections of the year 2010. The project was based on Open Street Map, where the user gives his personal data and then in an interesting map he can find the place where he should vote. The project was very useful, even for the youngsters who participated in creating it.

OLPC

OLPC project

OLPC was one of the most attractive projects of Open source in Kosovo because it was dedicated to children. OLPC was a project which was dedicated to poor places where the basic thing is a laptop which is used by children to learn the system of Linux. This laptop was based on a version of Fedora and it had some basic applications. It was also equipped with WiFi where people could browse in internet and learn new things. This project was supported since the first steps of Flossk and in different conferences. The project was very welcomed in Kosovo.

Wikipedia project

The Albanian community of open source in Kosovo has been active in the field of Wikipedia and Wikimedia. This community has been dealing mainly with promoting open knowledge in Wikipedia by translating it in Albanian so it made easier for the community to be informed about everything. This initiative was made by Flossk, and it resulted with 31,458 articles in Albanian language. In 2013, a conference was held, called 'WikiacademyKosovo', which is a direct way of adding articles in Wikipedia.

Fedora project

The project 'Fedora' is one of the open source projects which is also active in Kosovo. It is promoted and distributed from its two ambassadors in Kosovo: Ardian Haxha and Gent Thaqi. Flossk in association with ambassadors of Fedras in Kosovo always it organizes parties to announce for new versions.

FlOSSK, Mozilla Projects

Mozilla project

Mozilla Firefox community is active in Kosovo. One of the other projects of Flossk was also promoting the Mozilla Project. The ambassadors in Kosovo Altin Ukshini, Gent Thaqi and Heroid Shehu are very active in promoting the Mozilla Project.

Drupal training

In Kosovo, there have also been projects about the platform Drupal. Flossk in association with UNICEF Lab has managed to organize a training project on 6 May with Dave Hall, who is a member of free software, counselor, and administrator of the systems in Australia . The participants were trained for knowledge about Drupal, ways of using and developing this CMS.

Conferences

Software Freedom Kosova 2009

University of Prishtina, FIEK

On 29 and 30 August 2009, the first annual Conference, “Software Freedom Kosova 2009”, was held in the premises of Faculty of Engineering organized by Free Libre and Open Source Software Kosova (FLOSSK) and University of Pristina. In the conference were presented the public figures from the world of Free and Open Source Software as below:

• Giussepe Maxia by Sun Microsystems which is also the MySQL community manager
• Dan Carchidi from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who spoke of Open Courseware (OCW)
• Flavia Marzano, Italy's representative at the European Commission on issues of Free and Open Source Software and,

File:PrizrenCollection2010 100 4594.ogv

• Brian King from Mozilla who spoke for Firefox browser and its extensions.

Presented from Kosovo were also :

• Prof. Dr. Blerim Rexha – Deputy Minister of Energy and Mining
• Prof. Asc. Myzafere Limani – Dean of Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer
• Lule Ahmedi – FIEK professor and

James Michael DuPont – Co-Founder of FLOSSK In this conference is promoted the free and open-source software and also the aim was to exchange experiences between the speakers and audiences. Above 40 topics were lectures on various fields ranging from issues related to Wikipedia, Free Encyclopedia, Linux, intellectual property licenses, building communities, and programming languages PHP and Python. Given all these features mentioned above, this conference can be freely called one of the most extensive in Southeast Europe.

Software Freedom Kosova 2010

“Software Freedom Kosova 2010” was held for the second time on 25-26 September, in capital city of Kosovo, Prishtina. SFK10 again was organized by FLOSS Kosovo and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer (FIEK) of the University of Pristina. Conference this time was more than last time and was more focused: there were 24 lectures from Kosovo, region and world.

The main lecturers and also guests of honor of this conference were as renowned hacker

• Leon Shiman, board member of the Foundation that oversees the development of graphical system for Linux and BSD – X.Org, and owner of Shiman Associates consulting firm
• Rob Savoye, the primary developer of Gnash as previously developed for Debian, Red Hat and Yahoo. Savoy codes since 1977
• Mikel Maron, OpenStreeMap Foundation board member
• Peter Salus, linguist, computer scientist and historian of technology.

FK10 was prepared thanks to a job of almost a year from the organizing committee.

And also other topics were also offered by:

• Milot Shala
• Martin Bekkelund
• Baki Goxhaj
• Marco Fioretti

The conference was held at the premises of Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Software Freedom Kosova 2011

Through the time spending, tradition continued. So, almost in the middle of November, exactly on 12th, 2011 was organized the next conference of “Software Freedom Kosova 2011”, as one of the largest activities in this field. With over 300 participants, this conference was one of the most successful held till now, local and regional speakers with a full intensive day of very much topics that touched the world of Free Software. This one was held just for a day and was more focused at topic “Doing Business with Open Source”. The introductory remarks were made by:

• Muzafere Limani (FIEK dean),
• Lule Ahmedi (professor at FIEK and Conference Co-leader),
• Vjollca Cavolli (STIKK Director) and
• Arianit Dobroshi (President of FLOSSK's board), who talked more about the importance of organizing this conference and also for the weight of this event for development of free software community and also importance of IT industry in Kosovo.

The public was very curious about the topics that were presented in first half of the day:

• Gëzim Pula, CEO of 3CIS, which was introductory speech and presented the achievements of the company that he leads, which has an excellent result in the scope of outsourcing, then:
• Amir Neziri that had the next regular speech talking about the security of web servers and web applications,
• James Michael DuPont on the importance of quick response to customers requests,
• Ervis Tusha on security testing web applications,
• Marian Marionv on how Open Source helps and enriches his company.

In the second part of the day, there were presentations by:

• Arian Xheaziri for Chyrp CMS,
• P. Chriesteas for OpenERP,
• Jonian Dervishi who spoke for Ditari.im – an engine for blogging,
• Edlira Kalemi on LAMP vs. closed code,
• Damjan Georgievski on CouchDB and access to applications based on it,
• Flakerim Ismani for Ruby on Rails,
• Erdet Nasufi, the elevator management system with (Arduino) remotely.

And finally the long-awaited final presentation held by Omer Keser, Google executive, who spoke on the Google mobile applications detailing the number of users of mobile devices, their numbers in the territories of the world, the development of mobile phone use across different states. This conference was more focused in the aim of being a meeting point between a network of individuals and companies to sponsoring and also initiating projects to benefit the people of Kosovo by establishing it as one of the European centers of FLOSS, and as soon as possible result in commercial benefits for the country. This aim could achieve if Kosovo businesses and public introduce in a low cost alternatives rather than expensive proprietary software, promote respect for legal licenses, and introduce the public to the best methods for localization of software and knowledge. This kind of activity will present lecturers from the business world that use FLOSS in their commercial development projects. It will also present examples of companies from the region that are using FLOSS as a competitive leg up in the outsourcing European market. Moreover, by presenting free code to build on, it helps entry level professionals and companies build up skills and work up the leader towards more value added projects.

Software Freedom Kosova 2012

Open source software conference and related developments in knowledge, culture and mapping held in Prishtina, Kosovo. As the largest conference of its kind in the region the conference is being organized by Free Libre Open Source Kosova (FLOSSK), Kosovo association of information and Oommunication technology, Ipko Foundation and faculty of Electrical Engineering of University of Pristina. This conference more focused on web technologies that are standards-based and vendor such as HTML5, JavaScript and the like. This is especially important when we consider the recent developments in the global scene that are related to touch-optimized applications, mobile web and the fact that software development in Kosovo centers on web technologies. This conference held on 8-9 September in the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, in Prishtina.

Software Freedom Kosova 2013

Software Freedom Kosova 2013 nonprofit conference, for the 5th time edition has been organized by FLOSSK, with some new details released regarding in agenda and speakers that presented on 7 September 2013 and it was the first day of conference. Some of the topics that were discussed include mobile open web, hacker spaces, data protection, freelancing and code sharing scaling cloud.

This one for the first time changed the traditional location, and organizing was in Faculty of Education in University of Pristina. More than 170 participants and many speakers and welcome note done by Arianit Dobroshi, Altin Ukshini and Ardian Haxha that were thankful for anyone who was presented, for speakers and donators. The lecture was presented by Alex Lakatos, a Java Script developer and Mozilla Representative based in Cluj-Napoca, Redon Skikuli, Mozilla Representative and one of the co-founders of Design Everview in Tirana, Arianit Dobroshi one of the main member since the beginning of Flossk, Arbnor Hasani currently involved with Innovations Lab in Kosovo at the Design Center, Ana Risteska contributor to the GNOME project or Burim Shala, WordPress theme developer. Two next days of conference were held in other place and focused more in practical things by the participants, like Tuning Postagre SQL with Bert Desmet, Awesome HTML5/CSS3 with Vleran Dushi, WordPress and Template Development with Burim Shala and WMKIT Arduino workshop with Redon Sikuli.

Klina Embleme

Open Source in Government

In November 2004, Klina municipality started a project to change computer network in Linux and OpenOffice.org. The first part of the project was charged with Firefox and OpenOffice.org, and the second part was charged with Linux. From 3rd to 6 November in that year 70% of municipality had computer network in English language OpenOffice.org and Firefox in Albanian. The proliferation of open source software products have benefits from many companies and government of Kosovo because the costs are significantly lower and security is higher. UNDP FOSS Club has also trained municipal employees. A survey conducted at the end of training 100% of employees stated that prefer the software to be in Albanian language. The project for the translation of OpenOffice.org in Albanian language started in that year. UNDP FOSS team consisted of members from Bulgaria and Kosovo.

Richard Stallman's visit in Kosovo

On 4 June 2010, Richard Stallman, an activist and programmer of free software, visited Kosovo. He lectured on the topic "A Free Digital Society" at the National Library of Kosovo.

The lecture, which was about the freedom of the digital society and the threats that have to do with it, was very welcomed by a large number of the participants. During his lecture, Richard Stallman mentioned many countries where digital freedom was directly violated, such as Denmark, Australia, and other countries, where many webpages have been closed for unclear reasons.

He emphasized that the presence of free software and freedom in educational institutions is really necessary for the countries that want to advance their societies to use the free software and who do not want to be dependent on software that they have to pay for.

He also emphasized:

"Today I had a meeting with the minister of Education in Kosovo who offered to help in implementation of the free software in schools of Kosovo. This will help your country to develop, to be free, independent and not weak. Working on this project you will be more powerful and you will give the others also the opportunity to get knowledge about freedom of software" Richard Stallman.

At the end, Richard Stallman answered many questions put forth by the participants in the room.

Wiki Academy Kosovo

The winner of contest

Wiki Academy Kosovo

From 22-24 February at the Faculty of Education near University of Pristina was held the first academy which was called : WikiacademyKosovo. The idea of this conference was to promote Kosovo in digital world and to emphasize its good things through new and qualitative articles and pictures in Wikimedia. The propaganda which is present against Kosovo is a threat for the idea what Kosovo is as a country. Academy revealed articles about cultural heritage, social issue, geography, institutions, economy, and tourism; it was also a starting point to improve the actual image about Kosovo. A number of mentors of Wikipedia were present in this event in which they advised the writers about their writings, where as result the writings became more qualitative. The winners of the academy were writings such as :

• Archaeology of Kosovo – Atdhe Prelvukaj,
• Classical Music in Kosovo- Liburn Jupolli, Mic Sokoli, Edona Vatoci,
• Information and Communications Technology in Kosovo- Dardan Ahmeti.

This academy was supported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kosovo, the Great Britain Ambassy, the Royal Ambassy of Norway, British Council, IPKO foundation and kosovar organization FLOSSK.