AVOIR, open source and its economic long tail
A couple of weeks back, I ran across a reference to the African Virtual Open Initiative Research (AVOIR) which aims to bring together nine universities to expand capacity to design, develop and support free and open source software. AVOIR's goal is to harness African skill and knowledge through connections with the entire continent and the world at large. AVOIR lists four avenues of participation within the network: collaboration, development, implementation and connecting. According to its website:
"AVOIR encourages connecting with and establishing partnerships with local business, government and educational organizations, and the creation of local business opportunities."
I inquired further about the initiatives membership/involvement composition mentioned above and received the following response (via email) from Paul Scott, Manager FSIU & Chief Software Architect at AVOIR:
" AVOIR has always been, and will always remain an inclusive network. What that means is that anyone, under their own steam, is more than welcome to join the network and leverage the benefits as well as contribute to the overall running and growth of the network;"
The case for initiatives such as AVOIR extend past their potential to grow technical capacity using open source and the associated development model and into its ability to empower increased local economic opportunity. These opportunities compose what can be considered, the economic long tail within the global open source software ecosystem. The activities surrounding the larger-scale commercialization of open source technology fill out the high-amplitude section, one which has garnered the most immediate attention from those tracking industry growth and maturation (myself included). Still, what gives the open source model its strength is a form fitting makeup which enables multi-nationals, like Sun and IBM, to construct effective revenue models around it while still remaining a good fit at the local level in emerging domains across the world.
Therefore, open source's economic long tail can't be minimized or ignored, as it will be the origin of an interesting bevy of opportunities for developing nations to participate in a world economy where physical boundaries are becoming less important by the day. The opportunities will center around producing solutions which are currently being procured from foreign sources for significantly less. In Africa for example, billions of dollars are transferred to US and Europe in exchange for proprietary products, fit with their tendency to lock-in buyers to the sole benefit of the technology provider's margins. However, in the developing world, the money saved by avoiding the purchase of such solutions and instead invested in the building up of capacity to develop them domestically, will cultivate enhanced creativity, localization and self-sufficiency. Furthermore, software localization will be tied hand-in-hand with its development process instead of depending on a vendor to make the decision based on the potential of the market for that language.
In order for this to take place, developing countries will be required to not only consider already available open source alternatives (OpenOffice, Ubuntu Linux come to mind) but also make it a priority to nurture domestic open source software development capacity. The end goal wouldn't be to necessarily seed the beginnings of globally relevant communities but instead to leverage the efficiency of the open source development model as a productive force within that country's economic engine. This is by no means an easy task, but developing countries that begin the process today will be better prepared to meet its own IT needs and grow in an information driven world.
I expect the collective economic long tail for the open source software industry to develop in parallel (and similarly) to its higher frequency brethren. Consequently, pioneers such as AVOIR will continue to break tread new grounds until there is a ground swell of awareness surrounding the potential of doing so. At which point, more officially named and recognized groups and organizations will be set to emerge. Until that point, I plan to monitor the state of any such efforts as they arise.
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