free openSS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThe authors would like to acknowledge their debt of gratitude to the following:Phet Sayo, the Programme Specialist for Building Capacities and Partnerships at UNDP-APDIP, for gettingus started; Kenneth Wong, the Programme Consultant for the International Open Source Network, UNDP-APDIP; Tan Wooi Tong, the Programme Specialist for the International Open Source Network, UNDP-APDIP, for their patience and hard work. Managing and working on this large-scale project with them asour colleagues has made our lives less complicated. The team not only facilitated the project but alsoprovided the feedback and input that makes this primer unique.Sarmad Hussain, M Sasikumar and Javier Solá, the coordinator of KhmerOS, the Khmer (Cambodia)Software Initiative, for reviewing this primer and providing invaluable input. We want to specially thankJavier for his contribution on pages 12-15 on free/open source software and its benefits and the casestudy of Khmer localization.Vorasone Dengkayaphichith, Vincent Berment, Alberto Escudero-Pascual, Pramod Raghavendra andGuntapalli Karunakar, who read and critiqued this primer.Arthit-Thai OpenOffice team member, Indian and Vietnamese participants for their responses to thesurveys.Fred Williams, for his invaluable input, advice and suggestions.PAN Localization Project (www.panl10n.net), PAN programme of IDRC and Center for Research in UrduLanguage Processing (CRULP, www.crulp.org) at National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences(www.nu.edu.pk), for providing information from the survey during the “Fundamentals of Local LanguageComputing” training used in the second section.Anousak dedicates this work to his family and his late parents.vii