គម្រោងកម្មវិធីកុំព្យូទ័រភាសាខ្មែរ

The last decade has seen a phenomenon that in the preceding one would have been though as impossible. A community of volunteer computer scientists has put together and maintains computer operating systems, advanced user interfaces and a number of applications that compete in quality, appearance and robustness with some of the most developed proprietary (owned by one company) operating systems (such as Microsoft Windows). All this software –grouped under the name of OpenSource Software- can be used or translated by anybody, without having to pay any licenses.

OpenSource Software is also referred to as Free Software, not only because it does not have license costs, but also because it can be modified, translated, improved or distributed by anybody who needs to do so (freedom of modification and distribution).

The most popular OpenSource operating system is called Linux. At this time, more than 60% of the world's Internet servers use the Linux free operating system and other OpenSource free tools.

Large computer companies such as IBM, Novell or Sun Microsystems support the OpenSource model and develop OpenSource software. They consider that it is positive for their business.

OpenSource software included in releases follows strict control rules similar to those of proprietary releases, and is tested by large amounts of volunteer computer scientists.

A larger and larger number of European national and local administrations have developed or are developing policies to use OpenSource software instead of proprietary systems and tools. Japan, China and Korea has recently signed an agreement to develop a full system that will facilitate developments in these languages that use pictograms. The United Nations Development Program is actively promoting the use of OpenSource software in the Asia/Pacific region, as well as coordinating development efforts.

In the OpenSource model, in spite of the fact that the system and many applications are free, any development done by a development company for a customer is governed by the contract between those two parties, and not considered free software unless whoever has the rights to the software decides to put it in the public domain.

Available OpenSource software includes most of the applications that are traditionally used by computer end-users:

• Office applications similar in aspect and usability to those included in Microsoft Office, and fully compatible with them. Word processing, Spreadsheet, Presentation Tools and database management tools.
• Internet navigation, e-mail, chat, web development, instant messaging and other Internet related applications.
• Multimedia applications (music and video). Image and photo Editing.
• Utilities (such as calculator, games, etc…).

Some OpenSource user interfaces and applications are now being translated into different languages, including Indic languages such as some Hindi or Tamil or languages –such as Thai- that use complex Indic scripts similar to Khmer script. There already exist systems that can be used to facilitate implementation of Khmer script, but such implementation did not yet exist a few months ago... but now some people are now actively working on it, with very good results. Please see our status and project news pages.