Date 27 August 2004

Open Source in Pakistan by Khawar Nehal

Contributions

First person : Rubt company developing business applications using TCL/Tk in Saddar. Owner was a NED classmate of Arif Sattar. Hired a foxpro turned TCL/Tk programmer who was later hired into cyberaccess.

FAST ICS Saw first “distribution” of over 100 floppies. Worried that what would happen if one of the floppies failed.

Arif Sattar hired me into Acsys limited and provided the Linux Secrets book by Naba Barkakati with slackware on it. Upon seeing the three boot floppies I gave him the RedHat paper order form to get the distribution. Once RedHat 3.0.3 arrived Mr. Arif saw that it was clearly a better distribution.

Syed Yousuf had some 1.2 MB 5.25 inch floppies. Yes these were those which were really floppy before the rigid 3.5” 1.44 MB things came along.

Imran Qureshi

Mention Mohammad Ali Sabzwari

Mention Asaf Maroof

Tariq Pardesi for being the first businessman to “venture” into the ISP area by starting Digicom with Naseer Khan Ghazi.

Naseer Khan Ghazi had to endure a lot of technical hardships like having to answer questions like “what is email and how can it be better than regular mail.”

Tariq Pardesi had to invest into some unknown area and couldn't understand what this Internet Service thing is until he visited the US. Learning that the Internet is useful for business was fun but learning how to make an ISP survive in the Pakistani business climate is extremely painful. When the first ISP was created there weren't as many business restrictions as there are now. Hardware businesses have been facilitated since then but most of the Internet businesses have been severely restricted (some to death) in order to protect PTCL.