Open source in Kosovo

In February 2009, James Micheal DuPont became the first person in Kosovo to teach the operating system GNU/Linux. In June of that year, some of the students continued to teach about the OS.[8]

Shkodra, Albania

OpenStreetMap contributes mostly to open-source software in Kosovo. Together with the OpenStreetMap community, companies like LogisticPlus have contributed to the movement. . Its beginnings have been seen in the map which was made for Brod town, which was endangered by environmental damage. This project was introduced by Joachim Bergerhoff, who told to FLOSSK UN-HABITAT had a project for them. FLOSSK helped in the development of this project.[9][10]The map, which was created by community, included Brod, Gjilan, Gjakovë, Ferizaj, Prizren, Pejë, and Prishtinë.[11] Another project was also the project for Shkodra, when in 2010 the community helped the survivors of flooding to find the streets.[12][13]

"Kumevotu.info" is a project for youths of Flossk to help people find the places where they can vote in the 2010 election. This project was held until 12 December 2010 and was based on Open Street Map, where the user gives his personal data and he can find the place where he should vote. The project was very useful, even for the youngsters who participated in creating it.[14][15]

OLPC project

OLPC was one of the most attractive FOSS projects in Kosovo because it was dedicated to children and poor places where children use a laptop to learn about 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 the internet and learn. The project was very welcomed in Kosovo. [16]

The Albanian community of open source in Kosovo has been active in Wikipedia and Wikimedia, and has been dealing mainly with promoting open knowledge by translating Wikipedia articles in Albanian. This initiative was made by FLOSSK, and it resulted with 31,458 articles in Albanian language. In 2013, a conference called 'WikiacademyKosovo' was held; it was a direct way of adding articles in Wikipedia.[17][18]

The Fedora project is also active in Kosovo. It is promoted and distributed by its ambassadors in Kosovo: Ardian Haxha and Gent Thaqi. FLOSSK in association with the ambassadors organize parties to announce new versions.[19]

FlOSSK, Mozilla Projects

The Mozilla Firefox community is active in Kosovo. FLOSSK was also promoting the Mozilla Project. The ambassadors in Kosovo[20][21] and Heroid Shehu are very active in promoting the project.[22]

In Kosovo, there have also been projects about the platform Drupal. FLOSSK in association with UNICEF Lab organized 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 in Drupal to use and developing this content management system.[23][24]

University of Prishtina, FIEK

On 29 and 30 August 2009, the first annual conference, "Software Freedom Kosovo 2009", was held in the premises of Faculty of Engineering organized by FLOSSK and University of Pristina. In the conference were presented the public figures from the FOSS world:

• Giussepe Maxia by Sun Microsystems, who 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,
• 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

Above 40 topics were discussed in lectures on various fields including Wikipedia, Free Encyclopedia, Linux, intellectual property licenses, building communities, and programming languages PHP and Python. This conference was called one of the most extensive in Southeast Europe.[25][26][27][28][29][30]

"Software Freedom Kosovo 2010” was held on 25-26 September in Prishtina]]. SFK10 again was organized by FLOSS Kosovo and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer (FIEK) of the University of Pristina.

There were 24 lectures from Kosovo and overseas.

The main lecturers and also guests of honor of this conference were:

• Leon Shiman, board member of X.Org Foundation, 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.

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. [31][32][33][34]

The 2011 iteration of the conference was held on 12 November 2011. With over 300 participants, this conference was one of the most successful held till now. The day-long event was themed "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)

. Speakers for the first half of the day were; Gëzim Pula, CEO of 3CIS, Amir Neziri, James Michael DuPont, Ervis Tusha and Marian Marionv. In the second part of the day, there were presentations by: Arian Xheaziri of Chyrp CMS, P. Chriesteas of OpenERP, Jonian Dervishi of Ditari.im, Edlira Kalemi, Damjan Georgievski, Flakerim Ismani of Ruby on Rails, and Erdet Nasufi,

The final lecture was by Omer Keser, a Google executive, who spoke on the Google mobile applications and the development of mobile-phone use across different states.[35][36][37][38][39]

This conference focused on web technologies that are standards-based and vendor such as HTML5 and JavaScript. It was held on 8-9 September in the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, in Prishtina.[40][41] [42][43][44][45][46][47]

Klina Embleme

The 2013 conference was held in the Faculty of Education in the University of Pristina. Some of the topics that were discussed include mobile open web, hacker spaces, data protection, freelancing and code sharing scaling cloud.

More than 170 participants and many speakers, including Alex Lakatos, a JavaScript developer and Mozilla representative; Redon Skikuli, another Mozilla Representative and co-founder of Design Everview in Tirana, Arianit Dobroshi, a member of FLOSSK; Arbnor Hasani currently involved with Innovations Lab in Kosovo at the Design Center, Ana Risteska, a contributor to the GNOME project; and Burim Shala, WordPress theme developer.

Two days of the conference were held elsewhere and focused on 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. [48][49][50][51]