Python Helping Human Rights

[Bo Vandenberg]

Wired  http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51106,00.html has an
article about Patrick Ball who gathers and manages information about human
rights abuses.

"With the methodical manner of a forensic examiner who uses statistics and
open-source software instead of scalpels and x-rays, Ball undermined
Milosevic's claim that NATO and rebel forces -- and not Milosevic's own Serb
army -- caused ethnic Albanian deaths and displacement in Kosovo."

He used Python and MySQL to graph the rate and timing of the  Kosovo murders
and expulsions.

"At the trial in The Hague, Ball -- a sociologist, statistician and coder --
told the court that when he mapped the locations of the deaths and the
patterns of the refugee flows out of Kosovo in 1999, he saw an unmistakable
method in how they occurred over time and space."

He says that open source software is ideal because work in it is easily
reproduced, and there is a far lower price barrier for poorer
nations\organizations.


What an accolade for open source and Python. Makes me feel good to be
working in this software.


Bo