When Linux fails
,----[ Quote ]
| Jon “Maddog” Hall’s keynote talk at the Ontario Linux Fest also made this
| point in a very powerful way. Jon is a wonderfully entertaining speaker, and
| not afraid of controversy. Showing a picture of a child in the African bush
| holding a “One Laptop per Child” laptop he said, “I don’t care about this
| kid.” The audience drew a shocked breath. “He’s screwed,” continued
| Jon. “Five hundred miles of bush behind him, five hundred miles of bush in
| front of him. There’s nothing I can do to help here”. Jon flipped the slide
| to show a Brazilian “favela”, or slum city, with an incredibly dense
| population, seeming to cling to the side of a nearby hill. He said, “This is
| where I can help. These kids have electricity. They can get a network
| connection. I can do something with Open Source and Free Software here”.
|
| Jon isn’t a callous person. He’s just decided to focus his resources on
| somewhere he knows he can help today. It’s hard to find fault with him for
| that.
`----
http://www.tuxdeluxe.org/node/287
Recent from Jon "Maddog" Hall:
Show me the Code
,----[ Quote ]
| I was probably always subtly aware of the abilities of some free software
| programmers, so I should not continue to be amazed by what they can do. But I
| must admit they do continue to astonish me.
`----
http://www.linux-magazine.com/w3/issue/96/Doghouse_Open_Einstein.pdf
Open Source Software and Africa
,----[ Quote ]
| As an advocate for free, open-source software, I have run into
| Microsoft's "battles" many times, and your article ("Microsoft Battles
| Low-Cost Rival for Africa," page one, Oct. 28) made visible many of the
| issues around money-poor African nations being wooed by a large, powerful
| monopoly.
|
| However, your article doesn't go into the deeper value of using FOSS in
| Africa. Because FOSS supplies the source code for the software used, end
| users have the choice of using the software as it exists on the Internet or
| changing the software to meet their needs. Getting security fixes for
| software running on older systems (a natural need when you make $3 a day),
| changing the software to support your native language (not everyone speaks
| English), getting ancient peripherals to work long after the vendor lost
| interest in them (usually less than a year after the product ships), and
| developing a software economy in their own economic terms (creating high-tech
| jobs inside of their countries, instead of sending the money out of their
| countries) are all things that should be considered in the argument of free
| versus closed-source software.
|
| The public should ask how a company like Microsoft can continue to justify to
| their shareholders creating needed changes to their software for people who
| can't pay for those changes? The answer is that they can't justify it. In the
| future they will have to either start charging for the software on which
| people are now dependent or abandon the effort.
`----
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122602569707107649.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
|
|
