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Open Source Africa
Toucan Sam writes, "This could be of some interest to those who see the Linux community as being reserved for the first world exclusively." This doesn't just apply to Africa, but it's good to see that some people are thinking internationally.
You know your site has gone mainstream when even ignorant rednecks start to log on.
For the record Civilization itself is a function of international communication and cross cultural mixing. In other words nobody got civilized by living alone.
To put that in perspective Europeans still lived in caves when Africans were building the pyramids. It was around the same time that the Chines were inventing Paper and Gunpowder. It's simply stupid arrogance to think that Europe invented everything or that civilization is a creation of any single race. In fact we would all be in the dark ages if people didn't link up.
You see the specific wealth and power of individual nations is transient at best. There was a time when Babylon was unstoppable. At another point Rome ruled the world. The Mongols also had a turn at bat, as did England. Today it's America, In 200 years it will probably be what is today a 3rd world country.
My bet is on India. South Africa also has a shot if they can get apartheid out of the mindset.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
You know your site has gone mainstream when even ignorant rednecks start to log on.
For the record Civilization itself is a function of international communication and cross cultural mixing. In other words nobody got civilized by living alone.
To put that in perspective Europeans still lived in caves when Africans were building the pyramids. It was around the same time that the Chines were inventing Paper and Gunpowder. It's simply stupid arrogance to think that Europe invented everything or that civilization is a creation of any single race. In fact we would all be in the dark ages if people didn't link up.
You see the specific wealth and power of individual nations is transient at best. There was a time when Babylon was unstoppable. At another point Rome ruled the world. The Mongols also had a turn at bat, as did England. Today it's America, In 200 years it will probably be what is today a 3rd world country.
My bet is on India. South Africa also has a shot if they can get apartheid out of the mindset.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
One of the great problems that we have had in recent years is capital dependence. Developing countries - or for that matter developing communiteis in the United States - have had to bargain themselves down in order to "attract business"
Reportedly, for example, state legislators in Maryland and Virginia are being sold on UCITA because they belief their adopting it will attract Silicon Valley-type businesses to their states. More typically, states and localities simply give tax breaks and other preferences.
Particularly in the so-called Third World, this capital dependency is accute. The recent Asian financial crisis resulted when capital stampeded out of their countries. We often read about how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is applying doses of "financial medicine" to various countries in order to "restore investor confidence" in them. We rarely read about how investors are disciplined in order to "restore labor confidence" or anything like that.
In other words, we all dance to capital's tune.
Software and information technology are central to capital development because re-engineering plays a vital role in the modern economy. Information technology makes all these restructuings and downsizings that we read about feasible. For example, Ivar Jacobson's _The Object Advantage: Business Process Reengineering with Object Technology_ explores this on the micro scale.
So software - or business software at least - functions as encapsulated capital. Open source software therefore functions as the free transfer of capital.
This free transfer, in turn, reduces the need of either developing communities or developing countries to bargain themselves down in order to obtian capital. They can generate their own, thank you very much.
Still, on a slightly lighter note, here is some stuff on the other problem that Africa faces beyond software and hardware costs which is connectivity. If you don't have a pipe then your computing options are extremely limited. If you look at The Project for Information Access and Connectivity (especially the Internet Status at Feasibility Study Universities table) you will see that most large universities are still trying to get by on a 64k (or worse) internet connection. Not totally optimal.
However, there does seem to be quite a strong move to address this problem, namely the Africa One submarine fibre optic cable project. This is a 30,000 km fibre-optic ring that will encircle the continent "by the year 2000" (I don't know of the current status although it is seems that Lucent is now involved) with 32 main pipes from the ring into coastal landing points.
Once this system is in place and local governments (hopefully) see the benefits of extending the pipes in-land then we should see a massive increase in the African Internet population and yes I am pretty sure that Linux will be one of the technologies that makes this possible.
The only Good System is a Sound System
I think you missed the point. There are computers in Africa, believe it or not. It's not entirely unpopulated. S. Africa for example. They feel the same pressures over there regarding this issue, I would imagine. Enough to create the need for open source, apparently.
I would agree.   South Africa is considered by the WTO and most of the world as being a fully industrized (not developing) country (eg., they have nuclear power, nuclear weapons, etc.), no different than most European countries.  I would expect that majority of the use of Linux would occur there first and spread via the OAU to major cities in places like Zimbawe, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal, Ethiopia,and Kenya.   For example, TUCOWS (a major Linux distributor), has locations in South Africa, Zimbawe, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Kenya, and Egypt.   And if you go to this link, you will note that there are *9* South African Linux Users groups listed and here you will see that there are 4 LUGs in Egypt.   There are Linux references (link and "counter") for Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Togo, et. al.   I also expect that they are also already big users of the *BSDs right now.
Note that with many of those countries, you have 2 classes - the very wealthy, who have access to everything including the net, and the poor.   The continent is not what Hollywood or the National Geographic has portrayed it as being.   Once the colonial puppets are finally booted out and the continent stablizes a bit, you'll have a near 1 billion person potential market there, and a number of large businesses have already considered this fact and are opening up shop there.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
These terms date from the cold war era.
The first world was the United States, the western European nations, and their allies. The second world was the communist USSR, the eastern European nations, and their allies. The third world was the African and Asian nations that were neutral.
Microsoft Jumpstarts Subsaharan Africa
Seattle, WA (UIP)
In a startling business move with profound geopolitial ramifications, Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, today announced a moratorium on the enforcement of Microsoft's copyrights within Subsaharan Africa for at least the next 10 years. "The struggling nations of Subsaharan Africa need to leapfrog into the global internet economy and bypass the stages of economic development that have, historically, destroyed indigenous cultures and their ecologies." said Mr. Gates as his wife, former President Bill Clinton, Craig McCaw, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, South African President Nelson Mandella and Zulu historian Credo Muthwa looked on. He continued, "The wanton rape of the environment and tribal societies is perhaps beyond hope elsewhere in the world, but Africa still possesses much of the deepest heritage of mankind. It is not too late to protect it from modernization. Postmodern economies can leapfrog and preempt such destruction."
Craig McCaw also announced, "We are pleased to announce unlimited access to Iridium/Teledesic internet satellites within Subsaharan Africa for the duration of Mr. Gate's moratorium. Our satellite infrastructure is underutilized in the Southern Hemisphere generally, and Subsaharan Africa in particular. This will be a small investment with tremendous global benefits."
Mr. Gates announced additional endowments from the his private foundation to provide ground stations for McCaw's internet satellites and thin client PC's with access to computer-based training for African school districts. In a move labeled by many pundits as "eccentric" Gates targeted his largest endowment, $1 billion to The Bonobo Protection Fund. The Bonobo Protection fund will install an enormous array of cameras and microphones throughout the entire ecological range of the Bonobos in the Congo and Zaire. Real time unedited multimedia feeds of Bonobo social dynamics will become available around the world on the internet. These raw data streams are expected to make their way into academic institutions, but also the entertainment industry. Bids are already coming in from various internet pay per view channels on the theory that natural Bonobo social behavior will serve a viewing public that has come to expect primitive primate behavior on everything from talk shows to political debate. The profits of "Bonobo TV" are expected to pay for policing of the habitat as well as maintaining the array of sensors. The policing will be aided by the video cameras which are expected to provide unprecedented security for the Bonobo habitat against intrusion by careless or hostile humans.
Seastead this.
..."in developing countries - there the time is just not as valuable"
First off, I'd like to thank you for your usage of "developing nation". It's just as bad as calling it a third world country. It is ironic that the banner on the page I'm tying this is for IBM "moving at the speed of e-business", for that is exactly my point. The speed of e-business does not vary based upon your time zone, nationality, or geographic location. To say that tech people in the reigons of Africa, Eastern Europe, or Latin America have more time to spend installing linux is ludicrous. To say that, as I believe AC has said, time is not as valuble in any country besides "developed" nations is also ridiculous. There are 24 hours in each person's day around the world, and each minute is as valuable to one person as the next.
We cannot write off other nations or give them second rate or our discarded products because we believe they have the time to fiddle with them. If the USA's seemingly infinite tech structure can't deal with 486s and Linux, what makes one think that they will be welcomed in another country? An old computer is not necessarily better than no computer at all. This has been pointed out to be by people at schools who don't want old hardware donations from the company I work at. It's better to buy new equipment to teach people on, and it's worth every penny in support hassles.
Over 50% of the world's population has never made a phone call. Should we make a direct leap onto the internet for them? I would imagine that a graphical Linux on capable, stripped down for cost hardware would be an excellent en masse computing solution. Linux, a Celeron, 32mb RAM, 3gb HD, small graphics card is all it takes. Shipping 486s all over the place is not the solution.
Time is what you make of it, not what other people tell you it's worth!
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
Steven E. Ehrbar
Africa is widely considered the be the poorest continent in the world. The fact that they're beginning to embrace open source indicates not only their need for low-cost modern technology, but also their need for any sort of modern technology. Welcome to the 20th century, Africa. I'm glad you made it before it ends.
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Remember when "Truth, Justice, & the American Way" wasn't contradictory?
While being a better overview of what Linux is, the article still occasionally misrepresents Linux. /. users, the author states that "even technically competent people don't have the time to figure out how to install Linux".
My point is, though, that taking the cultural differences between the Westen world and the "less devleoped countries" into account, the social culture of the latter suits the Linux uuser profile much more.
Let me expand: In the recent article in the Boston Globe, which provoked a strong reaction from the
This is a true much more for a technically competent person in the Western world than in developing countries - there the time is just not as valuable. Hence in Russia, fo instance, even with the lack of good network connections, Linux is a lot more popular than one expects.
Thanks
At least you're not prejudiced, eh?
Sheesh.
FYI, civilisation doesn't begin and end in North America. South America, Africa and Asia may be in less than ideal conditions, but aren't all just primitive jungles either; Brazil, South Africa and India are all large consumers of computing technology and are relatively well-integrated into the Internet.
So lay off the bigotry, for a change.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Linux will be influential in Africa, not because of its logo, its mints, or its rebellious nature. It'll be influential because it's the right tool for the right job. Nothing more and nothing less.
I think this article has a lot to say, even if on the surface it doesn't. I think it says that Africans are fed up of being spoon-fed other people's ideas of what a solution should be, and are willing to pick up the challange of finding out what's right for them.
Yes, a lot of readers of Slashdot have probably come to the same conclusion. But a lot won't have. There will always be people who use a tool, or buy a product, purely because of the label. To have an entire continent wake up and realise the label isn't worth a damn thing, and that it's the product you're buying, is absolutely staggering!
It's very rare to get that kind of enlightenment, even in "technically advanced" countries, such as the US, Europe or Japan. Nike can charge up to a thousand times as much as anyone else, and get away with it, because people crave the labels. It wouldn't even matter if the shoes fell apart if you tried to wear them. People would still clamour for them. Most people are sheep.
But here's an entire continent that's poised to evolve from sheep to genuinely aware, sentient beings. Anthropologists claim humans evolved from apes. Personally, I think the process went in reverse for the brain. But if we're finally going to see self-aware, competent humans, that will be a great day indeed!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The problem is making that technology available to the people in those countries. Open Source can make a big contribution to that end, by allowing low-cost technical education.
Of course, basic education is still the biggest problem. Pencils and notebooks are more needed than computers in the poorest countries.
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This just about settles it. I can't say that the kernel won't split. I can't say that every distro will run every other distro's software; but we are now entering the era where Linux moves out of the early adopter phase, past the major market share phase, and into inevitable market domination. Linux's free nature, it powerful feature set, and plain old nationalism are combining to end the OS market as we have come to know it. Every nation on earth now believes that the high tech cocktail of Internet, software and next generation technology startups is the magic potion to lift them to first world status. Just as they once believed that industrialization would be their salvation in the past. The story of the next few years will be that countries like India, China, etc will push to create a software industry like that which exists in the US. Linux is the software that makes this all possible. Why base your software industry around Microsoft products when you can use Linux and avoid sending money back to the US. The last time we saw a phenomena like this was in the immediate post-colonial era from the 1950s-1970s. Nationalist governments in Egypt, India, China and elsewhere stopped using imported products to spur industrial development at home. The adoption of Linux in African nations and China can be seen as the first wave of a new supply substitution economic policy. This leads to a whole new set of questions. Will the US continue to dominate the software marketplace, or will it go into decline like the US manufacturing sector? Is the US in danger of becoming isolated as the rest of the world adopts Linux and we stay on Microsoft technology, much like the US uses English measurements; while the world goes metric? Finally what are the greater ramifications for the software industry? Will open source movements in databases, web servers, etc lead to the decline of the Enterprise software market?
Just to put some things in perspective:
* South Africa has more telephone lines than the rest of Africa put together yet our national telephone penetration is about 8 per 100 inhabitants.
* A 64 kilobit permanent connection to the Net here costs roughly $1000 per month.
* The telephone operator is a government-enforced monopoly which is partly owned by SBC and Telekom Malaysia
* The exchange rate of the South African Rand to the U.S. $ is about 6:1
What has all this to do with software? Quite a bit actually. The more costs you can get rid of the better, and Linux has shown itself time and again in this market to be cheaper, less expensive to run and completely free from the local piracy issues we read about on a more or less permanent basis here. This is also an extremely price-sensitive market, almost but not quite as sensitive as India. :)
Currently the most IT spend in the country is done by the top 100 companies but that is swinging quickly to the hundreds of thousands of SMEs. When they take the biggest piece of the IT spending pie, then Linux will become an even more popular choice for those businesses.
Microsoft in South Africa is a pretty slick operation but they've made their cock-ups. I sat in on a seminar for teachers once when the local MS salesperson threatened them all with death unless they paid full price for NT, Office and some other products. There were quite a few Linux converts that day
Check out this site for the local Linux umbrella body which IMHO is doing an excellent job of promoting the OS. As an example, South Africa's equivalent of Comdex attracted about 50 000 visitors last year. The local Linux lads managed to sell in the region of 15 000 RedHat and Suse distros during the show - which means nearly 1 in 3 visitors walked away with Linux on CD.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.