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Linux In Africa: Free, But So Far Scarce
Elvis Maximus writes: "Wired News is running an interesting piece on the inroads Linux is making in Africa. The article focuses on the advantages of the 'free beer' nature of Linux, which is good, but neglects the fact that open source empowers people in developing countries to solve their own specific problems. Worth a look." Ironically, if commerical software vendors are vigilant, the advantages of Free alternatives will only be more evident. But licensing isn't as pressing an issue, maybe, when getting access at all isn't easy for most Africans.
It is very important that PCs preloaded with Linux are shipped and sold to the first time home users in African cities. For most of them it would be the first computer experience at all. So it is crucial that this experience is on the Linux platform. Because once you are used to MS, the likelihood to switch afterwards is very small.
Must be working out of the box, must be cheaper than a Windows box, must have excellent documentation going under the hood beneath of the GUI.
Must have no glitches to configure modem dial-ups or whatever wireless access is mostly used. If that doesn't work easily, you can't catch the first time home-user.
Free printed documentation accompanying the hard- and software, to study before the box is set up, is crucial.
You can't make them dependent on critical information from online sources. You can't ship and sell printed documentation independently either. (Too expensive, no one would buy it) The way to go is to ship and sell preconfigured Linux on low cost machines with excellent, printed end-user newbie documentation. That documentation will be the only "textbook" the home-user will have to learn anything about computer in all likelihood.
Publishers and companies who sell preconfigured hardware with Linux should ship books together with the hardware to save costs. I don't see why VA-Linux for expample couldn't ship RedHat's or other distribution's handbooks, with other publisher's Linux books all prepacked in one box.
Geeks out there, just imagine your better halves would go off and study the snakes in the African rain forest. She hasn't really used Linux yet and doesn't know much about computer. What would you pack to help her succeed on her own with a Linux box ? Whatever you come up with, that's the way any African household would need it too. Very simple.
I can see it now. A jeep pulls up in a village and they announce that there is a delivery of free Linux CDs. People misunderstand and think that it's Linux seeds. Now, nobody knows what Linux is, but seeds grow food, and they figure this must be a free UN agricultural handout. So they plow their fields and plant these strange looking seeds in the ground and irrigate them with what little water they have.
6 months later the fields are still barren, but several more jeep loads of well intentioned Linux advocates return to see how they are doing. Oh! the villagers exclaim, that's what Linux seeds grow: Pretentions foreigners. Best crop they ever had. Finger lickin' good.
One of the wise village elders is heard to remark that whatever this Linux is, it's a lot like Unix--difficult to understand at first, and you have to go through a lot of steps that aren't really necessary, but if you wait long enough you eventually get a setup that works.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
He then goes on to conclude the Slashdotteri are not open minded because they all don't share the same uniform views, which he thinks they all should.
Had you actually read what I said, you'd notice that if anything, I'm actually indicating the opposite - we tend to "eschew that which is not [familiar]".
who claims his opinions and beliefs are superior...
Where do I make this claim? We all know his views and opinions are the real truth Or this one?-jerdenn
It seems the situation you have in Heliopolis is the same we have in Jakarta. Here, there is a store you can go to and buy any type of software sold. The price: $2.50 a CD, $4.00 for two - you name it, you can buy it. In fact, I only know of one dealer where you can buy licensed software, but you you have to wait months to get most of it, and forget about getting obscure stuff.
I saw a talk from the country manager for M$ about two months ago. He was talking about piracy. The piracy levels for India and most of South East Asia are from 60% to 90%. A guy I work with is from India and he said his company there had only bought licensed software once.
So, at this time, money is not a factor. But it will be. Here, software, books and movies are vigourously pirated (no legal repercussions whatsoever), but music is not. I have yet to notice any store selling pirated music. From that I can assume that the local authorities have the ability to rid the country of software piracy, but have chosen not to.
At some time in the future the piracy will stop, and a tremendous opportunity for 'free-as-in-beer' software will open. No one will think of paying the $ for a windows install when the Linux install is free. There will be millions of computer users who need quality desktop applications. (On the server, Linux use is already widespread here).
I think the real opportunity Linux desktop development will be in countries like this one.
\begin{gripe}
Africa is a HUGE place. It pains me when people try to describe it as one little country. Most of you do not describe Europe or Asia in that fashion.
\end{gripe}
I am from Zimbabwe. Geeks exist there. Here is my personal view of the free software situation in Zimbabwe (at least when I was there three years ago)
Linux and FreeBSD were expensive. It could be obtained in two ways. One way was to download it yourself. But local calls were charged by the minute, so it cost a lot. The second way was to get an ISP to burn a CD for you, but they were mostly clueless and most likely would only get the kernel, AND bill you a huge amount.
Importing the CD was difficult due to foreign currency restrictions, and the general cost of a US dollar.
The main university there (http://www.uz.ac.zw) was and still has the computer facilities controlled by power freaks with no computer clue, and so getting free software there was hopeless.
The other problem (which is also here in the US) is that you still paid the MSFT tax.
What if MS gave the OS for free, and made money off the apps like Office, etc? Give away the razor, sell them blades.
I had the pleasure of working with someone who was from africa. He told me that software piracy there is so great that you have to come here to the USA to understand that it is not the general order of things.
i stics/maps/map1.pdf
If it is on a disk it is "FREE BEER" over there.
You would have to be hiding in a hole to not understand all the economic perils in Africa as well as the political ones. Techies that could have such concerns are certainly lucky to have such freedom from the basics.
Here is a link to the World Health Organization about general health and well being. Most of africa is screwed.
http://wwwnt.who.int/whosis/statistics/whr_stat
In short, the only South Africans this hurts are the software retailers. When a continent as bad off as Africa can purchase American goods like Windows 98 for pennies on the dollar, I have a hard time sympathizing with the wealthy corporations who are trying to get tough on piracy.
Hmm. . . Since Microsoft is losing so much to African piracy anyways, why don't they start "donating" their software as a humanitarian service. For the cost of a CD and [optional] documentation, they could get a tax break for the full price of a copy. Heck, they might make more money that way than they do now. [Note: Bill, if you're reading this, remember that IANAL. Run it by your own people first.]
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Slashdot editors: Are you guys sure this is a valid slashdot article? Come on! Stuff like this doesn't matter!
The Boxer Rebelion, The Holocaust in Germany, The Nanjing Massacre, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The Killing Fields of Cambodia: all politically motivated by political ideology.
Political ideology and religious ideology are the _same_ ideology, and the similarities are not clevery disguised. Popes and presidents, Cardinal Richelieu and Congressman Jesse Helms... different costumes, different offices, different excuses, but the same center.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Unless something commercially viable happens in Africa, they are unlikely to get Internet and Linxu access in the near future.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
The free-as-in-beerness of Linux is something that is touted a lot by Linux advocates in developing countries, myself included. But I had an experience recently that made me wonder whether this would have any "selling" power at all.
I'm studying for my MCSE (don't all spit at once, OK guys?) and though I use NT 4.0 at work, I'm going straight for the Windows 2000 track since the NT 4.0 cert is being phased out. So I wanted a copy of Windows 2000 to play with. I went to every computer shop I knew in town, including the big CompuMall in Heliopolis. Nobody had a licensed copy of Windows 2000 -- or, indeed, any other version of Windows -- for sale. Actually, that's not entirely true; one shop had some OEM-only copies of Windows 95 Arabic they were willing to take out of a hardware box and sell me. Windows is so widely pirated here that nobody bothers trying to sell it.
More striking was the fact that many of the shop owners and clerks did not know that one could buy Windows. Several of them told me matter-of-factly that Windows is not something that is sold ("Windows is free"), but something that you hire a technician to come and install. The copies that technicians install, of course, are pirated.
Some time ago a columnist for PC World Egypt (yes, there is such a thing) wrote that he had seen more licensed software CD-ROMs hanging from the rear-view mirrors of taxicabs than in offices. It's not too hard to see why this is the case: a 25-client license copy of Small Business Server cost my office $2500, which is about the same as Egypt's annual per capita GDP. Not the per capita disposable income -- the per capita GDP.
In short, while I think there are many benefits Linux can offer developing countries, the price argument probably isn't likely to pull much weight.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
One of the major distros (Mandrake/RedHat/Storm), or some other org/group, do something like:
Accept donations to create/send out dozens of CDs of the latest versions of the various distros to universities/business IT departments worldwide, or if some "White Knight" has the resources, send 'em out for free;
Possibly work with one of the "PC Recyclers" that test, rehab, send discarded/obsolete western PCs to third world countries, and have them install Linux.
This would be a great intro to freedom for many of the global populace.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
The story selection process is fairly simple: the perl scripts scan the contents and go to the hyperlinks. The article must contain one of the following words or phrases (more than one gives a story a better chance): Linux, AMD, SuSE, RedHat, They Might Be Giants, BSD, Apache, DeCSS, MP3, Kevin Mitnick, Apple, CueCat, Dreamcast, ISO, RIAA, MPAA, Quake, Java, Sun Microsystems,
or the following portrayed in the negative: Microsoft, Windows, Intel.All stories not meeting this criterion are thrown out.
The stories which pass the perl script are then whisked away to one of the editors, which do the hard task of actually reading the page while sipping a Samuel Adams in the "include beer,h" beer glass (frosted only on the outside, damnit!). References to any major GNU figures boost the stories chances; bribery from the submitters also helps.How else do you think that damn Linux in Africa story could've passed through?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
You forgot Mountain SMS, one of the biggest SMS gateways in the world, a South African company, and Dimension Data (disclaimer: my employer's parent).
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I would suggest you to get in touch with NGOs involved in Africa (then again, Africa is *huge*). There's also some UN-related agencies working very hard to bring education and tools to developing countries, even in remote/agitated/devastated places (which Africa isn't as a whole, far from it). Most of them are based in Geneva, Switzerland, just in case. Contact them, I'm sure they'd be very happy to get some help. You can probably gather some info at http://www.oneworld.org/ and on the United Nation Development Programme on http://www.undp.org/
/. seem to forget the African continent is several orders of magnitude larger than the USofA and carry almost a billion people. If the "Western" world stops using Africa as a dumpster and testing ground for chemicals and actually starts redistributing its [financial and educational] resources, many African countries could start experiencing strong growth in the tech domains, just like South-East Asian countries did.
If education was more widespread in Africa, you can be sure there'd be much less wars, epidemics and other catastrophies.
Some moronic posters here on
Now, tell big companies to give away their old computers so they can be shipped to developing countries... But most of them don't give a shit and most of all don't want to spend a penny for getting rid of their 3 year-old PC junk...
Good luck,
/max
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
I have actually taught several classes on Linux and its use in science and education in Africa. Working with ICTP in Trieste Italy, we have helped to set up wireless networks, servers and computer labs using linux.
In both west and east Africa there is a huge amount of interest in the use of Linux to support distance education and distance science efforts. The will is there and we are trying to help them through our Collaborium effort (www.collaborium.org) to give them the technical support and guidence that is hard to get in Africa. (plus an email to web gateway service)
The feeling of isolation from the day to day news, patches and other information we can obtain in only a few seconds is one of the biggest issues. This is where the email to web gateway helps so much.
Another is that once trained in computers, business snatch up poeple from the labs and universities very fast because they can pay so much more (don't even mention the pre-university situation).
Wireless is all over in Africa due to the extreamly poor wired telecomm infrastructure. So working with them to get them experience in that area is extreamly important.
Working with these people in Africa is extreamly rewarding and I would love to hear from other who might be interested in helping.
We also need to realize that "economic development" is not the panacea for all problems, and that we don't need to push it on everybody like a corner drug seller. Lots of problems are cultural and internal. No amount of money or food will solve them, and we just need to help foster a environment friendly to resolving these problems without sticking our nose in. "Progress", manifest destiny, to some intangible yet glorious and definite end is a peculiarly Christian and European idea. Ancient civilizations existed in perfect happiness and harmony without what we would today call "progress". Yes, on a global scale economy certainly plays a large role...we just need to realize that to helping people really means helping them help themselves, not forcing them to institute solutions to problems they don't. Open Source is an attractive proposition because it is both money-free and Free in the sense that communities and governments can customize it to their own ends...so I guess I agree that Open Source is a good compromise between people who think Palm Pilots will solve everybody's problems, and those who think that participating in technology is mutually exclusive with helping real people.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
All this time I though the US' biggest problems were huge income disparities, horrible health care, violent crime, a growing prison-industrial complex, destruction of natural resource and corporate rulership! Good to know that they've gotten all that taken care of and now they just have to deal with developing stable web servers.
There is a relevant quote from the New Testament about seeing stuff that's gotten in other's eyes but not in yours, but I don't know it in English. Anyway, the point is that your (implicit, sarcastically expressed) argument can be applied to the US (which I presume is your country. If it isn't, my most profound excuses.)
I of course meant the Kalahari desert. My bad.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Yes, I admit that I've been sucked into a world where people care about things other than money. It's my peculiar weakness to believe that Good is better than Evil. Honestly, I don't know what came over me. You waved the smelling salts under my nose, and now I see how foolish I was.
You can't talk about Rights in the same breath as you're calling Goodness and Justice bullshit. I don't care how cynical and relativist you are. You wouldn't have any rights at all if someone hadn't shed their blood for you. Were they just pompous and self-important? Are you glib about the people that died for your freedom? What do you value? What is important to you? Don't just say something is bullshit without saying what the Truth is. What's your side of the story, eh? Riding on everyone else's coattails while you snicker at their struggle. How many times did your mommy and daddy bail you out? How many times did you let somebody else do your work for you?
I think it's past your bedtime.
More like "your gilded hardcover copy of Linux Kernel Hacking." Some people just never learn. Linux is not the answer to world famine. Would you give a sepulcrally famished Ethiopian a stinking computer with Linux? He'd die of starvation while trying to get it to boot!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
A lot of the posts so far (and whenever the subject of IT in developing countries comes up) are in the "how can we talk about IT when people are starving/at war/sick -- give them food/peacekeepers/medicine, not Linux" vein. Many of these are trolls, some are not.
Africa is not monolithic, but it's certainly true that there are basic and pressing problems in many parts of Africa. What is guaranteed not to solve those problems in the medium- to long-term is food and medical aid. In many cases such aid is necessary, but it is never sufficient. The roots of the problems need to be addressed, and the real roots of the problems are almost always economic. The long term answer can only be economic development, and in the early 21st century, IT has to be an important element of economic development.
Open source software has the potential to be a boon for IT in the developing world. Good development is about empowering people to solve their own problems, and so is open source. With open source, things like language localization are no longer the exclusive province of far-off Western software developers unconcerned with suboptimal markets -- local programmers can do it themselves. There are now Linux distributions aimed at the Thai and Russian/Ukranian markets, and I know there is an Arabic localization project going on now.
No, Linux is not going to feed a starving Somali kid today. But a bag of surplus Iowa wheat is not going to feed him tomorrow.
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
I was about to tell him that they also hate the Finnish, Czech, and other eurogeeks out there, but vulgarly put, he's right.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
What about U.S. girls of Brazilian descent? Or Venezuelan descent?
I don't know how good they would look like, and I just could not guess. But based on the people I've seen on the city streets, on buildings et cetera, I have concluded that. I don't know what makes women from that place more attractive than that other place, but I know, when I see them, which ones are most attractive.
Anyway, I think you should come to Brazil and... er... taste it for yourself :P (really, I doubt you'll ever disagree when you come here)
Also, thanks for pointing out to me, that I am unaware of the street kids of Sao Paulo, or the bastard children of Bucharest, Romania.
That's just not what I've been talking about when I mentioned geography. It's not a matter of 'knowing about bastard children of Bucarest'. It's a matter of understanding the world aroung you, the geopolitics (which is one of the most prominent topics of geography), how are the social interactions made and so on.
To the rest of the world, it always look like the USians have a very short-sighted vision of the world, and it looks too that they think their country 'is' the world somehow. You can quickly perceive this reading informal culture, like comics, e.g., Marvel or DC, where 80% of the heroes and villains are from the U.S., like if the rest of the world were just... guests on earth, I guess.
I bet you would say 'Oh, but we KNOW that we are not the world', but knowing is different from perceiving; your own culture lure you into subconsciouly thinking that, after that much pervasion -- a lie said a thousand times, for you, ceases to be a lie.
Patola (Cláudio Sampaio) - Solvo IT
IBM CATE
SAIR GNU/Linux Certified
Patola (Claudio Sampaio)
Unix System Administrator
But, anyway, even not ever been in Africa, I have some stuff to say. People from some developed countries (mainly from the USA, where history and geography in schools aren't good -- e.g, they abandoned all marxist avalysis of history even it being the most enlightening analysis) do not have a clear picture of life in developing countries.
Most times, they don't bother thinking very much about i, really. They don't want to think about misery. And so, they generalize certain things and stick to the cartoonesque version on others: people living in huts in the top of trees, unplugged citizens, dirty stone streets and roads, low tech, and so on.
Ok, low money can lead to some of these things. But the problem with most developing nations is not simply the lack of money - but the distribution of it. In fact, countries like Brazil (my country) and the middle-eastern petroleum countries are rich or very rich. But they have large quantities of people who are starving or in bad economic situations.
When economy is a necessity, they have the need to stick to what is less expensive, like Linux. But it does not mean that we don't have technology. There are a lot of people from the middle- or higher classes which use computers.
In Brasil, we have at last a major Linux software company: Conectiva. It provides a very good redhat-based distribution and support for linux.
That said, I hope I don't find any more posts saying "FUD" (hehehe) about developing countries. Hey, we can live well here too!!! And you betcha, the girls here are a lot more beautiful than most of the countries I've been to (with the exception of Venezuela. And the US is where the girls are uglier!).
Patola (Cláudio Sampaio) - Solvo IT
IBM CATE
SAIR GNU/Linux Certified
Patola (Claudio Sampaio)
Unix System Administrator
> I just wish many Americans would realise that US methods of doing things don't often work here. What does work is a willingness to exchange information and work together - something the Internet has been really brilliant at doing.
Which explains why so many American corporations are so damn paranoid about the internet.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Answer: It's very hard to roll out water/housing/food projects without a proper communications infrastructure. Basic computer training goes a long way towards ensuring people are skilled anough to help themselves in this regard. The precedents are there to show that better communications and computer literacy are good for economic growth and living standards.
#2: What do Africans know about Linux anyway?
Answer: More than you might think. I personally know people on this continent who:
If the US is so well off, how come it keeps poaching skills from countries like South Africa all the time? The main problem is non-Africans tend to lump together the whole big land mass into one. When I was in the US last, friends asked me whether the land invasions in Zimbabwe were a cause for worry. I asked them in reply whether Quebec wanting to go its own way was a cause for worry. "Ah but that's a different country," they said. Bingo.
#3: Africans don't get it
Answer: Some of them get it immediately. When John Perry Barlow toured Africa a couple of years ago, he showed a nomad tribesman the Internet from his laptop. Immediately the guy realised he could market his wares (rock salt and animal skins) to anyone in the world using this technology. This from somone who has probably never left his home village in the middle of the Sahara.
#4: Price is not really the factor
Answer: Price is THE factor on this continent. As some posters have already pointed out, your typical MS Office bundle can be worth a year's salary. More important is that many people just can't afford the constant cycle of upgrades to hardware that new software releases demand. Linux is free - tough to beat.
I am an African, linux programmer and user since 1993. I wrote about free software for a major national newspaper in 1994 - long before it became trendy to do so. I've travelled - quite extensively in the US. As a country I love it. I just wish many Americans would realise that US methods of doing things don't often work here. What does work is a willingness to exchange information and work together - something the Internet has been really brilliant at doing.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
mbendi.co.za
iafrica.com
Oh, I'm sorry, you are a mindless bigot. Not only do I know Africans quite capable of this, I know ones who can spell it, too. How would you know? You don't have the slightest chance of bumping into it.Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Maybe because there aren't any geeks in Africa?
This is probably one of the stupidest things I have ever read on slashdot.
I am African, lived there most of my life and was a geek there and am a geek here and will be a geek when I go back. I know 9 programming/scripting languages, I'm familiar with 4 RDBMS systems (Oracle, SQL server, DB2, Interbase), I'm into distributed computing (Java-RMI and CORBA), if I was graduating from college today I'd do so with highest honors, I am an avid Chinese history buff, I played D and D as a kid (in Africa), I owned an Amiga as a kid, I TA two different programming classes(C and Java), and have already turned down several employment opportunities from Fortune 500 companies because they didn't feel right. In all honesty, I almost flunked out of high school in Africa and most of my friends were a lot more geeky than I was, IMHO I'm nowhere near as smart or geeky as a lot of the people I went to school with, who I am in constant contact with via email and instant messenger (didn't think they had that in Africa huh?).
Anyway as for the article, Linux being free as in beer doesn't mean jackshit. Copyright laws are not enforced in most third world nations. I've seen pirated CDs for Windows NT SP 4, Starcraft, Adobe Photoshop, Oracle 8, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, etc. for $5 to $10. I also saw a lot more people using Windows than *nix, in fact very few people even knew what *nix systems were while everyone knew Windows.
"Open Source, Closed Minds" - This phrase never meant to much to me, until now. After all, I considered Geeks as part of the 'enlightened'. We are the Digeratti - those blessed with an understanding of all that is digital. It is a shift so fundamental that it threatens the foundation of current society and the its' artificial constructs of Intellectual Property. Geeks "get it".
Or so I thought.
And then, I was introduced to slashdot, and I realized that as a group, we are as any other. We cling to what is close to us, and eschew that which is not. The great Soundcard conspiracy? Very important... Our Geek Brethren in another continent? Not.
Some points that particularly bother me in this whole discussion:
To my fellow americans - there is indeed an entire world outside of our borders. Spend some time reading about it. Even better, use some of those IT mega-bucks and visit it. It is an eye-opening experience, if you allow it to be so.
To the world - Africa is not a country, but a continent. One can no more make a generalization about this continent and its' societal structures than any other, yet we all seem to assume that the entire of Africa is inhabited by a geneologically and ideologically homogeneous people. This is anything but the case.
To the slashdotteri - Please keep your minds open not just to source, but to ideas. What is source, but the communication of ideas - from human to human, and human to machine.
-jerdenn
I'd think affording the $1000 computer would be the problem - a free OS would be nice, but without a computer it's not much good!
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
I guess avoiding the Microsoft tax by using Linux is a minor issue, when you're facing the prospect of a $10,000 per patient per year Glaxo-Welcome tax for 20% of your population.
What are you going to use to avoid that? Bill Clinton has threatened to unleash the seven plagues of Egypt on South-Africa, if they use patent-infringing alternatives.
At least 45 million Africans are slated to die over the next 5 years for Glaxo-Welcome's intellectual property patent on AZT.
I hate to interupt the bigots, trolls, and everyone else convinced that every African is a starving disease ridden child, with something usefull, but here's a little info on the state of the telecomunications network in Africa.
Internet Connectivity for Africa
Connectivity Data for Africa's Information Infrastructure
Resourcery's African Telecom Links
The Acacia Initiative
Eric Henry
"When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose."- Don Marquis
I did some work in Africa this Summer for 2 months and went to a few banks for work related stuff and one bank in particular was using Red Hat. The used it instead of the costlier UNIX variants that companies like IBM, HP, etc. sell.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Here's another use for those old 486's and pentium 75's other than Yet Another Firewall: send them to a charity which can get them to a third-world country! Install Linux, and include the install media, since bandwidth for downloads can be expensive. Africa is one place where this kind of thing could make a big difference, but there are also some big chunks of Asia, South America and the Carribean where some old hardware and some help could go a very long way.
Why Linux, by the way (other than advocacy)? After all, so many posters have already pointed out that Windows is free there too. Everyone already knows how to run Windows, so there would be less training required. There are two very practical reasons:
First,the charity would need to keep on the right side of the law back here, where it gets its goods.
Second, there is little training required (or even possible) with Windows. CTRL-ALT-DELETE, then reinstall, is most of the technical know-how you need to M$ successfully. Not exactly a great learning system for folks whom you want to go on and build infrastructure.
So: does anyone know of such a charity? One that could get the hardware into the hands of folks who could use it, and give some training, and would absolutely insist on the use of libre software to avoid lisensing issues?
See what I've been reading.
How is expressing my opinion on this topic flamebait? Interesting...
Free music from Jack Merlot.
All this time I thought Africa's biggest problems were mass starvation, AIDS, and civil war! Good to know that they've gotten all that taken care of and now they just have to deal with developing stable web servers.
First of all, neither of the most common two web browsers are free as in free speech
Is Mozilla MPL a "free as in free speech" license? Is GNU GPL? The latest version of the #2 browser (Netscape Communicator) is now mostly MPL with a growing number of dual-licensed MPL/GPL modules.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't expect that much from slashdot in terms of non-technical understanding among it's readers, but I think this is a new low. Instead of basing your opinions of an entire freaking continent on I don't know, sitcoms or MTV videos or wherever you get your erroneous views of the world, why don't you try reading a book? And I don't mean one from O'Reilly.
--
Did you know that nearly every war on this planet had some religous background were everybody instantly forgot about not killing someone else but started killing everyone they saw that did not have the exact same religion as they had? And here you go start a few wars again by sending them even more religious stuff to fight about.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/