Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
-
-
Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
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.
-
-
Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
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.
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