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Roblimo Abroad: Pushing Linux' Prospects In Jordan

Posted by timothy on from the jeep-they-drove-in-on dept.

Last week, NewsForge editor and Slashdot poster Robin ("roblimo") Miller traveled to Jordan to observe, talk about and foment the free software scene there, in part by speaking at the Open Source Software Workshop held in Amman. How do you grow a software industry in a country with a 30% poverty rate, where water supplies are a bigger concern than ATX power supplies? At the conference Robin spoke at, clearly a big part of that answer is high-quality free software. He notes that "Two gentlemen from Microsoft also spoke. I was in favor of Linux and Open Source. They weren't." Aside from the software side of things (including another plug for the awesome demo power of Knoppix), the report is worth reading to anyone as ignorant of Jordan as I am just to find out more about the place.

1 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Similar situation in Syria by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Here in Syria we have a very primitive infrastructure. Using free software is one way to cut costs. I'm promoting free software everywhere I go. Some problems we have is that most programs aren't full unicode aware, but we're working on patches that we then submit to the authors.

    Mike Bouma : mike@talk21.com