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Linux in the Developing World
Norsemann writes "Peter Spotts of the Christian Science Monitor has some very interesting things to say about the latest wave of Linux adoptions throughout Asia and beyond. He hits on some important points about not only China's role in Open Source but the 'global' role in Open Source... Perhaps the best is still yet to come." The BBC also has a nice story about Brazil using Linux in cybercafes.
The same type of people who built our digital past..
here's a hint, it wasn't megacorp!
No offense, but have you ever heard of IBM? Or DEC? Or Intel? Or Texas Instruments?
I think you are missing the point. Sure, $40 is a bargain to the Western pocketbook, but I assure you it is a hefty price for our brothers and sisters in Thailand. $40 may be several months salary.
didn't know what localhost referred to :P) but this is what you get without an affordable public education system...
That's a serious non sequitor. In my 12 years of "free" public education, I never took a class that taught anything about TCP/IP.
Most computer knowledge isn't taught, it's learned.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The same economic benefits apply to rich nations as well as developing ones. However, I'd expect several orders of magnitude greater benefit.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Microsoft has been engaged in an some agressive pricing tactics here in Brazil for a while now, including in our major universities. They even give their software for free (you know, the first one is always free...), if they think it'll pay off in the future.
It is therefore important to make the decision people (including the government) realize that price is not the reason why free software is better, specially in schools and government-related projects. Hey, it's not even an important reason, in many cases.
They have to understand that free software is better because its quality is superior; because we get to see what's inside, so we learn more; we don't have to take anyone's word on its keeping our private data, well, private; we don't depend on a single vendor; we can even start developing our own version, based on what's available, if we want to, thus having complete control and developing our own technology.
It's just a better idea, pricing aside. If "they" believe price is the only advantage, we're on very thin ice...
Thanks to something called "sovereignty" {the international version of "an Englishman's home is his castle"}, if a person in country A does something in country A which is not against the laws of country A but would be against the laws of country B had that person done it on country B's soil, the authorities in country B cannot take any action against that person.
So even if the GPL is found invalid in the USA {and it can't be - read it, it's airtight} then it still carries weight in the rest of the world. If SCO are to be believed, Linux is in the public domain anyway {and thus can never be copyrighted by anyone}. But it's quite likely that, if anything enters the public domain, it will be SCO UnixWare - either by court order, or by natural lapse of copyright what with the case having dragged on for so long.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
That's a serious non sequitor. In my 12 years of "free" public education, I never took a class that taught anything about TCP/IP.
It taught you at least to read, write and some math, which is a prerequisite for learning any technology, but you seem to be taking it for granted.
Lisp is the Tengwar of programming languages.