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Thawte Founder Launches Open Source Campaign

Posted by Hemos on from the pushing-for-acceptance dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Mark Shuttleworth ? , lauched a campaign to increase the use of open-source software in South Africa, according to the Sunday Times. The GO-open source campaign is aimed at households and small businesses. Shuttleworth founded Thawte Consulting in 1995 and subsequently sold it to Verisign for $575 Million."

5 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting by Dogers · · Score: 4, Interesting

    .. but looks to bre premature to me?

    "I want to give it a try" comes up with "send us your name and address and we'll send you a CD!"

    How about whats on this CD, a more useful (other than the little thats in the FAQ's) list of links on where to stay/get up to date with your software, etcetc?

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    1. Re:Interesting by amber_of_luxor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Rumor is that the CD in question is TheOpenCD 1.4.

      Given the multi-lingual nature of South Africa, an open source cd, created from the software at translate.org.za makes more sense than The Open CD. Two CD's almost makes sense. The Open CD, to expose people to the range of software available, and one with localizations for South Africa.

      Amber

      --
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  2. Wow... by Short+Circuit · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I haven't seen that everything2 superscript questionmark on Slashdot in a long time.

    Why did it go away, anyway?

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  3. South Africa by aNTee-KrUsT · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We here in ZA has seen a lot of integration of open source everywhere, even our own government supports it. Another shuttleworth link.

    "What resolution is life running at"

  4. Re:Throatgestabben! by mav[LAG] · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Disclaimer : I am going to try and keep this civil and troll / flame free, expressing my honest feelings - but damn!

    Then let me try and be so in return...

    Does nobody see the long term ramifications of this? Is there nobody that can see the writing on the wall?

    Well, Andy Grove did in his book Only The Paranoid Survive. Probably the most famous quote in there was this one:
    "If the world operates as one big market, every employee will compete with every person anywhere in the world who is capable of doing the same job. There are lots of them and many of them are hungry."

    Sounds like a spot-on prediction to me. Bear in mind that this was published in 1996 which shows you just how much insight he had back then.

    I honestly don't envision the long term effects of this as 'a good thing'. Jesus H. Christ - how's this for an idea : how about I go to some third world country where the wage scales make Indian off-shore wages look like a king's ransom and teach all the indigenous inhabitants how to be 'computer guys'.

    Sounds good. Nothing like a bit of volunteer work to get your worldviews really in perspective :)

    These guys would sell their own brother into slavery for a cow and a chicken, just envision what they would do for $2/hr.

    Surprisingly, most people in the third world (where I live) want the same as you: to be left alone, to have food on the table, roofs over their heads and satisfying work to do to earn money.

    Anybody that thinks their long term employment prospects are bad now, just wait until this little project comes to fruition.

    I don't see how - the campaign is promoting the use and development of open source software. Anyone in the world who uses it will benefit.
    The real problem for US tech workers right now is that globalisation has caught up with you where it hurts and I would be lying if that word shadenfreude hasn't occurred to me more than once recently. For many years, the globalisation mantra has benefited few economies outside the US. It's going to be good for your economy in the long run like making it more competitive for a start :)

    Plenty of us outside the US (I am South African for the record) have seen this coming for ages, especially in the FLOSS arena where no-one cares where you're from as long as your code is clean and works. Outsourcing of development and support to skilled markets outside the US was just the next step - and it's happening.

    My first impressions were probably right, Mark Shuttleworth needs to take his $575M and spend the rest of his life like Hugh Hefner, set up a mansion and tap a LOT of high quality ass.

    He could have but he chose instead to put money back into the open source community.

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