Thawte Founder Launches Open Source Campaign

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."

Comments

Interesting

[Dogers]

.. 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?

Bad moderation

[texasandroid]

I selected the wrong moderation choice on a post and am posting this to kill that moderation. I ask other moderators to have mercy, and not mod me off-topic, but instead just let this post languish at it's default level.

Everything2 sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Use this link instead: Mark Shuttleworth.

Re:Robber Baron Stikes Again

[Twyford]

This has nothing to do with Verisign. Mark sold Thawte to Verisign and is using the money for better causes. The money that is being used for this initiative is Mark's and the partners involved, NOT Verisign. If you understood the situation in South Africa, which I do as a citizen, any new way to save money that could be put to use in a better way is something to look at.

Re:Good publicity can't hurt

[Misch]

R would be Rand.

18 Million Rand = about 2.56 million dollars (US).

(According to xe.com)

And he likes slashdot...

[GPLDAN]

In his Bio he lists Slashdot as one of his likes.

He sold Thwate for $575M. Damn, outside of the guy who founded Hotmail and actually walked away from a Microsoft $300M offer, holding out until he got something like $500M, this is the 2nd most impressive dot-com startup guy I've heard about. That's amazing.

This isn't the only good thing in Africa...

[Three Headed Man]

A very nice gentleman recently contacted me about transferring some funds out of Africa as well.

Re:Robber Baron Stikes Again

[Cally]

any new way to save money that could be put to use in a better way is something to look at.

How about having a whip-round for the cash needed to get a nice professional hit done on the Minister for Bullshi^h^h^h Health? I'm only half-joking - any country that has a health minister who recommends potatoes, garlic and lemon juice as a cure for AIDS & who is NOT then sacked in disgrace on the spot, has _serious_ problems :/ (google for "Mantu AIDS M'Beki" for the gory details...) Anyway this is completely O/T.

RE: Good publicity can't hurt

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

All the pretty advertisements in the world aren't going to help you get your Fedora Desktop running correctly when there's a kernel bug.

And, all the pretty desktops that run on Linux don't mean squat if the bean counters and other non-techie PHBs never considers evaluating them. I think this has to be done on both fronts, PR to people that control the purse strings at larger companies, and investment in developers that produce commercial class applications.