Slashdot Mirror
Researching Open Source
philippInAfrica writes "bridges.org just released the software comparison study that looks at free/open source software and proprietary software in community computer labs in Africa. The announcement is on bridges, or you can download the full report in PDF form. To our knowledge, this is the largest field study of its kind in developing countries - we visited 121 computer labs in Namibia, Uganda and South Africa - and we are making all data available to other researchers. Feedback from the international ./ community would be great."
Life is very different in other parts of the world/cultures. Do not think your way of thinking applies to them. I'm not bashing you, it just seems that a lot of people tend to forget that -- especially when they are more or less isolated from other cultures / parts of the world.
I'm not saying it is, but maybe, in some of those places/environments, it is acceptable, even by the government, to use pirated software, or at least to turn a blind eye to that fact.
In a similar but more "official" case, the Brazilian government broke international drugs patents to manufacture cheap AIDS medication -- a fact that was applauded around the world. It's a very different situation and in a very different part of the world / culture / society, but it illustrates the same point.
tmegapscm
Oh, and one more thing. I don't know if you don't know what you're talking about or the people at your meeting didn't know, but neither Samba nor SMB/CIFS, the protocol on which it is based, is a proprietary protocol. It's implementation within Windows is, but the protocol itself isn't. From an article about CIFS posted at Microsoft:
CIFS is an open, cross-platform technology based on the native file-sharing protocols built into Microsoft Windows and other popular PC operating systems, and supported on dozens of other platforms.
In either case, someone is a nutcase. If it's the speaker at your meeting, he or she is certainly not representative of the open source development community I've seen and experienced, and I'm probably inclined to agree that he or she is ignorant and arrogant. If it's you, well then, you do deserve to be modded down in spite of your complaining reply to your own post.
(No offense, but I'm leaning toward believing that in this case, it's you...)
now, there's someone here at bridges.org pointing out that Free Software is pretty much useless to people who need it the most.
Sucks the way the glass tends to be half empty, doesn't it?
Free software is useless, because it appears there isn't a statistical difference in the success rate between people who choose free software vs. people who choose proprietary. Let's assume by the way that there is no difference between those populations.
Free software developers are irresponsible because they have greater enthusiasm for the idea of making a new protocol than implementing a widely used and widely despised one. This "Not Invented Here" attitude is only found among free software engineers. Also, discount the fact they've actually done it. A responsible person only does what he thinks is the most fun; the difference is that he always finds the most important work the most fun.
i hope that this article will bring that home more clearly - that the ignorance and ego [definition of arrogance] of free software developers needs to go.
I couldn't help teasing you here a bit, because it seems to me you're position here is so unrealistic. Ignorance is always bad of course, but successful people, it seems to me, nearly always have a streak of ego and arrogance in them, they just know what to do with it better than other people. The most likeable of them also have an ability to simultaneously embody arrogance and humility, and maybe this makes them more successful as human beings. But I've often seem humility without success, ego without success, and success without humility. What I never seem to see is success without at least a dash of ego.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
To the repliers of this post, I wanted to make a couple of points.
First of all, I know that not everyone thinks like me and that copyright laws are not exactly a determining factor in many of these government's decisions. That's why I stated that I can accept this from an informational standpoint. However, the self-stated purpose of the study is not just to provide information, but also advice. As such, I am worried that people reading the study may make the decision to go with commercial software because it's okay to pirate that software. Bridges.org is a joint American / South African organization, so I wouldn't think that this is the kind of inferrence that they would want people to draw.
Second, I hate to point out the obvious, but one of the points I would hope that a study like this--one that provides advice--would try to emphasize is that these African labs don't have to scrounge to get the software they need, and no one needs to break international copyright laws, no matter how little regard they have for those laws. That's kind of the point of FOSS. Or stated another way, why pirate software when you can get software of the same or better quality to do the same thing for free? It seems to me that they're implying, "Cost isn't (shouldn't be?) a factor in your decision, because commercial software is free, too."
I agree that the willingness of the labs to use unlicensed non-free software is probably not a good fact upon which to base decisions about software. However, it is important to remember that no one - not even Microsoft - is going to go after a community computer lab in developing Africa for using pirated software. It would be a public relations nightmare, and not worth their time and money since they can't afford to pay for the software anyway. For these labs, pirated software is a perfectly viable option, so it needs to be taken into account in policy decisions.
Who's the arrogant one here?
that was a _very_ interesting and defining moment, because it told me that
everyone in that room...[snip]
Everyone? Come on now, a few people clapped. You are arrogantly assuming no
one else is as "enlightened" as you.
if you HAVE the ability, ACCEPT the responsibility.
I have the ability to do about 50% of the jobs in the world, if not
more. Should I accept the responsibility for them? Obviously not. Even
if I were Superman and could do half of them, I would force half of the
world's people into unemployment.
You may think I am being facetious there, but the point is that we
sometimes have to wait for someone else to do something before they
*will* do it. Similarly, we sometimes have to wait for consensus if we
want to move an idea forward. Not everyone is going to come around right
away -- they have their own hot buttons and their own agendas.
We do the best we can with what we are given. And those of us who *can* do,
know that sometimes the best thing is to *not* do.