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Microsoft Thinks Africa Doesn't Need Free Software
DIY News writes "Microsoft has claimed the cost of software is not an important issue in the developing world. According to MS, while you can give people free software or computers, they won't have the expertise to use it."
...they'll never get any expertise using it at all if they have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for an OS and office suite.
Move Sig, for great justice.
This is exactly where Open Source community should come in and fill the gap and jumpstart the whole thing. The only thing they need is just will power... and perhaps some access to the internet... which perhaps is not available in most areas....
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One summer the council decides to put Linux on donated school computers and put the saved money in the reserve instead of buying Windows. The next summer the crops are poor and the money from the reserve buy food to save lives.
So yes, in some cases Linux can cure hunger.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
on biz, and I see a lot of pirated software in the banks where I'm working on client site.
I'm against pirating software in general, but with attitudes like this, well let's just say Africans are ok pirating MS software in my book.
Down in Africa those folks are just doing the best they can with what they got. This attitude that "if they can't pay they don't deserve" is mind boggling. MS could do a lot of good down there, but no.
On the plus side, I'm seeing lots more banks deploying Open Office on the desktop with Liunx and MySQL on the Enterprise side. This whole controversy will be rendered academic in perhaps ten years.
Who the hell would accept MS crapware when they've spent the formative years on their careers using Open Source?
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Personally, I think if that statement is true, it would still be true if the word "free" is struck out:
Of course, that would be Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot, but that'll *never* happen, will it??
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Why can't African states bootstrap?
Maybe because of the aid we're giving to them:
"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"
It ironic then that the best developed countries in Africa today are those where European colonisation was strongest, compare e.g. Kenya (British colony - exports ~ $2.5 billion) and Uganda (British Protectorate - exports ~ $600 million).
Some comments from an African: 1. Anyone heard of Ubuntu? Does that sound like an english word? "Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". The person driving it (Mark Shuttleworth) is an African and the business he built and sold was developed in Africa. 2. Africa is a big place, don't generalise. Some Africans live on a $1 a day, whereas I live a first-world lifestyle. 3. Microsoft ignores the developing world at its own peril. A true competitor for MS will probably emerge from a developing country, where people and governments are not prepared to pay expensive licenses for functionality they can get for free.
Why does everyone say this always; when china do spaceflight and africa gets computers.
Let me tell you something; in todays worlds all type of fields are interlinked. A diverce economy is needed to become successful. We cannot grow food in large quantities if we do not have technology. If everyone focuses on farming in africa noone will develop technology, infrastructure, stores, and other things that are necessary for a well functioning non-starving country. In my country 2% of the population does farming, in africa I bet it is much more, still we probably produce much more food for every citizen. Why? Well mostly because they dont have as much technology to help and many are poorly educated.
Helping africa is NOT about constantly sending them supplies they need; but to help them get educated so they will be more efficient farmers and build themselves a stable infrastructure and economy to distribute the food and other things amongst them. Preferably helping them by going there; when we send technology we should be there and learn a few who in turn can learn others. Helping someone is often mostly about fixing the root to someones problem. One way to help africa get educated is to send them computers with internet - one really good thing with this is that it opens up the world for many ordinary africans.
I have a friend that went to Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world, to install computers and microwavelinks for internet. He was there for a few months and when he got back he told me a lot of the country and showed me pictures. The problem there seemes not to be mass starvation or anything; most people in africa *HAVE* food for the day. They have clothes etc. What they dont have is education, internal technology know-how, or organizational skills. They seem to have lots of problems organising themselves into companies or other forms of organizations. Everyone, mostly, does everything on their own for themselves (or their close family). We need to teach them those important things. My friend who went there said that there was a lot of intrest in the computers and internet, they teached them to use it and to do maintenance on the hardware+software, so that they can teach others who in turn can teach others, and so on.. Most people here on slashdot learned themselves computers when they where kids, kids/adults in africa can and will do the same if we give them the changce.
If other slashdotters have the time, I think they also should go to some country and help them with what they are good at. Are you good at farming, then well you can help with that; are you good at technology then you can help them with that, and so on.. You get no pay of course, but most organizations that organizes these things pay for your flight and stay.
The United States is one of the lowest per GDP contributors to the international aid effort and most of that aid is severely resticted in its allocation - the bulk of it goes to US contractors/consultants/suppliers and only a fraction of it actually going to help the people who need it.
With a similiar gusto to yours, President Bush announced recently a tripling of international aid - unfortunately, the level of aid was so low to begin with, nowhere near that promised, that tripling only brought it closer to that aid given by the rest of the world - and tripling the aid also meant tripling the subsidies to US contractors.
When you actually start putting your hand in your pocket and helping these people then you can start patting yourselves on the back.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
If you give the computers to the children they will learn it and the perceived difficulty is irrelavent.
When a child is born it understands no language yet learns one. Windows isn't easy for a complete beginner either, inexperienced computer users ask millions of questions about Windows every day.
This is true in many countries. Nescafe seems to be almost ubiquitous across much of Africa and the Middle East (and I'd probably guess elsewhere too though my travels haven't taken me much beyond these regions). Even in Turkey, a country *famous* for its Turkish coffee, if you ask for coffee without being more specific, you'll get Nescafe. It's an interesting testament to the power of marketing or the appeal of things perceived as part of Western culture. The irony is, in North America, you're unlikely to find Nescafe anywhere except vending machines.
It's crystal clear that 95% of the people here have not only not been to Africa, but did not even Read The Freakin' Article. Anyway, I have been to Mauritius (island off the coast of Africa) and no, people weren't batting flies off their heads. Developing countries do have a lot of poor people involved in low-wage agriculture struggling to get by, but they also have the beginnings of a professional class, the people who work in offices and run the governments, banks, etc. They all have computers, if not in their desks then in their offices, and those computers run software. But what, as Microsoft says, they do not have is enough people to maintain those computers, hence the lack of expertise it cites. Which brings up a good point that if you gave computers running Linux to people, they would have a very hard time maintaining it, because if the Microsoft expertise isn't there, then the Linux expertise definitely won't be there, because it's rarer. Scarce expertise may push people away from diverse OSs and towards the market leader (Microsoft).
So there's some interesting stuff worth discussing if people bother to RTFA before they post "Bill Gates doesn't care about African people" or whatever all the junk was I had to wade through while I was trying to spend my last mod point.
Tristan Yates
'Billions to combat AIDS'? The biggest way you could help there is not to insist on the ability to enforce patent rights on anti-retroviral drugs.
Giving a little aid makes you all feel so big, but what you're doing to the third world makes me sick to think you're our (Europeans') cousins...
See, the world doesn't have to be all MS software.
Look at the car industry for a comparison. Not everyone drives a Ferrari. Precisely _because_ not everyone can afford a Ferrari, and they can't just pirate one, some will go buy a cheaper Ford Fiesta instead.
Or, and here's the most important part: in some of those countries they'll go buy a locally produced car, creating employment and taxes in their own economy. E.g., if a citizen of Russia can't afford a Ferrari, maybe maybe they can afford a locally produced Lada instead. Pretty good cars too, and they're creating employment and taxes in their own country. (Ok, I know Russia not quite a developping country, but it's the only one I know a car brand from, so for this example it will have to do.)
The same applies for other products too. E.g., Via sells a lot of their CPUs in China. If a Chinese family (earning about 1000$ a year) can't afford the latest dual-core Opteron, they'll buy a dirt-cheap C3 instead.
Yet invariably the same countries don't have much of an internal software market (and pretty much no retail boxed software market), because they pirate MS software instead. There's a bunch of jobs which never were created, because everyone downloaded a cracked version of Windows and Office.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If they don't pass these laws, they get less or no aid from countries like the US, who (guess what?) want to make sure that American companies are able to enforce their patents everywhere in the world.
Sort of a neat definition of how aid, in fact, _works_. Loans earmarked for Halliburton to build infrastructure and Monsanto to hook them on annual purchases of GM seed.
Unnecessarily cynical? Not really. Both my wife and I took the State Department day-long orals. She got to defend dolphin-killing fishing. I got to try to convince a minister to allow American cigarette imports. It's all about the cold-blooded wheels of business -- aid included.
You're confusing the general public with /.ers. How much of the general public even in America do you think will figure out how to use linux on their own?
:) nonetheless, through persistence I managed to pick up the very basics of msdos ie.. simple 'cd c:\games\airborn' or whatever I wanted to run, and then find the executable through 'dir/w'. After a while I wanted to do more, and with Xtreegold learnt about directory structures/copying/moving etc etc... you know the drill...sounds all so simple I know.. but it was the start.
;)
Maybe... maybe not. The first pc I had real access to was in 1987... at that stage I was definitly not a 'technically able' bloke. Heck I was only 12 years old
These days things are so much easier for the novice. If I could do it as a kid back then anyone can do it now... you mentioned your dad - using that example I'd say that if it were important to him and no-one else was around, he could figure it out himself anyway, but since people are around to help why not just ask? it saves time and is much simpler.
Why else do you think those technical schools which teach you how to use spreadsheets and word processors make money if everyone can just open a software and magically learn how to use it.
Because these days half the time you can't get job that requires said software without some 'official training'
"they are smart people"
And, what exactly do you base this assumption on?
To start, I’m African, in fact a Nigerian. To say Africa does not need open source or lacks the necessary expertise to support opensource or other licensed platforms, is a total MISCONCEPTION. I'm also disappointed @ Gerald Ilukwe, the general manager of Microsoft Nigeria claims. I have worked as a freelancer programer both in the grassroots and the corporate level, and I can tell all not to be misconstrued by the "poverty commercials".
There are people, i mean professionals, who can match up. So much development has been happening here in Nigeria, Much of the business processes these days are computer streamlined and backup by either local and Open source software.
Almost all web applications used in Nigeria are developed locally. Almost all customised software, including Opensourced is developed locally, so what’s Microsoft’s problem?
Africans are survivors. African can survive and would do anything to survive. We do not have Natural Disasters like the west; all we have is Human disasters. The Govts have been criminal these years past, leaving Africa impoverished.
The poverty level is high, but that’s stale news. Most Nigerians have put that (poverty issue) behind them, in a bid move on. So they result to different mediums like software piracy (Apart from Spam and scam mailing, Nigeria is a den of software piracy), spamming using advance-fee fraud and so and so.
Would you say that someone who knows how to hack and crack a piece of software with a long list, and someone who goes to buy this software knowing its use the implications and how to bypass it, IT Illiterate?
Or would you categorise some one who knows how to cook-up a good story, sniff out a looooooooong email list and start a criminal spamming business as illiterate?
In the wake of the millennium, SPAM was king here in Nigeria (This has dropped drastically, as govt is out with different schemes as a crackdown). In those days when there where no Law enforcements, you would see young people, aged 16, 17, in their teens sending spam mails in cybercafés. a lot of them.
I am not saying these criminal activities are justifiable, but does Microsoft expect Nigerians to buy software with their entire monthly salary? Microsoft claims to be supportive through NEPAD; I’m sorry, i disagree! Microsoft Makes a lot of money from direct sales to corporate office in Nigeria (NO WONDER THEY ONLY OPENED A SALES OFFICE IN NIGERIA NOT EVEN ONE FOR SUPPORT), they also have anti-piracy networks and other surveillance systems. They make Money from their sale of software! A lot of it. So for them its all about more sales!
The grassroots are not affected in anyway! How many people can claim they benefited from Microsoft generous offers? Rather people scramble for pirated windows software that they can afford, scramble for junk computers and IT components gladly donated by the west at a price or buy IT components all brought in from Taiwan. Let microsuck make these softwares affordable and people would buy!Let them get involved in grassroots support, projects, and people would appreciate them.
The openSource Cloud here is enormous for example close to 80% of cybercafes in Nigeria use LINUX boxes for their routers. If Microsoft says they want to keep their pitch, let them go ahead, the open source is an alternative with a lot of local support.
Being from Africa (South Africa to be precise) I feel compelled to add some perspective. South Africa is considered to be the most advanced country on the continent and we have access to all Microsoft products.
There is a Microsoft regional office here that provides training and seminars. We even have a launch event scheduled for VS 2005. The point is we have most infrastrcuture in place.
The biggest problem that is holding us and other African countries back is internet connection speed and connectivity in general. Even here in technologically advanced South Africa ADSL is ridiculously expensive. Currently a 512k connection costs roughly the equivalent of $100/month plus the line is capped at 3GB.
Getting to online training sessions and even just MSDN is a major problem for most rural communities that still use modem connections since our main telecomunnications provider (Telkom) http://www.telkom.co.za/ also charges per minute for phone calls.
I think to help with training and advance Africa a better option would be to help local telecommunication companies reduce costs so that internet connections can become cheaper.
It ironic then that the best developed countries in Africa today are those where European colonisation was strongest, compare e.g. Kenya (British colony - exports ~ $2.5 billion) and Uganda (British Protectorate - exports ~ $600 million).
As I understand it, the British, went to the trouble of preparing the colonies, teaching them how to set up a decent government and generally preparing beforehand for the transition. The French basically said to their colonies, "you're on your own now". Pretty much all the countries we here about (the ones that have problems) are ex-French colonies.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
So yes, modern technology does have a frontline role in solving problems of war, genocide and human rights in developing nations. Just because you can't think of how these technologies can help, doesn't mean you are right.
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
Actually 50 years is a short time in just about everything but science. How do you change an established corrupt government? They have the guns and the money. I swear most people that live in the west have no idea about how power is often wielded in other places. It is so easy to sit in the US and say the should be stand up to the government. Would you stand up to a government if you knew that if you where caught that you would have your whole family arrested? Then you would see your mother, sisters, wife, and daughters raped while you watched then murdered? How about your children murdered one by one in front you? You would have to listen the scream in terror while they are killed starting with the oldest to the youngest and you could do nothing? Don't think things like that happen when people want to stay in power? We would even like to thing things like couldn't happen in the EU but they did in Yugoslavia. People that live in free and democratic countries for the most part have no idea what brutality or poverty really is. I will let you decide if that is a blessing or a curse.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.