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."

Comments

I spend a lot of time in Africa

[The Mutant]

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?

Windows versus GNU/Linux in Africa - an analogy

[danny]

Check out Windows versus GNU/Linux - an analogy... It's five years old now, but still perfectly relevant.

Danny.

Re:What does Africa Need?

[patro]

Why can't African states bootstrap?

Maybe because of the aid we're giving to them:

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"

Please RTFA, article is about lack of expertise

[tyates]

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.

Microsoft's Got it all wrong!

[folababa]

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.

Re:No, they don't need free software

[DjReagan]

A friend of mine was recently at a cell phone services conference in Canada, and told me the following story of some guy he met there:

[snip] His name is Bukeni Waruzi and when I first spoke to him I was the same old ignorant guy I normally am... his english isn't so great and so I assumed that whatever he had to say wasn't really worth my effort in listening to... but I listened anyway and this amazing story unfolded.

Bukini lives in the Congo (I think) and, from what I gather, works to demobilise child soldiers in the DRC and deals with crimes against human rights... because of his odd grasp of english (he speaks like a million languages!) his story unfolds in a way you wouldn't expect and, like many others at the conference, I found myself thinking "ok, so how does this guy have ANYTHING to do with mobile phones?"... but it turns out he's giving cellphones to one individual in each of these villages (that don't even necessarily have a stable electricity source) so that any human rights violations can be reported to that person who will in turn report them to the authorities who up until now have turned a blind eye by saying "we didn't know that was happening". [/snip]

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.