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Continued Look at Global Open Source
sebFlyte writes "In the second part of its look at open source in governments around the world, ZDNet takes an interesting look at open source in the developing world. Pricing obviously is an important factor (if you look at GDP, MS prices in Vietnam are the equivalent, for local people, of charging just shy of $50,000 for a Windows XP license in the US), but other issues arise, such as Brazil's 'sense of community', a certain amount of security-related worries from the Chinese, and language issues in India. A good analysis of the advantages of open source generally, the huge benefits it can have in developing markets, and the fact that open source is on the up despite massive amounts of lobbying and pressure from some proprietary vendors."
That's why the $100 MIT Laptop makes sense: It's "cheap" for developing countries. Any *serious* developer should have one on hist desk just to see how his applications perform on the next half-of-the-world-hardware-standard.
mootion.com - Never underestimate VCs stock options (was: Web 2.0)
Windows XP - Indian Rupees ~8,000 (average pay for an IT worker per month). Equivalent US$ 5,000. Office XP - Indian Rupees ~15,000 Eq US$ 9,000.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
In the pharma industry, prices in the US are much higher than overseas. In other countries governments regulate prices to some degree to keep them low. Socialized medicine won't tolerate the US prices. In the US we basically subsidise the large costs of Research and Development, clinical trials, etc. I wonder if the software market could handle this - pricing variation by country for the same items? The problem for MS and others is that unless they do this, they're driving other countries to either steal or to open-source software. Of course, that may not be a bad thing!
I doubt that pricing is a factor in third world countries. Since they can't afford the prices anyway, but have to communicate with the rest of the world, the majority will using pirated copies of Windows. MS is probably well aware of this, and that is the reason why the local versions for these countries are also localized in the pricing. What these countries value though, is also the independence, which is the really galling thing for the US. Linux doesn't have a stron relation to a particular country, and if it ever will get one, then there is no big problem. You got the source, you can change it and develop it however you wish. When you start out with a mostly new infrostructure you don't need to think about existing ties, because there are none. So it's cheaper and more reliable to code the appropriate converters for like Word dcouments, then taking the whole OS just to get this stuff, and have the extra advatnages for free.