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."

Comments

MIT $100 laptop.

[_eb0la_reston_]

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.

Indian price equivalents...

[jkrise]

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.