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OSS Provides Opportunity, Challenge for Developing World
NewsForge has an interesting article looking at open source in the developing world. From the article: " Open source software and development can push governments of developing nations ahead in the world, but only if they participate as producers of the technology themselves, United Nations University (UNU) researchers say. While they say developing regions such as China, East Asia, India, and South America are among the biggest markets for open source software, UNU officials worry that there may be too few open source developers in those regions."
I travel and I travel a lot: 40 countries so far and the one thing that frustrates me to no end are American swho think that bringing technology to the world is a bad thing. They suffer from a mentality that the grass is greener...
Not doing what we can to empower folks in impoverished countries only serves to keep them down. Maybe, just maybe they can (no closed sourced pun intended) excel and achieve great things if they just had the tools. Before the technology boom the concept of outsourcing anything to India was unheard of for example. It's not empowering EVERYONE but India is definitely becoming a powerhouse. I know small businesses who outsource to Ukraine and Azerbaijan now.
Closed source by it's very expensive nature only serves to keep people down.
I think that OSS developers in these countries will pop up only after the wide-spread use of OSS. What we need are current open source groups to get together with university language programs and create free, easy-to-use open source software with well-translated documentation along with some pre-set up forum space or somesuch... I don't really see it happening any other way.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
A large middle class with significant 'spare time' is a particularly recent, western, first-world phenomenom. In third world countries, most people - except for the aristocracy - just don't have much spare time.
Forty hours per week? Until the US became industrialized in the late 1800s, most people worked 10-12 per day 6+ days per week.
"That is a mindset that should be discouraged from being advocated."
I don't get it. You ripped this line out of its context. Let me get it back in:
"Open source is not the poor man's Windows, [t]hat is a mindset that should be discouraged from being advocated."
Translated: "You don't use Open Source, just because it is cheaper than Windows. There are other reasons."
FOSS means that work, whether localisation or support, can be done in the local region at local prices. It therefore levels the playing field, helping to achieve the (supposed) objectives of the WTO. And, in reality, it doesn't reduce Microsoft's profits as much as you might think because, in many cases, the alternative is actually piracy.
On the other hand, it creates middle class jobs (jobs relying on literacy, professional skills etc.). The biggest problem of many Third World countries is the lack of a middle class. Between the very poor (exploited) and the very rick (exploiters) there is no buffer of people to create a civil society. In China the very concept of civil society is still alien while it has emerged rapidly in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. India has a rapidly increasing middle class and is the world's biggest democracy.
So, I know this may seem over the top: but FOSS provides support to fair trade, emerging democracy and free markets. And it does it while expending very little energy, so it contributes little to climate change.
Pining for the fjords
For any country to be dependant upon imported proprietary software can't be a good thing; it has to be even worse for a developing country's IT infrastructure to be dependant upon pirated copies of Microsoft Windows.
The term "open source" actually has a very precise definition, which enshrines each of the "four freedoms" described in your link. Anyone using the term to describe something like the Windows Shared Source Initiative is using it wrongly.
No need to start a controversy where there is none. The Open Source/Free Software split is more about ideology than practical effects.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
There are several real issues with Open Source in Emerging Economies
1) Limited broadband capabilities, even in a country like Saudi Arabia the typical University/Research Center/ISP will have a limited international connectivity, and downloading a Linux Distrib is not easy, having a large number of people doing this is even harder.
On the bonus side the same applies to Windows upgrade with the result that most installations are hopelessly unsafe, and the typical Windows box a flea ridden disaster.
2) Limited value given to Freedom, although the "G8" countries are trying to limit the citizens freedoms to fight T. D.D. and P. you can promote "Freedom" without sounding "too" suspicious, in a dictatorship where Free Speech is defined as a foreign conspiracy against national values only "Free as in Free beer/(or in some country apple juice)" stays as an argument.
And of course if you have a lot of conterfeiting happenning you are in a situation where Ubuntu cost 4$ and Windows Vista also 4$ (two DVD you see).
3) Limited access to large projects
Large projects are "paid for" by foreign government through various "AID" schemes, wich actually means that "G8" tax payers carry the risk of large loans, that are eventually repaid by the emerging countries tax payers to various insurance funds.
And since it is an "AID" it actually means that the lender country decides what will be used, and in the case of the US it means
That the great philantropist Bill Gates will be contacted to provide his marvellous products.
4) Limited access to "reseller bonus",
Basically the way corruption works in emerging countries is that since the "G8" countries decided to "fight corruption" what they
really did is "outsource it" to local reseller, since "service bills" will be paid on delivery, and since the people who are
expecting a kick back are in a hurry the best place to pad fees are in the licences fees.
So basically you sell a lot of licences for 10 time the real price and the local distributor is giving the cash "as needed"
And you have plausible deniebility.
Of course if you use Open Source solutions 10 time 0 is 0, not very attractive.
5) Little respect for creative work, the most admired people are "warriors" of some kind and "big merchant", and those people are
the one that get the best revenue, actual "work" is paid a minimum. And since Open Source is all about squezzing out the
"merchant" and trying to give the power back to the "creator" it does not fit.
Why will it ultimatelly succeed
a) Telcos are greedy, so they will ultimatelly improve the infrastructure to attract more customers.
b) Public discourse and private discourse are very different, so ultimatelly the grass roots effect of Open Source should do the trick
c) The governments are starting to be scared of the cost of "aid", so some critical infrastructure are self funded (so have to be affordable)
d) Corruption has a tendency toward reduction, and anyway where it cannot be reduced the "corrupt elite" will see in their interest to find ways to squezze cash out of "sustainable solutions".
e) People in the emerging country will eventually start to find their own creative role models, you might keep in mind that one of the things the precipitated the first world war (less that 100 years ago) was the desire of the German Imperial government to stop local opponents by calling on a common enemy.
And one of the gripes of the local opponents was the "c
Not to point out the really obvious, but developers in those countries are may be too busy working to make money 16 hours a day, and just have no time to write open source. The conditions really are horrible.
You know, the developers we outsourced all the jobs to because they are cheaper, leaving plenty of free time for western developers to write Open Source.
India is starting to join the open source world in great numbers... because their jobs are being outsourced to China.
Yes, I expect this will be modded -1 Unpleasant Reality.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
First of all, let's stop the stereotyping. The "developing world" is huge and extremely diverse, containing countries as comparatively wealthy and advanced as South Africa as well as underdeveloped and poor countries like Mozambique. To suggest, as some have here, that "nobody in the developing world has free time", or "few people have access to electricity" or my personal favourite of "people in the developing world have more pressing needs, such as food and water", is of course ludicrous. To those making such arguments, please do us all a favour and educate yourselves.
Programming is essentially a product of enthusiasm, as many of those reading Slashdot will probably know. In this, it is similar to becoming a pilot. Every single programmer I know began programming purely out of interest, and a desire to do more with their computers and explore the boundaries of what was possible. Not all programmers go on to make it their careers though, just as not all of those who dream of flying as kids end up as pilots. However, when the demand is there, people become encouraged to turn their hobby or interest into a career, and do so. The thing to remember here is that programmers are not created, and you cannot shove out some govt program that will result in a couple hundred programmers emerging by the end of the year. Instead, it's about giving youths access to computers (say at school) and teaching them the healthy curiousity and ambition that results in them trying to do more than the usual.
Currently, the emergence of programmers in the developing world is hampered by a lack of widespread access to quick and cheap internet, and a lack of access to computers. Yet this is slowly changing, and it really can only get better as both internet access and computing become irrevocably cheaper every year. Indeed, if there are already enough skilled software programmers in India to throw half of Slashdot's contributors into a protectionist rage every so often, then you know things are looking up in the developing world.
This article, and others like it, is interesting but ultimately misguided. The choice here is not an absolutist one between open source and proprietary software, as both have their place, and nor is there any way to magically create programmers. Instead, the attention that is being focused on the supposed lack of programmers such instead be focused on pressuring the governments of the developing world to liberalise their markets, drop tariffs, and generally increases the level of freedom available to their people, so that those with the curiousity to try new things will be able to do so without hindrance.