Microsoft Thinks Africa Doesn't Need Free Software 729
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."
Re:It's just a new way of stupidity brewing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's just a new way of stupidity brewing (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What does Africa Need? (Score:5, Informative)
Colonialism ended less than half a century ago; it takes a lot longer to develop even under ideal conditions.
And conditions are hardly ideal: Africa's most natural exports are heavily disadvantaged by Western subsidies, and economic exploitation of Africa and propping up of undemocratic regimes in Africa by powerful nations continues to this day. Even our so-called economic aid is usually tied to specific purchases from the donor nations, so it isn't very effective, and what isn't tied up that way disappears in corrupt regimes, usually with knowledge of the Western donors.
Re:No, they don't need free software (Score:5, Informative)
Do you know that today foreign aid is mostly used as a tool to force poorer nations to implement the policies (e.g on energy) that the rich nations want, and that more money flows from the poor nations to the rich than the other way around?
And let's not forget cancelling the US farmer subsidies, which do cost billions too (way more in fact), so that agricultural societies in Africa and elsewhere can actually sell their food at a competitive price AND market their way out of poverty?
The fact is that on the world scene just as in Western society the rich make the rules. They draft the laws, they have the police, the army and the resources. The poor just try to survive from year to year. Yes they take advantage of the few crumbs that the rich leave on the table from time to time to make themselves feel somewhat better, but on average the poor get raped almost every time.
The West needs education too.
Best.
Re:In other News... (Score:2, Informative)
http://lostinbenin.com [lostinbenin.com]
[/blatant self promotion]
We don't need it - we are writing it ourselves. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No, they don't need free software (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe you should take your own advice. The Romans never conquered Africa, in the sense that we use the word. There was a Roman province called Africa, but it was only a part of North Africa.
Nestle (Score:3, Informative)
You'd be surprised that in a region, West Africa, which produces a hell of lot of coffe and has a coffe culture which is on par with Italian coffe, "coffe" surprisingly often means Nescafé.
In a region where money is scarce and time and coffe beans are plenty, people drink Nescafé. It makes your head spin.
I AM AFRICAN (Score:5, Informative)
South Africa is the original home of Mark Shuttleworth and his foundation Ubuntu has an ongoing task in South Africa to teach and install Ubuntu in schools (Hint to Microsoft: It's one fuck of a lot cheaper than a Windows solution). I chat regularly with my mom down there who has a Windows PC. South Africa's biggest problem is a monopoly telecommunication company that refuses to allow competition or lower prices on internet access, thus ensuring some of the highest access prices in the world.
However, if you go accross the border to the north, in Zimbabwe, which is in total financial ruin with an autocratic president who hates whites and the blames everyone but himself for the crap that is going on there, you'll find an infrastructure that was similarly built up by the original white minority government, but one that has almost no new investment since Mugabe came to power ensuring that growth in the IT sector there is non existent.
And that is the case all over Africa, you have some countries which have fairly decent political systems, such as South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, etc and you have others which are either run by despotic tyrants, plagued by tribal warfare or thoroughly corrupt or a mixture of these.
In those countries where there is a semi decent system, the education is usually quite good. In those which are chaotic the people are lucky if they can read or write and those who do know the internet, know it usually from an internet cafe.
Linux has advantages due to its flexibility and low price. Claiming that teaching people Microsoft is better because there are more Microsoft trained people is only true if there really are trained Microsoft people around. Usually, the level of trained Microsoft people doesn't reach the level of even an MCSE, since we all know what an MCSE POS costs, so that advantage is null. Training people from scratch with Linux is in my opinion better since a basic grasp of Linux will enable someone to manage in extremely difficult circumstances where hardware and other constraints would make it extremely difficult to keep a system running with Windows.
Re:OT: Re:The point is Mr Watson.... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06 -poll-iraq_x.htm [usatoday.com]
Expertise: the factor that made MS-DOS (Score:4, Informative)
That's why Bill Gates' recognized expertise, formal training, and extensive hands-on experience with the Altair the critical factor that made his implementation of BASIC such a success.
In the same way, his vast experience with OS development was the critical factor to IBM selecting him to produce MS-DOS 1.0 as the OS for the IBM PC.
And that's just how it happened. Bill Gates says so, so it must be true.
[insert loud, long raspberry here]
I live in rural Kenya (Score:3, Informative)
There is a huge unemployed population here. Most businesses employ more people than they need. You go to the greengrocers in the city and someone will push your cart, select the best produce, and carry your bags to your car -- for the quarter tip you give them -- which is likely what they work for.
The two people we employ in our house went through 8th grade(standard primary school), speak at least three languages, read what they can (although a newspaper costs an hour's wages). We pay them a pittance by North American standards, but they work well and happily and are glad to be employed.
A friend has set up one computer center to help give some kids a leg up in the job world. He has funding for 9 more, but construction is going a bit slow. The school it is at has no water or electricity. The center is solar powered for 10 laptops, and the kids are thrilled to have a chance to learn.
Does Linux make sense? Absolutely! Why should Kenya be paying the US for something that it can get for free? Is my friend using Linux? No. I couldn't convince him to do that, he worked for Compaq and Oracle and believes that windows is the future.
On the other hand I was given a new Linux mailserver to administer this week and there is certainly some expertise in the country to use is, I just wish education of Linux could be more widespread.
Oh, and I'm on a 256kb connection for about 1000 users. We are doing some testing with VSAT connections, but politics and Kenyan procurement seems to stretch things for weeks and months.
Michael
Microsoft Windows XP is Free as Linux (Score:2, Informative)
You can get Adobe photoshop for $1.25 too!
The only people in third world countries who pay for Microsoft products are government bueracracies who's managers have a cousin who is the Microsoft rep for that country.
In the third world, Microsoft and Linux compete toe to toe in the same market, freeware!
Re:Expertise: the factor that made MS-DOS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No, they don't need free software (Score:0, Informative)
Iraq and New Orleans. The diference is Africans recognized their corruption, Americans call it liberal media bias.
Third article on MS today (Score:1, Informative)
MOD PARENT UP (some more) (Score:2, Informative)
So why do we are we subsidizing Africans out of business, when they can compete perfectly fine on their own? Oh, that's right: because if we didn't subsidize American farmers, we'd run out of crops.
Re:No, they don't need free software (Score:1, Informative)
Um.....what about that war? You know the one in Iraq. The one in the country that didn't attack us. The one that the White House lied about to get us into and is now (finally) starting to see some indictments over. The one where far more innocent civilians have been murdered then were on 9/11.
You talk about governments upholding human rights, but the only bill that George Bush is willing to veto (the supposed conservative), is the one coming up to limit torture. I didn't know that our 'progressive' ideas involved the rape of little boys.
We are quite possibly the most corrupt nation in the world and more people have died over it than under most regimes. I know you were talking about Delay, but the Abramoff scandal goes far beyond cheating Indians. And it goes beyond the republicans as well. If you don't think people are dying from it then you must not be paying attention. Or you don't consider Iraqi's and US soldiers to be people. I'll take two-bit corruption over the levels that we're seeing anyday.
Re:No, they don't need free software (Score:3, Informative)
You aren't without a point or completely off base, but that had nothing to do with why we were fighting. The American public didn't really know anything about the holocaust, and most of the American industrialists were huge supporters of Hitler. That is mainly his economic policies. I am not saying a lot of them supported the holocaust although there were those who did like Henry Ford, Charles Lindburgh and the like.
Pretty much the only Americans who supported opposing Hitler were the Communists and Socialists which we actually had back then.
So while we did end up being on the right side in that war, don't break your arm patting us on the back for our great moral stand against evil or anything like that.
Re:No, they don't need free software (Score:2, Informative)
Oh really? So you're saying that Tom DeLay's corrupt political money machine has nothing to do with the fact that the GOP holds a majority in the House of Representatives? And I'm absolutely positive that the GOP majority has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the federal minumum wage has not gone up since 1997, even though inflation has, effectively slashing the paychecks of the poorest workers. And that desperate poverty definitely has nothing at all to do with the fact that we are 47th in the world in per-capita infant mortality rates. Babies are more likely to die if they're born in the USA than if they're born in Malaysia. Americans pay six times more than Europeans do for health care, and we get less for it.
But this fall we'll get $70 billion more in tax cuts for the super-wealthy thanks to that GOP majority, and since everyone knows that rich people love to go around buying health insurance, food, and medical supplies for throngs of poor people, maybe we can start to make a dent in the little problem of so many babies dying.
And Tom DeLay's corrupt, strong-arm, money politics is totally unrelated to all of this death.