Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 15:13:55 -0600 From: "Gerardo Paredes" <gerardo_enrique_paredes@hotmail.com> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Message-ID: <F154yjSSXl6PPQcy6aC00001f6b@hotmail.com>
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i am not suscribed to this list but i wrote this and i tought you guys could give it some use: The Explosion of Open Source Software on the Third World and The FreeBSD Project I live in a third world country, is called Honduras, this in Central America for those of you that don't know, i've been using FreeBSD for about 3-4 months and have found the experience amusing, entertaining even enlightening, since i use FreeBSD i forget what the word reboot means (it was replaced for the phrase "power outage") i also have learned a lot of new things in the process and above that all i now feel part of a comunnity, a communnity i enjoy being part of, who haves a mascot every one have fun looking at and who is so smart that it make worth the work and sleepless nights required to have the system working as you want it to work (i feel like Greg Lehey said, like a craftsman). Enough ranting. Now i want to explain what this article is about, is about open source software (let's call it FREE) and the impact it is starting to make in third world economies, that impact is still making little splashes of water, but soon, is gonna become a great wave, Why?, may you wonder, because it's free and because license enforcement of commercial applications on this countries doesn't have a future. In Honduras, hardware vendors sell computers with Microsoft Windows with option to buy the license, obviosly, only the bigger companies are capable to buy computers with licensed software, home users just ask for the unlicensed version with their hardware (BSA, i didn't do anything). As i said, only the bigger companies and maybe some educative institutions have buyed licenses for some software, and that's because minimun wage here is around 90-100$, but don't lie ourselves, people who win minimun wage is not the intended market of computer hardware vendors, but hey, middle class people (i include myself in that group) wages are around 500$-1300$ and, with some amount of money in between the middle class wage i have to buy food, pay rental, electricity, water, college, buy clothes, invite girlfriend to dinner at least once a week and feed the dog (he is called oreo, by the way) if still i have money left by the end of the month i wouldn't expend it on software, who would??????, i would try to save it because next month dollar will be at a higher price (16.24 at the time of writing this) and all prices will be up, after that long lame explanation of what our thirld world economies are you must understand very well why license enforcemente will the slap on their face commercial vendors are looking for by themselves, here is where our open source software comes into the spotlight, here is where were we talk about FreeBSD, people is already starting to use free software, some time before getting started with FreeBSD i contract sysadmined a Caldera Linux server (and that were at a big company!!) we even got a linux only lab at college, this is the oportunity of their lives for FreeBSD, *BSD, linux and all the opensource software to increase their established user base; to start conquering market in this countries you don't need Dell, you don't need Compaq, you don't Need IBM, you don't need ___Name_it_yourself_ big hardware vendors, you just need to teach people how to use it, to sell preinstalled packages ready to run with decent desktops interfaces and a viable alternative to Office and above all, to sell it cheaper!!!, but how we open source advocates start to preach the "May the source be with you" on computer cathedrals?????, start them young, i would say, yes, we need to find some little hardware company (with balls bigh enough) who want to enter this market and invest some money giving hardware preinstalled with FreeBSD to put in schools and teach little 8-9 years old kids how to use our mighty FreeBSD for everyday use, this would have the double effect of taking education to a higher level and making the perfect race "Latinos who use FreeBSD :)", just think about how a whole generation could be converted to open source software getting smarter in the process. Open source software is about to explode on countries like mine, and already have in some of them (some of you remember Brazil?), let's use this big wave with the wind it bought to send our mighty BSD ships to conquest them, let's be the sailors of those ships! This text is covered under the "CHOCOLATE-WARE" License, if any time after you read this you get to know me, give me some chocolate, in liquid of solid form and i you are free to do with this text anything you want. Questions, rants, replys please send them to g.paredes@unitec.edu _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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