For those who don't know me, I am working in Kuala Lumpur for Consumers International leading its global campaign on Access to Knowledge. FOSS advocacy is a big part of this. I'll be talking at MOSC 2010, but this email is about something completely different.
I would like to help with advocacy around FOSS adoption in Malaysia, and it seems to me that an easy target would be to convince the OEMs and computer retailers who are distributing PCs and laptops with FreeDOS (or, less commonly, with a version of LInux that boots to the command line), to ship them with Ubuntu instead. I have nothing against FreeDOS, but it is obviously not remotely useful for most people. In reality the only reason why such a useless operating system is preloaded is because users are expected to replace it with a pirated copy of Windows immediately. Instead if these units were shipped with Ubuntu, users booting it up for the first time or playing with it at the dealer would be struck by the fact that, actually here is a really damned good operating system and maybe there is no need to replace it with a pirated version of Windows at all. What is needed is for a person or team from the FOSS community to make a project of liaising with OEMs and retailers to explain how easy it is to preload Ubuntu, to present their customers with an attractive, useable computer right out of the box, at no cost to the OEM or the user, and at the same time discouraging piracy of Windows. Is anyone interested in collaborating on such a project? -- Jeremy Malcolm Project Coordinator Consumers International Kuala Lumpur Office for Asia Pacific and the Middle East Lot 5-1 Wisma WIM, 7 Jalan Abang Haji Openg, TTDI, 60000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: +60 3 7726 1599 CI is 50 Consumers International marks 50 years of the global consumer movement in 2010. Celebrate with us as we continue to support, promote and protect consumer rights around the world. http://www.consumersinternational.org/50 Read our email confidentiality notice. Don't print this email unless necessary.
_______________________________________________ general mailing list [email protected] http://lists.foss.org.my/mailman/listinfo/general
