I am afraid this discussion tends to be focalized around the dominant consumerist perspective of "development".
What will we do with waste resulting from 2 billion obsolete 10$ "Xputers" that might pile up in 2025? Don Slater's points are however well taken. Actually there was a report a few days ago that MS was going to sell its OS and Office suite in China at much reduced prices. One can only wonder, if the company is so much concerned with supporting development in poor communities, or else by piracy, why such practices are not generalized. As to a "cheap" Office there is already one, free, Openoffice, which runs on MS Windows as well. Addressing the OS issue in absolute terms is often excessive. Yet there are many instances such as education or large systems where Open Source solutions present a clear advantage in terms of TCO. Not to mention the dependency effect associated with initial learning. Options might need to be considered not on the basis of "countries" but on the basis of users' institutions or situations. Among the options is also the support of local Open Source developers and backstoppers capacities. Michel Menou On Tuesday, March 8, 2005, Don Slater wrote: > This point might seem silly, but surely a very 'sensible' alternative OS > would be a very *cheap* Windows XP, with very cheap Office or Works > versions? If Windows XP were sold at the price it usually commands in > pirate markets, it would be perfectly OK. So doesn't it make just as > much sense to pressure M$ for the equivalent of educational licences, or > simply donated software? The demand would be for a more appropriate > pricing structure, and would be similar to demanding that drug companies > allow or produce very cheap generic versions of drugs that are essential > to lives in poor countries. > > I tend to get worried (particularly as an ethnographer) when I see the > word 'only' used in these discussions - there may seem to be only one > solution *technologically*, but there are always multiple political and > economic strategies, and Linux is 'only' one of these. ..snip... ======================================================================= Dr. Michel J. Menou Consultant in Information and Knowledge Management B.P. 15 49350 Les Rosiers sur Loire, France Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +33 (0)2 41518165 Fax: +33 (0)2 41511043 http://ciber.soi.city.ac.uk/peoplemenou.php ======================================================================== ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
