Incoming from Johnny Stork: > I am currently in the process of conducting extensive research for
I've been involved with the UN Online Volunteers for a couple of years now (though quite a bit less actively recently) and I'd have to agree; in the developing nations (DN), you have two choices: pirate commercial software or go Free/Open Source Software. Someone earning three bucks a day in a tin mine in Peru simply cannot afford legal copies of XP and its ilk. If they've got a computer of some kind, they can run FOSS (if they can get their hands on a copy, which can be difficult in the DN). Apache took and held the web server market long ago. FOSS won there. Here in North America, however, business is still heavily addicted to commercial software, with few to no suggestions that change is coming, or even possible. Considering North America (aka., the US) is the only market business really cares about, FOSS is (for all intents and purposes) dead here. I've been waiting for, and advocating, change for a long time and it's not happening. North American based business remains heavily addicted to commercial software. Even when you manage to make a foothold (a Linux based mailserver or firewall), it's still just a funny kind of animal that protects the _real_ corporate assets: the Windows based LAN. I don't expect FOSS to make much progress in the typical North American based business for a _long_ time to come. The bean counters and marketroids can't see it, and even its supporters continue to use commercial software, even knowing all they do about the pros and cons. Despite all that, yes, FOSS won here, under my fingertips. I'd rather give up computing than run that other stuff. -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*) http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling - - _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
