Yet another reason to get angry with Bill...

[Eric Dunbar]

On 18/03/06, Vincent Trouilliez <vincent.trouilliez at modulonet.fr> wrote:

> Yep, I hope the whole world will hear of it, and hopefully its success,
> and that it will get the richer countries to move their ass and switch
> faster to Linux than they would have otherwise.

> I started using Linux only 2 years ago, but what makes me sad is that
> the supposedly "developed" countries are the ones that can't see the
> light (or only very slowly), whereas the supposedly "developing"
> countries, asia, africa, south America, seem much more pragmatic, they
> add 2+2 and just go for it. They seem to have much more common sense and
> will than most of the richer countries.

Developed nations have no need to do so. Commercial software does
offer some pretty significant advantages that FAR outweigh the cost
associated with those packages. The % for IT costs are miniscule vs. %
cost of salaries for people using computers. If you can squeeze an
extra 10% of work out of a workforce that's costing you an average of
Euro 25K/a by investing an extra Euro 200/a in commercial software
licences you'd be an idiot not to. Euro 200 to save Euro 2500. That's
a 1000% return (and, I don't think that's a massive underestimation on
the value of a product like Photoshop (vs. GIMP*) or the compatibility
you get by running the same software as 95% of your
customers/clients).

*Yes, GIMP is nice and has some pretty good features but it's as slow
as molasses in January (in the temperate northern hemisphere; August
in the south) vs. Photoshop and nowhere near as robust.

> For example I just heard today that in Korea, they invest a lot in R&D,
> and now they have 100MBps broadband for cheap, whereas here in France,
> the max you can get is 20MBps, and I doubt you actually get the
> advertised speed...

Korea isn't exactly a "developing" nation anymore (it passed that
barrier many decades ago ;). Their GDP PPP is near the bottom of the
highly developed nation but at $20300 USD they're not doing too badly
at all!!!

<http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html>

PS http://www.nationmaster.com and
http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/ are also good sources for data
;-) (those three are some of my favourite websites around (as part
geographer ;-))

> So, thanks to the "developing" countries for showing the developed ones,
> the right way. Maybe Africa, Asia and south America soon be filled witrh
> millions of Linux machines all over the place... :o))))))))))

I won't hold my breath for much of Africa -- things aren't exactly
looking rosy for the continent for the forseeable future (and, on a
personal level I hold little hope for Tanzania and Nigeria :( (Nigeria
is on the brink of Biafra part II and Tanzania -- who knows... a
stable country for the past 30 years yet still in dire straits).

Eric.