The powerful appeal of something for nothing (Financial Times) [LWN.net]

The powerful appeal of something for nothing (Financial Times)

Posted Mar 29, 2006 19:25 UTC (Wed) by quintesse (subscriber, #14569) [Link]

"so spending time debugging open source code for no payment will be
especially hard to justify"

It is? I would say that getting something for free and then being able to
adjust it to suit your purposes would be a powerful incentive to consider
working on OSS.

Remember that living in a developing country normally means you have a
lack of means (money in this case to buy software) not a lack of time.

Of course for a lot of these people cost is not an issue because they will
use illegal version of commercial software (seen enough shopping centers
in South America where the shops openly sell nothing but illegally copied
software) but I think this will change when companies like Microsoft make
it more and more difficult to use pirated versions of their software. Of
course it will never be 100% safe but there will come a time I think where
it will become easier to just tell people to use Linux than getting around
all the copy-protection stuff, especially when more and more features will
require being on-line. Windows Update works now if you have a pirated
copy, but how much longer?

The powerful appeal of something for nothing (Financial Times)

Posted Mar 29, 2006 20:14 UTC (Wed) by Stavros (guest, #36829) [Link]

"It is? I would say that getting something for free and then being able to
adjust it to suit your purposes would be a powerful incentive to consider
working on OSS."

An even more fundamental incentive: developing nations are using open source, so experience with open source is more valuable than experience with closed source like Windows. If end user licences for proprietary software are already too expensive there is no way companies in developing nations will be able to pay for developer licences, or even be able to deal with the security infratructure that NDAs will impose.

Most people want a good job without travelling half way around the world for it. Whatever skills are needed for local jobs are the skills that people will try to acquire. In the U.S. you need to be able to work with Windows because all the businesses are already using it. If the governments in the developing world are using open source you need to be able to work with those tools.

To me the most encouraging comment in the article is:

"For many in the OSS community, the developing world is their natural territory - a place where proprietary alternatives such as Microsoft have not yet established a grip, [...]"

This is a place where we're starting on a level playing field, rather than battling uphill against an entrenched competitor. It will be very interesting to see how things evolve.

-- Stavros

Something for nothing, or community effort?

Posted Mar 29, 2006 20:58 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]

It seems people from the first world sometimes think of developing countries as a savannah where you have to pedal to generate the electricity for the computer, and use smoke signals for wireless internet connection.

I now live in Brazil, and am originally from Europe. I can tell you that we have very high technology here! And we do develop software for our needs that we then release under (L)GPL. Check for things like TerraLib.

Also, loads of this type of countries (India, China, Brazil, ...) have a higher-than-you-may-think level of education, and when students use GNU/Linux at Uni, they tend to use their spare time developing for it rather than for other OS's. Example: the 2.4 series of the Linux kernel is maintained by a Brazilian (olá Marcelo!).

Something for nothing, or community effort?

Posted Mar 31, 2006 2:04 UTC (Fri) by jkhoo (guest, #36581) [Link]

Yes, I am from Singapore and I have great admiration for Brazilian linux guys. There are alot of talents there...

Time is a very big factor

Posted Mar 30, 2006 8:38 UTC (Thu) by anandsr21 (guest, #28562) [Link]

I think you should also consider a lack of time as is the case with India.
In India generally Software education in Colleges is not very good except for the top 20 colleges. In these colleges most of the students are more interested in gaining grades as that is what will help them in getting a job, rather than learning about software development. The companies do not hire based on your software skills but based on the speed of tackling problems so their tests are rarely technical, and mostly analytical. There is a technical interview but that can be handled with what you would learn in the course, not through development experience. So students do not waste their time in learning how to develop software, and instead study the course material faithfully and prepare for GMAT, CAT, etc where they can master Analytical tests. They do not really have the time to master software development. Companies in India expect that and have their own training courses where they teach what they think will be useful on the job.
Even people who are interested in learning about software development cannot spend all their time on it as they have to get a good job as they do not have a safety net in India. Everybody has to fend for themselves and their family. So they cannot become proper contributors. It may happen the prof. or guide may put you into a project where you do OSS development and may be able to contribute.
After getting a job their is no time anyway. Because Overtime in India is the norm which is expected on the job and you do not get paid for it. It doesn't really matter to the students if they are getting their software free or not. They may be working on Linux but still would not contribute.

The powerful appeal of something for nothing (Financial Times)

Posted Mar 29, 2006 23:37 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

The story overlooks some other obstacles for potential contributors from developing countries:

Bandwidth and connection quality. It's hard to download a multi-CD distribution over the phone line. I don't know of any distribution that would allow installation over dial-up internet while tolerating possible disconnects.

Language. Understanding "Cut" and "Paste" is one thing, understanding real language is another. Ability to write, to argue and to refine patches in mailing lists requires good English. This needs to be learned. Not everyone who is good in computers is good in foreign languages.

Localization. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard. If the secretary cannot use free software right away because of a seemingly trivial issue (e.g. incorrect date format), it's likely that non-free software will be used, and the IT support staff will support it during the work hours instead of fixing those issues.