What does 'Userful' do?

Well, it sounds like one of the things that it offers is the backing of a company that is trying to solve some of the problems listed in the article and the comments.

Before we rush to pull Userful's oxygen, perhaps we should ask ourselves what the consequences would be. It sounds like Microsoft is investing a lot of money to ensure they do not lose these markets. If we think that Linux based solutions would be a positive step forward, we need to understand how to make that work.

I agree, it would be great to see all the software as free software. If efforts to install Linux as a significant fraction of emerging market deployments are successful, I am sure fully free alternatives will emerge.