Open Source in poor governments.

[elliotn]

Since i have read a lot about rich states adopting open source and saving Millions of dollars, that makes me wonder why are the most poor countries are slow to adopt what could save tax payers money. Were I work we use Ms office, p.e.s, ctrack, wordperfect, novell car circulation software, etc. .its actually about 15 licensed sofwares per PC, imagine how may pc's our EPRS which has close to 60 PCs uses alone, not including the police stations,laptops etc.

I mean with the Gdp those african countries has. Some living under a dollar or two per day they could save alot

[billgoldberg]

Since i have read a lot about rich states adopting open source and saving Millions of dollars, that makes me wonder why are the most poor countries are slow to adopt what could save tax payers money. Were I work we use Ms office, p.e.s, ctrack, wordperfect, novell car circulation software, etc. .its actually about 15 licensed sofwares per PC, imagine how may pc's our EPRS which has close to 60 PCs uses alone, not including the police stations,laptops etc.

I mean with the Gdp those african countries has. Some living under a dollar or two per day they could save alot

Yes sure.

But then again I doubt that those are all legit programs running.

[HavocXphere]

Being from SA you should know that things move sloooowly in these departments. There is movement towards FOSS...its just so slow that its easily confused with no movement.;)

http://www.ioltechnology.co.za/article_page.php?iSectionId=2888&iArticleId=3695987

The other thing is that MS is pushing very hard in these areas. e.g. If some government is planning to go FOSS then MS sends in a team to do whatever it takes to prevent this. Usually this means handing out MS licenses for peanuts. The government/university then sees that they are getting a $100 product at $10. What a bargain...so they stick with MS. This
slows down FOSS adoption like crazy.

[gaffurabi]

imho in countries like turkey the government is pretty marble-headed. they want an authority (hence a corp.) to contact, to deal with.

[binarypill]

another major leap for poor governments to adapt to open source technology is the severe lack of technical know-how of their existing IT division (if they even have one). MS applications are so "embeded" in society (internet cafes, personal computers, free internet access points) that most efforts in education and training focus mainly on them. Adapting to open source software is not very attractive because:

1. they are not that common
2. technical support for such technology is not readily available

the open source movement needs some ambassadors like the "engineers without borders" thing.

[mips]

Then there is this think called "kick backs".

[Zlatan]

Since i have read a lot about rich states adopting open source and saving Millions of dollars, that makes me wonder why are the most poor countries are slow to adopt what could save tax payers money. Were I work we use Ms office, p.e.s, ctrack, wordperfect, novell car circulation software, etc. .its actually about 15 licensed sofwares per PC, imagine how may pc's our EPRS which has close to 60 PCs uses alone, not including the police stations,laptops etc.

I mean with the Gdp those african countries has. Some living under a dollar or two per day they could save alot

Poor countrie's governments do not want open source because in this case members or these governemnts are not getting payed by MS guys.

[FLMKane]

The main reason is because the governments are technical egg heads. I tried talking to few high ups in Bangladesh recently and they had no idea what Apache was, thought that Open Source software meant 'Free Software' as in free beer and thought that windows server 2003 was the most stable server OS around.

[ugm6hr]

Then there is this think called "kick backs".

Unfortunately, the relative value of these in a "developing" country in comparison to a government salary can be massive.

The value of an OpenOffice deployment can be as low as zero to an open source company such as Sun; hence they don't play the same corporate games as MS.

Government sponsorship and support of OSS does exist outside the EU (largely for political reasons):
Red flag Linux in China (Red Hat base): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux
Cuba's Nova (Gentoo base): http://www.osnews.com/story/20963/Cuba_Says_No_More_Microsoft_Joins_the_Linux_Bandwa gon

In medical circles, local OSS development is very active; it appears that Argentina, Thailand and the Philippines (amongst others, I'm sure) have successful EMR tools in development, or already in use.

As for business, it is the same story everywhere - marketing.

[longtom]

It's a combination of all really - but the shortage of knowledge and the kickbacks probably weigh in most in South Africa.

South Africans, who know what they are doing on a high level rather earn Pounds and $ then ZAR...

Hey eliotn - nice win by Chiefs this we...

regards

longtom

[mehaga]

- It's difficult to use linux in environments where many people cooperate via software, doing very different types of work. Microsoft, on the other hand, is putting a lot of effort into understanding what it is that people in medium/large organizations need, and they are trying hard to meet that need.
- There is a *lot* more corruption in poor governments. They do illegal stuff all the time ;)
- They often have no idea that they are using illegal software.
- People running poor governments have option to use "free" Windows and a lot of (again, "free") Windows-based applications and another option to... They often don't know there are alternatives. Even if they knew, FOSS wouldn't be able to cover all their needs.
- Microsoft loves the idea of people using their platform, even if they use it illegally. Sooner or later, they will have to buy that software. And they will keep asking for more.

Delivered to you from Bosnia, one of the poorest, if not the poorest country in Europe :)

[FLMKane]

Oh yeah I forgot. It is too difficult to pirate windows Vista and possibly Windows 7, so when poor governments try to upgrade they will be in a bit of mess with Microsoft taking away hordes of cash