rouben
July 29th, 2007, 07:58 PM
This summer I went to Cuba for my vacation. Part of my vacation planning was to get in touch with the Ubuntu marketing folks, as well as the Cuban LoCo and ask them if they knew anyone in Cuba that was interested in some software being delivered to them on CD-R or DVD-R. Several people from Cuba responded, but only one was available in the area where I was (transportation is a big problem in Cuba for locals; too expensive), so I decided to deal with that person. A couple of e-mails later, I had my "to be burned" list. Basically a list of CDs and software like a few distributions and several packages. When I arrived to Cuba, I met with this person and handed him a spindle of software that would otherwise take him a week to download (if it was at all possible for him to download all that). As you may have guessed, broadband Internet access isn't as widespread in Cuba as it is in North America.
The moral of the story? If you're going to a place like Cuba, I encourage you to get in touch with the LoCo team and see if you can lend a hand with software or anything else you can. Heck, next year I will probably just buy a hard drive and just fill it up with open source software instead of burning discs. I can imagine that a copy of the Ubuntu repositories would be priceless for someone who doesn't have Internet access. They would get blazing fast access to Ubuntu's immense collection of packages instead of having to wait minutes, if not hours, while packages download.
Secondly, I also wanted to perhaps create a website like Ubuntu's shipit website, where community members from different areas can request software from other community members, and people that can provide, can pick up these requests and act on them.
What do you think?
The moral of the story? If you're going to a place like Cuba, I encourage you to get in touch with the LoCo team and see if you can lend a hand with software or anything else you can. Heck, next year I will probably just buy a hard drive and just fill it up with open source software instead of burning discs. I can imagine that a copy of the Ubuntu repositories would be priceless for someone who doesn't have Internet access. They would get blazing fast access to Ubuntu's immense collection of packages instead of having to wait minutes, if not hours, while packages download.
Secondly, I also wanted to perhaps create a website like Ubuntu's shipit website, where community members from different areas can request software from other community members, and people that can provide, can pick up these requests and act on them.
What do you think?