Africa doesnt need Free Software

[KingBahamut]

In response to a question on the role of open source software in Africa, Gerald Ilukwe, the general manager of Microsoft Nigeria, said that cost is not important, even though he admitted that the average annual salary in the West African country is only US$160.

External Links
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Microsoft_Africa_doesn_t_need_free_software/0,2000061733,39217580,00.htm

I think what is most inanely laughable about this article is the statement --


"It's easy to focus on cost and say how much is a product, but at the end of the day it's the total impact that's important. You can give people free software or computers, but they won't have the expertise to use it," he said. "Microsoft is not a helicopter dropping relief materials; we're there in the field."

Holloway states that they are sharing their expertise....This to me is even more laughable. Sharing expertise, sure, Ill bite why not, right? What expertise are they sharing? And at what Cost?

[Stormy Eyes]

Microsoft has expertise to share?

[Swab]

"Microsoft is not a helicopter dropping relief materials; we're there in the field."

Stealing the aid? :cool:

[Spoofhound]

In truth no amount of software - free or otherwise - can solve many of Africa's problems.

MS seem to be using a variant of the "give a person a fish and you feed them for a day, teach them to fish and you feed them for life" point of view - however, if you haven't been fed then free software won't still your hunger.

Its kinda sad that anyone would try to position software as part of the solution - when the problems are issues like AIDS, corruption, genocide, the unfair trade practices of european countries (i'm european, btw), etc

[gray-squirrel]

What expertise is being shared by Microsoft? Good question. I wonder if it's security expertise: I go into my e-mail at least once a day, and what's the first thing I find that manages to escape spam filters? 419-mail. ](*,)

I might be reading too much into the article, but I get the impression that Microsoft is minimizing the good work of other organizations out there by saying "Microsoft is not a helicopter dropping relief materials; we're there in the field". This quote I took offense at in light of the context. Again, I might be reading too much into that.

[blastus]

I have never understood these premises that Microsoft frequently uses:

premise 1: The cost of software is only about 5% of the total cost of ownership. The other 95% is training, migration, support, maintenance etc...

premise 2: The entire software industry will collapse if it uses free and open source software.

How can both these statements be true?

[Swab]

Its kinda sad that anyone would try to position software as part of the solution - when the problems are issues like AIDS, corruption, genocide, the unfair trade practices of european countries (i'm european, btw), etc

Ummm... why is software not part of the solution? A small part maybe, but still....

[KingBahamut]

I have never understood these premises that Microsoft frequently uses:

premise 1: The cost of software is only about 5% of the total cost of ownership. The other 95% is training, migration, support, maintenance etc...

premise 2: The entire software industry will collapse if it uses free and open source software.

How can both these statements be true?

Because Microsoft is the paramount of Self Contradicting Statements. They should change the company name to Paradoxical Obstinate Oxymoron Inc. or POO Inc. =)

[KiwiNZ]

I have never understood these premises that Microsoft frequently uses:

premise 1: The cost of software is only about 5% of the total cost of ownership. The other 95% is training, migration, support, maintenance etc...

premise 2: The entire software industry will collapse if it uses free and open source software.

How can both these statements be true?

Both these statements are true

premise 1. Yes the actual purchase price of software(licence) is only a fraction of the TCO. Depending on circumstances 5% would be a realistic figure.

Premise2 If all software creation and distribution moved to free open source then the Industry of selling and Distributing Software would collapse.

[KingBahamut]

TCO itself is an incorrect term. Its more like Total Cost of Use , depending on the nature of your business. Look at the overall cost analysis of owning a computer at current retail prices based on who uses it and on what level. 125 Dollars for Windows liscense, 500 Dollars for a Desktop, and 125 Dollars for Office MS liscense. Total ownership cost of a 20 man business then becomes $15000.00 dollars. $5000 of that is software liscensing alone. Now one must also factor in the hiring of employees and training of employees to this affect, probably to the sum of $5000 as well. The supplying of nessecary Training materials , $2000. And then Support of the product, Annual sum of $2500 (assuming a 50 dollar per system liscense for support over a 1 year period), what we have is 25% Total Cost of Ownership over the immediate life of the product. Math's probably a little off, but the actual factor involved in cost on the software level is much higher than 5%.

TCO analysis is as reliable to Business as Statistics is to mathematics.

[Lovechild]

"Microsoft is not a helicopter dropping relief materials; we're there in the field."

Stealing the aid? :cool:

Those aid packages can be quite big.. I'm hoping they land on their heads - thus ending the problem once and for all.

[gray-squirrel]

Its kinda sad that anyone would try to position software as part of the solution - when the problems are issues like AIDS, corruption, genocide, the unfair trade practices of european countries (i'm european, btw), etc

When you think about people getting a decent education, practicing good fiscal responsibility in government, and making computers accessible to more people (among other things), software inevitably has to play a role.

If there were people who could design software tailor-made for their local market, some of the trade issues would disappear. Local and free software could remove some of the corruption (I think someone alluded to it in an earlier post about Microsoft in the Philippines). I'm not saying it will solve every problems out there, but it will help people solve other problems.

[chimera]

about promise 2:

Who cares if the Industry of selling and Distributing Software collapses?Wouldn't it be good if every line of code ever written would go open-source?

[KingBahamut]

Then the industry would be driven by service and not by product, and ultimately , probably function alot better and more smoothly in my opinion.

[chimera]

So it's pretty much a good thing,which I was trying to say.

[occy8]

"Microsoft is not a helicopter dropping relief materials; we're there in the field."

Stealing the aid? :cool:

sadly they are reducing the effective aid, money for licenses could be better spend. I did some voluntary work myself in some developing countries, not in IT but in hospitals and I met development aid volunteers teaching how to use windows and MSoffice. I asked them to at least teach Openoffice because he didn't know how to use Linux.