Here's a paradox. Free software seems perfect for developing
countries: it's free both to obtain and to share, runs well on
low-spec machines and – an important aspect that is often overlooked –
can be easily localised. And yet the uptake of free software in many
such countries is poor, with Windows still dominating computing at all
levels. How is this possible?
Here's what looks like a highly plausible explanation:
If you live in a "well to do" country for instance, downloading 600MB
of data might be a matter of minutes, but to those of us who only have
1GB of bandwidth for a whole month, it generally is out of the
question. This first bottleneck alone puts Linux out of the use of
most people in developing parts of the world.
The post goes on:
The relative unpopularity of Linux in most 'developing' countries,
relative to Windows, can be due to many factors, but I strongly
believe that the issue of 'accessibility' is the overriding one.
Before you fire your comments about how Linux is free and Windows is
paid for, let me please tell you that in all sincerity and honesty,
90% of Windows users in 'developing' countries, run pirated versions.
…
This is what makes me believe that should there be the availability of
Linux CDs, then some inroads can be made. This leads me to wonder if
there is any initiative anywhere to the effect that the Linux
community in the 'well to do' parts of the world come together to make
as many copies as they can of their respective distros and send them
to potential user communities in developing parts of the world.
So, let's consider the options of how free software can be brought to
people in these countries.
There are existing projects like One Laptop Per Child, but that has
been something of a disappointment, not least because it has abandoned
its initial total commitment to GNU/Linux and is offering
Windows-based systems – the last thing developing countries need if
they are to escape from dependence on expensive technologies owned by
Western companies.
Then there are new initiatives like this one:
IBM, Canonical and Simmtronics today announced they will market a
low-cost, Intel Atom-based Simmtronics netbook in emerging markets.
The Simmbook will be preloaded with the IBM Client for Smart Work
Linux distro, based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and will first be made
available in Africa for just $190, says IBM.
That's a reasonable price, but still $190 too much for most people in
developing countries. The best solution remains sending out CDs and
DVDs that can be copied and handed out locally among people who want
them.
It would be easy to create a Web site where people from around the
world applied for free CDs/DVDs, and where those in the countries with
more resources could burn those discs and send them out. But there are
a few problems here. First, there are issues of privacy: people might
not want to send their addresses to a site such as this. Then there is
always the danger that the discs sent out might not be "real" distros,
but might include malware. That can be addressed using MD5 hashes from
the distros concerned (for example UbuntuHashes), but that's a slow
process, especially on older machines.
What is needed, then, is for the discs to be sent out by authoritative
sources so that the recipients can be sure they do not contain any
(well, reasonably sure – nothing's perfect) malware. In fact,
Canonical already does this with its Shipit scheme:
Ubuntu is available free of charge and we can send you a CD of the
latest version (9.10 (Karmic Koala)) with no extra cost, but the
delivery may take up to ten weeks, so you should consider downloading
the CD image if you have a fast Internet connection.
That's clearly a great solution, but it has a big drawback, as the
original blog post quoted above points out:
please remember that Canonical as a company has limited resources, and
cannot meet all the demands from users. My first CD of Ubuntu was
Hardy which came via Shipit, then Jaunty, when I requested one for
Koala, I was told I'd reached my quota.
You can hardly blame Canonical for that: it needs to maximise the
effectiveness of this scheme by distributing its free discs as widely
as possible, which means one copy only. So maybe the solution is for
us to pay Canonical to extend that scheme. Fortunately, there's an
easy way to do this using the Canonical store.
On the page selling CDs and DVDs, it would easy to add an option to
buy copies to be added to the Shipit pool. There might also be a more
general option to append such an extra disc to other purchases on the
site – I'm sure that many people would be happy to add this to their
shopping baskets if presented with such a painless and relatively
low-cost way of giving Ubuntu to people in developing countries who
would like to receive discs. Then, when requests to Shipit arrive,
more of them could be met – including those repeat requests that are
turned down at the moment.
The Canonical store already accepts most forms of payment, so there's
no need to set up extra infrastructure. All that needs to be done is
for the store page to be modified accordingly, and for the scheme to
be publicised. And of course there's no reason why this should be
limited to Canonical and Ubuntu: any distro could set up pages with
similar systems allowing people to pay for extra discs to be sent out.
As well as the purely philanthropic aspect, there are good selfish
reasons why people might want to help spread free software in
developing countries. It would increase the market share of core
software like Firefox, OpenOffice.org and GNU/Linux, which would help
persuade more companies to support them, and more governments to adopt
them. It would increase the pool of programmers who can contribute to
free software projects, making them better for everyone. It would
also make it more likely that entirely new, indigenous applications
would be created for developing countries and their particular needs.
It might even lead to a whole new era of free software creation and
use.
Sounds like a real win-win situation: how about starting the ball
rolling, Canonical?
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.
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