---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Derek Keats <dkeats@uwc.ac.za> Date: Feb 7, 2007 9:44 AM Subject: [Idlelo2] Permanant Secretary of Kenya speaks about negotiating for cheaper development tools To: Idlelo <idlelo2@fossfa.net> I am writing this from the 1st International Conference in Computer Science and Informatics (COSCIT 2007), in Nairobi Kenya. In the opening session, Dr. B. Ndemo, Permanant Secretary in the Kenyan Ministry of Information & Communication, gave a speech about ICT in Kenya. He spent quite a bit of time talking about negotiating a deal with Microsoft to make their software cheaper for Kenyans, including developer tools so that Kenyans could become software developers. The local Microsoft representative was in the audience, naturally. Members of the Microsoft "technical officer" team follow politicians and policy makers around like flies follow sick dogs. She left when the Permanant Secretary left. Apparently, a meeting of many of the computer scientists in Kenya was not important enough for her; certainly not as important as being visible to the Permanant Secretary. When the Permanant Secretary made this pronouncement about these negotiations, completely ignoring all that is happening in Kenya with respect to FOSS, I was shocked and saddened. I wanted to ask why waste time removing impediments to creating Kenyan software developers, when with FOSS we can start immediately. There is nothing to negotiate, the tools are as good or better than the tools for Windows, and there are no barriers to innovation. Java, C, C++, C# Python, .NET, PHP, BASIC, and most other environments are available on GNU/Linux. Why do Kenyans need to waste their money getting permission from Microsoft to use these languages for training software developers? This mystery that is only explainable by the constant lobbying pressure from the "technical officers" and their like. There is absolutely no rational basis for it. The minister is implicitly saying that it is right for Kenya to pay money to Microsoft and create a long-term dependence on them, thus using the Kenyan taxpayer's money to create development opportunities in Redmond Washington, an area of the world that really needs dollars from Kenya. It is clear that Dr. Ndemo does not understand that innovation happens faster when barriers are as few as they can reasonably be. With Free Software, this is the case. With propriteary tools, barriers have to be negotiated, and this limits and inhibits innovation. I wanted to show the Permanant Secretary my Ubuntu desktop, equipped with Free Software development tools for which I need neither permission nor to pay license fees to use, and which I can use immediately, no negotiation required. The Permanant Secretary clearly just doesn't get it. Unfortunately, the session did not have a question peroid, and he left along with the Microsoft lap dog (er, I mean representative) before I could use my own keynote space to show him what Free Software can do. So Kenyans active in FOSS, you have a responsibility, this man is in need of some educating. Please make an appointment, go see him. Show him what you are accomplishing with software Freedom. We need to find a way to balance the lobbying power of Microsoft, so that truth and logic have a reasonable chance of prevailing. cheers Derek All Email originating from UWC is covered by disclaimer http://www.uwc.ac.za/portal/uwc2006/content/mail_disclaimer/index.htm _______________________________________________ Idlelo2 mailing list Idlelo2@fossfa.net http://mailman.dst.gov.za/mailman/listinfo/idlelo2