Comments on: Microsoft vs the Open Source Community in Africa

By: AJS

AJS — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:50:32 +0000

Microsoft’s strategy in developing countries can be summed up as follows:

Sell a man a fish, and you have sold one fish.
Teach a man to fish, and you get to sell him expensive, proprietary bait and tackle for the rest of his life.

Once you buy — or get given, or pirate — Microsoft software, you are pretty much locked into using Microsoft software forever afterward, because as far as Microsoft are concerned, “interoperability” means “helping our competitors poach our customers”.

By: me

me — Mon, 25 May 2009 09:23:54 +0000

To M
Yes there is a lot of free development tools from MS, but they are not really made for deployment of professional software. You can do it, but some important things are missing. This is personal experience speaking, I just shelled out for Visual Studio Standard after trying to get by with Express. There is a further problem through. The system itself costs money. Now as a freelancer in Europe, I can buy Vista, but it hurts my bank account never the less. Since I develop, naturally I cannot use the basic home edition. Since I have only limited knowledge of Africa, I cannot really imagine how much it may hurt someone in Africa a) to get a machine which can run Vista (yes that cost hurts moderately too) b) get Vista itself. With open source there are systems that do not need top of the line hardware and there is no cost to get an OS.
I still work with OpenOffice because MS Office (professional) is a waste of money. And I am in an affluent part of Europe.

On the other hand I understand government wanting to use MS. Because people do not complain about MS Office as much, as they do about open source software. If something doesn’t work in MS, people think they themselves are stupid and get a new course scheduled. If Open Office acts funny (and it does too) its the softwares fault and they are no certificates and courses to take. Perception plays a big part in the decision. And MS is good in cooing people to calm them down, this works the world over.
By the way I use the tools I need to get things done. I am not firm on one side or the other. I can understand IT-departments wanting to shove responsibility about the software firmly in MS court. But I don’t think this works out long term. I use open source to save money and because it doesn’t irk me half as much, if I know that actually, if there is a problem I could fix it myself. And I like the fast update cycles, always something new. As a student I used Linux exclusively, MS wanted me to jump through too many hoops to get the student software, Linux was just complicated and I learned a lot. It is really easy now, they have come a long way. And they will get better. MS just didn’t get this much better in this time, because that is not their main goal.

By: Louis

Louis — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:56:47 +0000

i’m not really sure whether Microsoft vs open source debate should be the dominant debate – i think for those who love open source the debate should be how to increase the number of open source developers — how can we increase the number of opensource developers and how can we demonstrate to those interested that its in their personal interest to adopt the open source development model.

Now there are a coupe of subtleties about Africa, that’s are different from the US or Europe. In Africa, unfortunately most people in particular careers not because they have love for it but more so because that is where the money is [the same can be said about the US .. but because in the US there is a surplus of skills it sort of nullifies this – hence you find English majors or music major who are software developers etc] end up in careers mainly out of the financial security it offers and those are the people [not all] who end up in running the IT organization in business and government and those are the people you will have to deal with.

So to answers or deal with the question of Microsoft vs open source question you first have to deal with the motivations – we all know or think we know Microsoft’s motivations but we seem not have taken time to find out or have not adequately addressed the motivations of the developers on the ground.

Another part of the equation is arguably is the culture of open source itself and attitude to knowledge and sharing. In Africa and i stand to be corrected Knowledge and Information are closely held – like if you search the web for information about anything in Africa you quickly discover that most of that information has not been put there by Africans rather its mainly foreigners and mostly likely you getting half the story– now that is not to say there is no information or knowledge it just means that information is closely held by few individuals and if its important information its likely held by fewer individuals who derive enourmous power from having that information.

I think i lost myself here and sorry for blogging on your blog but if i say anything meaningful its that you have to understand the motivations of the parties involved

By: HASH

HASH — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:03:26 +0000

@james roberts – on the personal level you’re right. What we’re discussing here goes beyond that though, it’s about the way large government departments buy the lucrative contracts, this in turn wags the tail of local development and the focus of programmers in-country.

Oh, also, I’m not bringing the debate to Africa, it’s already there.

By: james roberts

james roberts — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:57:25 +0000

It’s pretty lame to bring this OSS vs. Microsoft debate into Africa. Can Africans decide for themselves, for once? If I sell coffee to a company in Seattle, why should I not buy a copy of Microsoft Windows made in Seattle? If I deem the product inferior or unsuitable for my needs, why shouldn’t I sell coffee to the Germans and buy a support license of SuSE Linux?

By: Shanty

Shanty — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:37:56 +0000

Hello All.. finally i found one of african blog! hhihihi.. nice to meet you all.. 🙂

By: ismail

ismail — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:29:42 +0000

Zulsafi, i agree totally. Open souce can beat out closed Source any day. And YES buying the business is totally wrong and Ethically incorrect.

I once worked with sharepoint, its by far the worst software i have ever worked with. No one ever uses half of the features due to complexity etc. I tried to evangalize drupal or some open source CMS but the company would never hear of it.

As i said above, key decision makers often do not go with Open Source not because its not up to scratch, simply put with open source they do not get any benefits(Personal). If drupal is implemented for intranet, will the person that made the decision get a free trip to a drupal con? I highly doubt that.

However, i know many MANY people that have been flown around the world with $’s from MS, SUN, HP, Symantec (Insert any other large vendor here)

It simply boils down to that…. and as long as these freebies are handed out… people in decision making positions will continue to make these decisions!

By: Saara and Sirja

Saara and Sirja — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:58:02 +0000

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By: Miquel

Miquel — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:35:10 +0000

@Don, I couldn't agree more with you on the issue of localization. Very important and heavily overlooked by most tech companies as they're based in the de facto monolingual US. Ironic given that a great swath of their programmers are often able to speak two if not three languages. We're trying to change that on our project, although the message is hard to purvey to an audience that doesn't "get it" in how important the native African languages are to communication. You know it well, but it needs to be emphasized that not everyone on the continent speaks English or French! Google realizes this and has made pretty good efforts in having various languages here and there, like their Congo site being available in English, French, Kiswahili, and Lingala with French as the default. I suspect that this may be something that really trips Microsoft up as I've never been terribly thrilled at their localization efforts. It always seems to me that they felt they had to do it to get a market share as opposed to wanting to do it to make their software more universally accessible and be genuinely better.

By: zulusafari

zulusafari — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:59:49 +0000

Is it taboo to say monopoly or corruption? I would find it hard to believe if the big guns are actually putting money under the table, (not that the leadership isn’t asking for it) but monopoly? I could see that. Giving away a lot to get business, that’s outselling the competition. I’m a HUGE free market person, but some things are just straight up amoral. Even though it’s not money, giving leadership a few free laptops for life for his business… just the same.

Ismail- Open Source doesn’t need cash to happen, but if it’s going to play the game, it has to literally buy it’s business. And that’s bad business.