John “maddog” Hall on FOSS in the Developing World
One of the reasons for my interest in FOSS is that it can be used in the developing world to improve the lives of people without much money for high technology tools. John “maddog” Hall was interviewed by Newsforge about his involvement with FOSS in South Africa:
“In 2001 I was invited to Johannesburg to talk about FOSS software by LinuxAfrica, a local user group that was putting on a small but nice event. In 2003 Hewlett Packard invited me to both Johannesburg and Cape Town for a FOSS “road show.” In 2005 I was invited to Linuxworld South Africa in Johannesburg, and this year I came back again. I have seen a steady increase in the interest and usage of FOSS in South Africa. I believe this has been boosted recently by the actions of Mark Shuttleworth and the Ubuntu project as well as the efforts of the Meraka Institute and its projects.
I think it is exciting that OpenOffice.org and other FOSS software has been able to be translated into African languages so it is easier for African people to use.”
And I really like this quote from Hall:
“There are some universities that are now using FOSS to train their computer science students, but others are still using closed source proprietary software. I do not understand why any university is not at least starting to go down the path of FOSS software. FOSS software not only teaches you what the software does, but allows you to see how it does it. It also allows you to participate in creating the software.
I also have experienced high schools teaching with FOSS software in other countries. They assemble their own computer labs out of cast-off hardware and install their own software. This teaches the students pride in accomplishment as well as computer science.”