How Microsoft Profits From Chaos in Developing Countries
For those of you who don't want to read the whole post - I need ideas on how to make open source software in Bosnia more popular. Government is about to sign a contract with Microsoft. Linux users group of Bosnia is a small organization that could implement some of them. If you have any - email them at uka at linux dot org dot ba, or leave a comment.
Hello, people. Remember Bosnia ? It's a little located in Balkans, wich is located in Europe .... To cut the story - it's here. We were under an aggression from our neighbours from 1992 - 1995.
After that - the "peace" came and with it all the weight of everyday life. In war you think only how you will survive. People around you do the same. There were "they" on "that side" and "we" on the "this side". Life was hard, but simple. After the war people started beathing easier, even buying luxurious stuff - like computers, for example. Before the war not many people had personal computers at home, and if they had it - it was commodore 64. There were some amigas here and there, and, very rarely, xt or 286 ... At first - software was a problem. There was no cheap internet, and no cd writers - and very little software. With the cd writers, came the pirates. The price was 10 KMs per CD (1 KM - konvertibilna marka, convertable mark is 0.5 EUROS approximately) . The price didn't depend on WHAT's on CD ... After a while the price had gone down to 5 KMs per CD.
During that time, buying pirated software was the only way you could buy a software, so it's a natural thing that pirated software started spreading. A lot of people even now are not aware of the fact that MS Office, Corel Draw(! at that time), Adobe Photoshop don't "come with Windows". CDs are sold on the marketplaces, sometimes along with vegetables or in pirate CD-shops.
Our country is almost at chaos. It has no up-to-date laws about universities, agriculture, double citizenship. It also has great corruption problem, more layers of government than economy can support etc. Instead of solving these problems - the government decided that the priority is legalization of software. It was probably decided under outside pressure.
After the decision, in several police raids, pirate cd-shops were closed, and pirate cds moved from marketplaces. Croatia signed a "strategical partnership" with microsoft. Macedonia did so too. Serbia and Montenegro made the same decission. A fool from Croatian government was braging about how much taxes they collected from the licenses (ignoring the fact that much larger amount of money went out of the country for - nothing ... licenses are like air).
I became member of Linux Users Group of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the only organization that advocates free / open source software in Bosnia. It has done miracles with no continuous financing (except symbolic membership fees - around $20 a year), and very small number of active members. We managed to localize KDE, GNOME, OpenOffice, some linux distributions (Mandriva is the most localized for now), and also we created a BHLD - bosnian knoppix-based linux distribution (project is abandoned due to lack of free time).
Someone from Macedonia wrote to LUG about how the "legalization" in Macedonia started and how it finished with signed deal with Microsoft "under the table" (it wasn't very transparent process), and the government didn't even know how many computers they have. At that time - almost same scenario was starting to happen in Bosnia. First, in the local daily newspaper, manager of a strongest Microsoft's partner in Bosnia stated that "Microsoft is willing to invest in Bosnia" (same thing happened in Macedonia). It was an alarm for LUG, we quickly prepared few press statements ... and went to the Krug 99 session (an "associaation of indenpendent intelectuals" - they are mostly ex-communist but they recieve some public attention) and explained the situation. After that everything was quiet a bit, until it was announced that Microsoft is opening it's office in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Our prime minister Adnan Terzić started talking about legalization again. When asked by the journalists about Linux he responded "I have heard about Linux, but they haven't sent us their proposal yet". Although government used Linux for their modernization of tax colecting information system, there is no ministry, or any other government agency that is responsible and competent to choose which software should be used. But that does not prevent our prime minister to make that decission. As in Macedonia - noone knows how many computers government has.
Later, it was anounced that Terzić had signed a letter of intention with Bill Gates about the deal on strategical partnership.
Some FOSS organizations have in neighbouring countries have stopped working after "the contract". In Bosnia - it would mean "no more linux" ... so I wouldn't like that to happen. Now ... LUG could use some ideas on what to do in this situation. If you have some, you can email them on uka at linux dot org dot ba, or leave them in a comment. Thank you, in advance.
Hello, people. Remember Bosnia ? It's a little located in Balkans, wich is located in Europe .... To cut the story - it's here. We were under an aggression from our neighbours from 1992 - 1995.
After that - the "peace" came and with it all the weight of everyday life. In war you think only how you will survive. People around you do the same. There were "they" on "that side" and "we" on the "this side". Life was hard, but simple. After the war people started beathing easier, even buying luxurious stuff - like computers, for example. Before the war not many people had personal computers at home, and if they had it - it was commodore 64. There were some amigas here and there, and, very rarely, xt or 286 ... At first - software was a problem. There was no cheap internet, and no cd writers - and very little software. With the cd writers, came the pirates. The price was 10 KMs per CD (1 KM - konvertibilna marka, convertable mark is 0.5 EUROS approximately) . The price didn't depend on WHAT's on CD ... After a while the price had gone down to 5 KMs per CD.
During that time, buying pirated software was the only way you could buy a software, so it's a natural thing that pirated software started spreading. A lot of people even now are not aware of the fact that MS Office, Corel Draw(! at that time), Adobe Photoshop don't "come with Windows". CDs are sold on the marketplaces, sometimes along with vegetables or in pirate CD-shops.
Our country is almost at chaos. It has no up-to-date laws about universities, agriculture, double citizenship. It also has great corruption problem, more layers of government than economy can support etc. Instead of solving these problems - the government decided that the priority is legalization of software. It was probably decided under outside pressure.
After the decision, in several police raids, pirate cd-shops were closed, and pirate cds moved from marketplaces. Croatia signed a "strategical partnership" with microsoft. Macedonia did so too. Serbia and Montenegro made the same decission. A fool from Croatian government was braging about how much taxes they collected from the licenses (ignoring the fact that much larger amount of money went out of the country for - nothing ... licenses are like air).
I became member of Linux Users Group of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the only organization that advocates free / open source software in Bosnia. It has done miracles with no continuous financing (except symbolic membership fees - around $20 a year), and very small number of active members. We managed to localize KDE, GNOME, OpenOffice, some linux distributions (Mandriva is the most localized for now), and also we created a BHLD - bosnian knoppix-based linux distribution (project is abandoned due to lack of free time).
Someone from Macedonia wrote to LUG about how the "legalization" in Macedonia started and how it finished with signed deal with Microsoft "under the table" (it wasn't very transparent process), and the government didn't even know how many computers they have. At that time - almost same scenario was starting to happen in Bosnia. First, in the local daily newspaper, manager of a strongest Microsoft's partner in Bosnia stated that "Microsoft is willing to invest in Bosnia" (same thing happened in Macedonia). It was an alarm for LUG, we quickly prepared few press statements ... and went to the Krug 99 session (an "associaation of indenpendent intelectuals" - they are mostly ex-communist but they recieve some public attention) and explained the situation. After that everything was quiet a bit, until it was announced that Microsoft is opening it's office in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Our prime minister Adnan Terzić started talking about legalization again. When asked by the journalists about Linux he responded "I have heard about Linux, but they haven't sent us their proposal yet". Although government used Linux for their modernization of tax colecting information system, there is no ministry, or any other government agency that is responsible and competent to choose which software should be used. But that does not prevent our prime minister to make that decission. As in Macedonia - noone knows how many computers government has.
Later, it was anounced that Terzić had signed a letter of intention with Bill Gates about the deal on strategical partnership.
Some FOSS organizations have in neighbouring countries have stopped working after "the contract". In Bosnia - it would mean "no more linux" ... so I wouldn't like that to happen. Now ... LUG could use some ideas on what to do in this situation. If you have some, you can email them on uka at linux dot org dot ba, or leave them in a comment. Thank you, in advance.
posted by Sladis d.o.o. @ 1:31 PM
2 Comments:
At 3:18 AM,
Angelo Embuldeniya said…
i THINK you could take advantage of google grants, check out www.google.org or google.com/grants
Sign up for the summer of code this year, applciations close in may, code.google.com get your LUGs there to participate... there's still hope -- grass roots efforts of course!
good luck!
At 3:24 AM,
Sladis d.o.o. said…
Thank you, we'll try that.
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