[Wftl-lug] Dreaming about desktop Linux: The first community TuxZine wiki article?

[Christian Einfeldt]

hi

On 1/4/07, Michael Rudas (computer) <mpr_linux at ameritech.net> wrote:
>
>
> --- Christian Einfeldt <einfeldt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > This is a topic I think about.  A lot.  Desktop
> > Linux.  The end of the Microsoft monopoly.
> > A truly free market in desktop software.
> > But will it ever happen?
>
> Helios has been doing some interesting musings on this
> very subject, recently at "The Blog of Helios"
>
> http://blog.lobby4linux.com


Cool.  Nice link.

in which he makes reference to a publication by Eric
> Raymond and Rob Landley: "World Domination 201"
>
> <http://catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html>


That is an AWESOME and really well thought-out article by ESR.  However, ESR
does leave out the people who are actually going to make desktop linux
happen, IMHO:  the developing world.  One of the primary focuses of the
Digital Tipping Point movie will be Extremadura, Spain.  It has historically
been one of the poorest Regions (States, Provinces, etc.) of Spain, and
Spain historically has been one of the poorest countries in the EU.  But the
work that the government of Extremadura is doing with FOSS will make your
head spin.

I am supporting a public middle school in San Francisco, CA, USA, with FOSS,
and I can tell you that when I go to Extremadura Spain this Feb for their Free
Software World Conference <http://www.freesoftwareworldconference.com/>, I
am going to be taking copious notes on how to let teachers take control of
individual dummy terminals under LTSP.

And yet, ESR doesn't even mention Extremadura in his piece.  I'm not
slamming ESR at all; the man is brilliant; but IMHO he does have a blind
spot when it comes to events in the "Free Software" half of the FOSS
community; and he also sometimes has a bit of a blind spot for the power of
the developing world.

But yeah, that article by ESR is nothing short of scary, and it is one of
the reasons that I thought of starting out TuxZine with this topic (of
course, we can write about anything, this was just fodder to start out).

which I will DEFINITELY be asking Eric about when I
> see him 2 weeks from now, assuming I can pin him down
> for more than the ten-minutes-in-the-Consuite I
> usually get...


If you wouldn't mind asking him about the Extremadura question, and also
Brazil.  And let's not forget South Africa and Ubuntu, of course.  ESR does
talk about Ubuntu on several occasions in his excellent World domination 201
piece, but not in the context of users in the developing world, nor does he
talk about it in terms of balance of trade issues.  IMHO, one of the really
cool things about FOSS is that it basically allows anyone with a brain, some
electricity, a basic computer, and an Internet connection to make a
potentially important contribution to the technology.  Contrast this with
the otherwise massive infrastructure problems that developing countries face
in building roads, building agriculture, transportation industries,
financial markets, etc.  Compared with those huge infrastructure costs, the
costs for building FOSS infrastructure, while big, are not as impassable as
some of those other infrastructure issues.

At any rate, nice link, thanks.
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