Jon maddog Hall wrote: >Finally, as a resident of the small country of New Hampshire, I must say that >we have a lot of out-of-work software people here, and I am tired of sending >my money to the small country of Redmond, Washington. I want to keep it in >New Hampshire, and pay our software people money to help me tailor the >FOSS software exactly to my needs. There is only so much maple syrup that >Bill can eat. But those software people buy local food, local housing and >pay local taxes, and that is good enough to slow down my "Digital Divide". > > Yes! This is the real economic argument that everyone seems to miss no matter how many times you hit them over the head with it. Software Libre comes at a financial cost; someone has to produce it. The cost is usually lower because of a lot of things. But even if the price were higher (which it isn't, despite flawed studies), it's better to keep the money within the country. Hire a local programmer. Oddly enough, the same issue of 'piracy' of software keeps people from paying their own people to make a living. This leads to brain drain.
Brazil is really doing some good work here - not necessarily the government, but the people. One of the programmers working on the Linux kernel resides in Brazil, I've been told, and that's a big deal. On the flip side, FOSS advocacy in South America attracts all sorts of strange people. Including me. ;-) -- Taran Rampersad [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linuxgazette.com http://www.a42.com http://www.worldchanging.com http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
