Thank you Derek Keats.
I do believe that based on what I've seen, Keats trumps Heeks and that
Heeks conclusions are rubbish. The original posting by Heeks seems to
be a prime example of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) [Reference 1].
I'd like to see the data that Heeks refers to so I can look at the data
collection methodology.
However, for my own purposes, I thought of a simple question just now:
What operating systems run on Tanzanian machines on the Internet, and
are they FOSS or non-FOSS?
I did a quick and crude "ad hoc" survey by limiting my inquiry in the
following way:
(1) Take only domains with the TLD suffix .tz
Admittedly, this does not represent all machines in Tanzania,
but it is my sample.
(2) Use a list of operating systems identified reliably by
netcraft.com [Reference 2 and 3].
I answered my own question with a few minutes of effort.
My survey summary results are:
206 100.0% .tz domains total
-------------------------------
138 67.0% FOSS
60 29.1% non-FOSS
8 3.9% unknown
Thus, there is about a 2.3 to 1 proportion of FOSS to non-FOSS operating
systems in my sample.
My survey detail results are:
206 100.0% .tz domains total
-------------------------------
129 62.6% Linux
29 14.1% Windows 2000
19 9.2% NT4/Windows 98
8 3.9% FreeBSD
8 3.9% Windows Server 2003
8 3.9% unknown
4 1.9% Solaris
1 0.5% NetBSD/OpenBSD
If I aggregate the Microsoft operating systems, the Windows family sums
to:
56 27.2% Windows
Thus, there is about a 2.3 to 1 proportion of Linux to Microsoft
operating systems in my sample.
I should point out that I work on a variety of found operating systems
and have installed mostly Linux, BSDs (FreeBSD and NetBSD), Windows,
Solaris, and OS X. All can run GNU software tools just fine. The last
Windows installs were at a nonprofit, because that's what they wanted
and asked for. So I suggested and wrote a software grant request to
Microsoft so the nonprofit would not have to burn through their precious
budget. Fundraising seems to be the Achilles heel of nonprofits, unless
they are lucky enough to be endowed or have an idea that is infectious.
douglas
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUD
[2] http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?host
[3] http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/accuracy.html
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
-- Howard Aiken ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Aiken )
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