I'm with Don on this one... Here in Indonesia, intellectual-property laws are weakly enforced and pirated software is extremely cheap -- $2 for any CD-ROM. That has several effects:
a.. Commercial software vendors earn very little in Indonesia, and are not interested in investing here. b.. The main cost of computing is in fact hardware acquisition. Indonesian institutions spend very little on staff training or maintenance: staff are expected to learn the software themselves, and computers are run until they croak. c.. There are no Indonesian-language applications. No Word, no Windows, no Excel in Indonesian -- although Indonesian probably has more speakers than French. That in turn restricts users' capabilities to learn the intricacies of the applications: imagine trying to plough your way through menus and help screens in a language you don't understand. Lack of training means that most computers are merely glorified typewriters. d.. There is very little local software development in Indonesia. No sane software manufacturer will spend money on producing a program that risks getting copied and resold without royalty. The solution to this situation? There may be a niche for open source, especially in the B2B arena, as John West suggests. But more likely, and potentially of much larger impact, would be a combination of enforcement of intellectual property rights (which Indonesia must do to comply with WTO rules), along with reduced local pricing policies by major software vendors. Drug companies already sell their products at much lower prices in developing countries because they recognize that the market cannot bear higher costs. They rely on sales at higher prices in the North to cover the product development costs. Software is probably similar. An Indonesian buyer cannot afford to shell out hundreds of dollars for an office package or drawing application. The only alternatives are (a) to do without, (b) to pirate, or (c) to use a non-existent, hard-to-find open-source product that no one knows how to use. But how about if commercial software vendors were to cut the price to $50, put the interface in Indonesian (makes it more attractive to local buyers and restricts parallel exports to developed countries), and introduce the risk of a hefty fine if the user (more likely, the retailer) is caught selling pirated software? How about if some effort were put into lobbying the major vendors and national governments to explore this route? Best wishes Paul Paul Mundy development communication specialist [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.mamud.com Temporary email in Indonesia (to 7 June 2002): [EMAIL PROTECTED] mobile 0818-168332 DevArt: copyright-free artwork for development http://www.developmentart.com ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
