I think it is more interesting to talk about things we can change (like
Uganda) than to moan about the demise of a US corporation
On Monday 07 January 2013 08:06:03 [email protected] wrote:
An interesting comparison, Reinier. Yahoo! is a jack of all trades, but king
of none.
That still leaves me with the question "why aren't they already dead?",
though.
Reinier Battenberg <[email protected]> wrote:
HI Joseph,
You bring up a very interesting point, that is very valid in the Ugandan
context as well.
There are a lot of FLOSS users in Uganda, especially in the website building
business: joomla, wordpress, drupal, ushahidi. A lot of people can offer you a
site for a very reasonable price because they use free software.
Unfortunately there seem to be very few people that become active members of
the community that comes with the tools they apply.
I think there are 2 reasons for this:
- "Why would you? It's free, I use is, and that's it." Very valid statement,
but as you wont learn more about the internals of the tool you use, others
will come on to the market and do exactly the same as you: download and
install. This will make it harder for anyone who gets stuck at this level to
compete.
- Very few people tend to specialise. On the average CV that we receive, if
they were all true, most people in ICT in Uganda can do anything: From Oracle,
to PHP, from C++ to Networking all on 1 CV. If you know so many subjects, its
pretty clear you can not be extremely good in any of them. And that is what a
lot of employers are looking for: extremely good people.
So, point of the email: a lot of IT people in Uganda could compare themselves
to Yahoo. (And btw, reading John Graham's posts is a very good idea when you
are in IT.) And it would be great if in 2013 we can see more Ugandan names pop
up in the forums on drupal.org (for example)!
rgds,
Reinier
On Sunday 06 January 2013 21:37:38 Joseph Mutumi wrote:
Hello,
This is a bit off topic but wanted to share it anyway. Think about Yahoo before
you
plan for this year.
Started the year by doing an audit on some of my accumulated login
credentials.
I realized a lot of them use my yahoo email which I noticed I actually no
longer use!
Yahoo in the news for all the wrong reasons; layoffs, product discontinuations,
CEO
woos etc. What happened to all those profit speculations? So what killed Yahoo?
I did a search and came across this http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html
I think this post albeit a bit old, nails it, with one interesting insight
being:
*Yahoo was killed because they didn't have a hacker-centric culture*
Yahoo which used OSS failed to adopt OSS. OSS and the Linux stack is more than
downloading packages for free, its a culture. A proven successful business
model and
work paradigm. If you believe your organization is using OSS but not adopted
it watch
out 2013 may be just another bad year for you.
That said I hope a lot of the IT corps come to their senses and start backing
community.
I hope LUG flourishes this year.
Happy New Year
--
rgds,
Reinier Battenberg
Director
Mountbatten Ltd.
www.mountbatten.net
tel: +256 758 801749
twitter: @batje
The Uganda Linux User Group: http://linux.or.ug
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--
rgds,
Reinier Battenberg
Director
Mountbatten Ltd.
www.mountbatten.net
tel: +256 758 801749
twitter: @batje
_______________________________________________
The Uganda Linux User Group: http://linux.or.ug
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