On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 06:59:56PM -0800, ireneo bisquera wrote: > Are you assembling PC running linux on a commercial > scale or just one or two for your buddies?
The latter. The most I ever did was build 17 machines from scratch in one day for an internet cafe i used to part own. > My plan is to start with all the components, mother > boards and all to be imported, since theres a glut of > hardware and computer component worldwide, then > identify which components can be made in the > Philippines profitably from scratch until I reached > 100% Philippine made, if this is feasible since even > Dell and Compaq imports most of there components from > Taiwan, China, Indonesia or Malaysia. > The problem with this is that electronics hardware production is *capital intensive* and not labor intensive. I'm not sure whether there are any serious components that you can make in the Philippines profitably in that sense. AFAIK, there are no IC fabrication plants here, and a typical chip foundry requires a multi-billion dollar investment (these are not even the cutting-edge plants capable of fabricating deep submicron chips), and requires minimal human labor as the processes are almost totally automated. You also need to pay licensing fees to use particular chip design technologies patented by the major players in the semiconductor industry. Boils down to capital. Similar although on a smaller scale the same is true for PCB fabrication. There are pick and place machines that remove people from the drudgery of soldering components onto PCB's, which was where the major labor in the creation of motherboards went. However, as the capital investment for such a facility is much less than that of a foundry, it might be feasible here. Dell, Compaq, and IBM do not really "import" any components from countries like Malaysia and Indonesia in general. They are multinationals that operate plants in those countries and use the relatively cheap labor there to reduce the costs for the labor-intensive portions of their manufacturing processes. Taiwan is different of course, they actually DO have a major manufacturing infrastructure that is a force to be reckoned with. > >Why would you want to do it in the first place? Whats > the motivation? > > Because nobody is doing it in a commercial scale and > there's no big corporation pushing for the open source > in the Philippines. PLUG can only do so much if nobody Well, IBM has presence here in the Philippines. > will start this idea, open source is doom in the > Philippines. In addition profit. It's the single most > powerful motivation as far as I am concern. Profit is > what makes the whole world go round and it's what > drive people to push themselves to the limit. I beg to differ, Mr. Econodwarf... If that's absolutely true, then why do we have Linux and The Magic Flute? None of these things were created for profit, and Linus Torvalds and Mozart knew full well they'd never make any sort of profit for creating either of those great things. Or why did Beethoven even bother to become a composer after he heard that Mozart died in poverty? No, profit is not the sole thing, or even the most important thing that drives people to push themselves to the limit, although it can be a motivator as well. -- Rafael R. Sevilla <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> +63(2) 8177746 ext. 8311 Programmer, Inter.Net Philippines +63(917) 4458925 http://dido.ph.inter.net/ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x5CDA17D8 Heute die Welt und Morgen das Sonnensystem! _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
