Re: [Fsfe-uk] [Fwd: [discuss] OOo and Linux OUTSELLS Microsoft in Thailand!]

[Ramanan Selvaratnam]

Hello Paul,

Been away on a long break and cannot believe the amount of mails I have 
gotten into!

First a big thank you for posting those AFFS leaflets to Edinburgh.
After letting them organically distribute themselves from a pile I 
collected 40 back (out of 75).


Paul wrote:


> [discuss] OOo and Linux OUTSELLS Microsoft in Thailand!

Dunno whether you are aware of it but Thailand is the capital of 
software piracy. It looks to me that this is a comparision of the M$ 
products *legally* bought vs the free systems against this backgroud.
Unfortunately Linux is still largely unheard of in Thailand even with 
another large schools based project I am aware of.

(About two years ago I had a friend who had a friend return from 
Thailand with about 50 CDs all literally bought off the pavement for 
dirt cheap as he put it....all M$ products and the other usually 
expensive software pushed into the PC of the standard 'home user' 
...amusingly he even had a along with incomplete and outdated Mandrake 
and RedHat CDs as it was all part of the bundle :-))))


> From:
> Christian Einfeldt <address@hidden>
> Date:
> Mon, 18 Aug 2003 16:07:43 -0700
> To:
> address@hidden, address@hidden
>
>
> Here it is, boys and girls, the tipping point.  Gandhi Con 4.  (First 
> they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you 
> win).
>
> In at least one market, Thailand, FLOSS has forced MS to actually 
> compete for sales ON THE DESKTOP!!!   See the Wall Street Journal 
> article below from Thursday,  August 14, page B1.
>
> [...]
>
> Microsoft Discounts Software In Thailand to Battle Linux In Cheap 
> Computer Sales
>
> BY REBECCA BUCKMAN
>
> Bangkok
>
> FACTORY worker Chom Booncharoen doesn't know much about e-mail or the
> Internet. But he jumped recently at the chance to buy a cheap computer
> through a spcial program created by Thailand's government. His new 
> machine runs on free Linux software instead of the Microsoft Corp. 
> software that powers most computers world-wide.	"I pay by cash," says
> Mr. Chom, 56 years old, gazing approvingly at the slick new machine 
> sitting in his living room, beneath two photos of Thailand's king and 
> queen.	Mr. Chom's two-story house, off an alley in a Bangkok suburb,

This does not seem to tally against the localisation statistics for Thai 
in GNOME and probably KDE too.

> seems anunlikely place for a high-stakes battle in the war for software 
> market share. Yet Mr. Chom's participation in the new Thai 
> computerprogram which has sent about 50,000 PCs to ordinary citizens so
> far and aims to deliver a million by the end of next year-highlights 
> the
> potential for free, "open source" software like Linux to spread in the 
> developing world.

Maybe the Thai government is better than ours on this but they could do 
better by actively promoting localisation.

Maybe the Thai new millenium is to come very soon when the King will 
open the new M$ headquarters.

I am very sure that in developing countries the desktop is asking to be 
taken over by free software and I wish this happens ASAP but there are 
other really big opportunities that can do with more help from us (AFFS) 
too.

For *an* example (please read Freeware as free software)

<http://www.cerncourier.com/main/article/43/6/20>



Best wishes,

Ramanan