Living together BUT not married: RR/MC and Linux

[Mathewson]

Bob Warren's description of the Brazilian situation almost
exactly mirrors that of Bulgaria:

"Pirate" Windows everywhere: not because Bulgarians are
crooks or lack morals (well, there are a few dubious
characters lurking here and there; mainly in the
government), but shear necessity caused by the undesirable
fact that Microsoft is the king of the hill and the average
Bulgarian is rather worried about how to buy a decent pair
of shoes for his kid rather than worry about the licence
fee for the OS or 'Office'.

Sooner or later the European Union will absorb Bulgaria,
and the happy software police will start poking their noses
into every little 2-bit company and carting off their PCs
with a Windows OS on it. Some forward thinking folk have
paid me to install Ubuntu onto their PCs  I charge about
the same as an avrage family's weekly shopping - i.e. about
5% of the price of Licensed Windows.

As I mentioned in my previous posting about my political
stance: surely it is only right and fair if we expect
everybody in the world to stand on their own 2 feet and not
sponge off others, or poor countries sponge off richer ones
(whether by choice or necessity) that they start from a
level playing field. PCs running FREE (as in, you only pay
the IT-bloke to install the stuff) software flattens the
playing field quite effectively.

Now, there will always be people, mainly in the richer
countries, who prefer to use Mac or Win (or RISC OS -
sorry, my hobby horse), and will pay both for their OS and
for their licensed copies of RR or what-have-you. As
individuals and nations elsewhere become richer they may
decide to change over to Commercial software alternatives.

If (for instance) all the kids in Uganda learn to program
using RR on Ubuntu, then when and if they transfer to Win
or Mac they will automatically seek out Win/Mac versions of
RR.

At present nobody is making any money out of software sales
in Bulgaria - because the Bulgarians are helping themselves
- so nobody will lose anyhting if they are encouraged to
opt for open source; and, just possibly, that may
eventually lead them to pay money for software they have
invested their time in in mastering.

I believe that it would, ultimately, be in RR's interest to
release a FREE (as in totally free) version of RR for Linux
- possibly modified from current Linux RR versions so that
it cannot be used to manufacture standalones for commercial
platforms.

sincerely, Richmond
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See Mathewson's software at:

http://members.maclaunch.com/richmond/default.html
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