[kictanet] Fwd: [Idlelo2] Permanant Secretary of Kenya speaks about negotiating for cheaper development tools

[Bill Kagai]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Derek Keats <dkeats at uwc.ac.za>
Date: Feb 7, 2007 9:44 AM
Subject: [Idlelo2] Permanant Secretary of Kenya speaks about negotiating for
cheaper development tools
To: Idlelo <idlelo2 at fossfa.net>


I am writing this from the 1st International Conference in Computer
Science and Informatics (COSCIT 2007), in Nairobi Kenya. In the opening
session, Dr. B. Ndemo, Permanant Secretary in the Kenyan Ministry of
Information & Communication,  gave a speech about ICT in Kenya. He spent
quite a bit of time talking about negotiating a deal with Microsoft to
make their software cheaper for Kenyans, including developer tools so
that Kenyans could become software developers. The local Microsoft
representative was in the audience, naturally. Members of the Microsoft
"technical officer" team follow politicians and policy makers around
like flies follow sick dogs. She left when the Permanant Secretary left.
Apparently, a meeting of many of the computer scientists in Kenya was
not important enough for her; certainly not as important as being
visible to the Permanant Secretary.

When the Permanant Secretary made this pronouncement about these
negotiations, completely ignoring all that is happening in Kenya with
respect to FOSS, I was shocked and saddened. I wanted to ask why waste
time removing impediments to creating Kenyan software developers, when
with FOSS we can start immediately. There is nothing to negotiate, the
tools are as good or better than the tools for Windows, and there are no
barriers to innovation. Java, C, C++, C# Python, .NET, PHP, BASIC, and
most other environments are available on GNU/Linux. Why do Kenyans need
to waste their money getting permission from Microsoft to use these
languages for training software developers? This mystery that is only
explainable by the constant lobbying pressure from the "technical
officers" and their like. There is absolutely no rational basis for it.

The minister is implicitly saying that it is right for Kenya to pay
money to Microsoft and create a long-term dependence on them, thus using
the Kenyan taxpayer's money to create development opportunities in
Redmond Washington, an area of the world that really needs dollars from
Kenya. It is clear that Dr. Ndemo does not understand that innovation
happens faster when barriers are as few as they can reasonably be. With
Free Software, this is the case. With propriteary tools, barriers have
to be negotiated, and this limits and inhibits innovation.

I wanted to show the Permanant Secretary my Ubuntu desktop, equipped
with Free Software development tools for which I need neither permission
nor to pay license fees to use, and which I can use immediately, no
negotiation required. The Permanant Secretary clearly just doesn't get
it. Unfortunately, the session did not have a question peroid, and he
left along with the Microsoft lap dog (er, I mean representative) before
I could use my own keynote space to show him what Free Software can do.

So Kenyans active in FOSS, you have a responsibility, this man is in
need of some educating. Please make an appointment, go see him. Show him
what you are accomplishing with software Freedom. We need to find a way
to balance the lobbying power of Microsoft, so that truth and logic have
a reasonable chance of prevailing.

cheers
Derek


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