Hopefully without opening a can of nasty worms, I don't see a compelling value proposition for closed-source/proprietary software, and if it was within my powers I would make that official government policy. The benefits of this have been countlessly outlined in great detail elsewhere, just google.

Having said that, I also think there needs to be a vigorous discussion on why *public* contribution to FOSS is poor in Kenya (there are a lot of *private* modifications to FOSS that are not released, contrary to the opensource licenses).

saidi

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 1:57 PM, Gakuru Alex <alexgakuru.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
Let's argue the opposite. How much code do our local closed source
defenders contribute? Or would they be mostly just commissioned
resellers occasionally offering some  "additional" vendor lockin
services at sizable personal incomes/fees?

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 8:45 PM, saidimu apale <saidimu@gmail.com> wrote:
> Very true.
> But the code is the foundation of all other involvements. No code, no
> community. Bad code, bad community. And since this is (mostly?) a developer
> list, I assume (perhaps wrongly) that that is where people
> interests/abilities lie.
> I like what you're saying: what other non-coding opportunities exist? I hope
> documentation isn't one of them cuz I don't know any one who likes doing it.
> Perhaps filing good bug reports? Helping out in newbie forums?
> saidi
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Gakuru Alex <alexgakuru.lists@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 8:07 PM, saidimu apale <saidimu@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I once asked the same question to Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu's
>> > "benevolent
>> > dictator" ( the occasion was UbuntuBelowZero developer preparations for
>> > Ubuntu 6.04). I'd noticed that 99.9% of the developers in the room were
>> > white so I asked him how it was that an "African" distro (as it was
>> > being
>> > marketed then) had virtually no African developers.
>>
>> I have never considered nor confined Open Source to "code contributors."
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