There's no question here, software is definitely one of the master gates for developing countries to step out from the crowd. India is a live example for what I'm talking about. I regret not having enough information about India's experience in the field, but this is for everyone out of question.
Anyways, Software is too broad to talk about, I will only talk about the influence of open source development on countries that follow the same critera like Egypt.
Whoever minister of information in a country like Egypt, doesn't know exactly what Opensource is about. In case he knows, so what ? What kind of software development phase does Egypt fall in ? The only kind of software we produce is databases and things scholars do in their very first years of study.. things of the "GadoSoft" kind.
Opensource is one of the rare chances for under developed countries to participate. In each other industry, the top contributors keep the secrets explicit for themselves. This is also the case in software, but thanks to the open source activists, this is beggining to end.
If we're still far behind contribution to the open source community, we have to at least use it as end users! How come such a poor country like Egypt, the government pays huge amounts for windows operating systems, microsoft office bundels... for the employees to enjoy their solitaire games! Employees can still enjoy solitaire, but at least the tax payers will not have to pay for it! Come on .. use freeware and opensource! This is really what I find unbelievable, why would you pay for something if you can get the alternative for free ??!!
Software pirating is even worse. I see it coming, one day all the software we've been pirating will just hang and leave us unstable. Imagine your operating system will not load, you're not backedup with an alternative, it will definitely take you down sometime and you will definitely lose A LOT of work ! For now, microsoft can't just do it because they know exactly if they do this, people will not purchase a license.. they will buy a playstation instead or if they're smart enough they will use Linux. Both cases having microsoft lose its market share tragedily.
I have taken the decision to completely migrate to free and opensource, even if they don't offer exactly the same options. I will just do it gradually. For me it's no different than shop lifts and robberies.
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The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides never decides.
