it is the best time for us

First, I should prevent you, english is not my mother tongue, so I am trying hard to explain clearly my humble thought about how wonderful the Open source is becoming,

As I am a regular reader of planetkde.org, I was pleased to read an article about promoting strategy of KDE (broad vs. niche ), although I did not understand a lot of it due to my poor skills of english language, I have to say that there is a great opportunity for open source in general and KDE in particular( I have nothing against GNOME but I can't love his look;) in the emerging market,

In my country, recently our government start to promote an initiative to give access for a computer to each family, so every one can buy a computer with a help of a bank facilities. we were all happy of course, but guess MICROSOFT is an early partner, but as expected after the initial lunch no real success ( I know we can't make a judgement after only few moths). Among the reasons ( which indeed are many ;) The machines are expensive due particularly to the Microsoft Tax, we should paid the license of Windows XP for the equivalent of 100 €, which is 30% of the price of a typical model( to get an idea, the salary of a secondary school teacher is 130 €), and as we don't know the meaning of intellectual proprieties, leaked CD are every where, you can buy any software for 0,7 €. worst than that the box sold in the local market are tax free by all means( don't be so astonished ! Sellers don't use invoices, which is a strange concept for them;)

Seems like a complex situation for our government, so what ? selling computers with leaked software to drop the cost and making them compelling against black market. Of course not !! specially we are trying hardly to be an WTO member!

I am sure you know the right solution like me, it's simply; free software, hopefully there are still some smart people in my country, one of them a small software service company, representative of Novell, they made a good job of advocating Linux as a the perfect solution- recently a senior responsible of Novell was here to promote NLD- after that, many people; journalist, even our ministry of IT begin to speak about free software, and hopefully many of the new machines will shortly be shipped with Linux.

It is definitely easier to wide spread Linux in the third world than in the developed countries because :

• the cost is the most important factor for us, and Linux is very competitive in this arena ;)

• Users don't even know what is an operating system, so they will not be confused in using (new) DE like KDE as it is the first time , they start to learn so keeping thing simple and logical is a right way to go.

• Users don't have a computer background experience, so all the disadvantage of Linux like the support of third party software and hardware is less important, we have OpenOffice and Fire fox, sexy multimedia player like amaroK , which are enough stuff for the most users.

I know many people, will install a leaked copy of Windows after buying the cheap machine but anyway I am so happy that a lot of my citizens will use Linux in their home. Which was by all mean an unbelievable idea a short time before.

So please keep it simple, stuff like klik, plasma, gstreamer, Wine (I mean the software;), ideas of usability, ease of use, compatibility between different Distro, hardware requirement( I learned that (K)ubuntu 6,04 will support 32 megabit system) are a hot concern for the success of Desktop Linux specially in emerging market( actually I prefer third world as we are a stagnant market), IT industry made a bad decision thirteen years ago in the developed countries, so it is the best time to make the good one for the developing countries.

Update: today I read in a local newspaper that according to Robert Holleyman from BSA, 83 % of software used in Algeria are leaked.