One of the signs that open-source is entering the mainstream is when articles about it appear in unexpected places. Whenever I get the opportunity, I encourage open-source advocates to get out of the ghetto and write articles for wider audiences – Open-source for Morris Dancers, Linux for Lepidopterists, that sort of thing. Earlier this year I trialled an article on open-source into The Ecologist – not the most obvious bed-fellow.

You can imagine my delight to find the latest issue of Developments magazine had on its cover How wireless technology and open-source software can liberate the poor. Not only that, the magazine had a cover disk of The Open CD (a collection of high quality open-source software for MS-Windows), and an article by Bill Thompson Free to share about open-source in developing countries.

The best part about this is that the magazine (and the disks) is financed by the UK’s Department for International Development. Given the UK government’s worship of Bill Gates, this is pretty revolutionary stuff.

Quite how suitable modern Linux distros are for the developing world is a topic for another day…

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 20th, 2005 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Greenery, Open-source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.