Description of a program involving the deployment of thousands of Linux computers in schools in the Philippines. Even though heavily subsidized, Microsoft products are still too expensive for the schools, which began looking at Linux in earnest after the 1997 market collapse. There's a bit of a subtext to this item which catches my eye, specifically, the need for commercial Linux companies to exist in order to capture government contracts. One wonders how much the structure of school and government procurement actually inhibits non-commercial initiatives (including open source software) and, conversely, how much such procurement processes are stimulating the Cape-Town-style commercialization of open content initiatives. The problem (as I see it) is that the commercialization of these initiatives drives up their cost, making them harder to access and less affordable to the people who really need them.
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