Debconf in Senegal? Why not?
Let's look at the map carefully...
The centre of mass is located just off the coast of Greenland, which
theoretically is the cheapest point for all to travel, assuming that the
airfares don't change from route to route or from airline to airline.
About the real airfares:
We all know that airfares between Helsinki and New York are almost
identical with Between Helsinki and Beijing, or Helsinki and Bangkok, or
Helsinki and Delhi, or Helsinki and San Fransisco (when it still
existed), and between Helsinki and anywhere in Middle east, other South
Asia or Caribbean, it's around 700 euros. Anywhere in Australia, Latin
America or Africa it's around 1000 euros. We all may conclude that the
fares aren't as proportional to the distance between the destination and
the origin, as they are to the popularity of the route itself.
Now, we may dictate that Debian is a globally developed operating
system, whose developers represent other than EU/USA in growing numbers.
Especially companies from the Developing World join as independent
developers, or sister distributions are derived to complete tasks in the
Debian way. Ubuntu is a good example, so is Arabeyes. Moreover, a
growing number of electronics contain Debian technology, such as
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS2220873893.html and many many DVD
players, robots...
---To the point---
Senegal is a small, tropical country with 300 sunny days in a year,
tremendous beaches that spread hundreds of kilometres from the
never-sleeping metropolis of Dakar, and with an ambitious plan to
develop the country's IT infra at least to the Western levels. With
Senegalese technology. This is where Linux comes in the picture.
Linux, especially Debian, is not an American OS. It's not a Chinese OS,
and it's not German quality. It's definitely not written by students as
their hobby in Finland. Debian as a 100% open source distribution, is as
much Senegalese as it's Spanish or French, or Canadian. That's why we
may claim that Senegalese government could build their IT infra and
their It industry upon Debian; and so could the rest of Africa.
The Senegalese government would gladly support organizing Debconf there
annually. The Government could even pay some of the developers of they
would otherwise be unable to arrive. Some they could even hire.
The airfares are about 1000 euros for everybody, whether they arrive
from Europe, other parts of Africa, Latin America, USA, Canada, Japan,
China, India or from anywhere else.
Why not?
Best regards
Tuomas
--- http://kilinux.org ---
They do IT everywhere these days.
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