Original software? Free software’s better
After visiting the Canadian embassy to get myself a visa yesterday (yes, I’m going to Ottawa Linux Symposium (OLS) – see you there?) I decided to take a trip to Low Yat, and the surrounding area to take a gander at computer hardware out there.
I ended up picking up a bunch of disks and external casings, and a USB webcam (cheapest Logitech, I wonder if it’ll work with Linux – RM80 down, the salesman looked at me funny when I said Linux, but I have faith). Then I decided to scour the place for Microsoft Windows XP Starter Edition. To my dismay, I found it for sale, nowhere.
The cheapest I was going to get was a RM300 copy of Windows XP Home. However, most of the retailers were quite happy to point me to the RM5 pirated copy of Windows XP Professional.
These pirate shops also sell Fedora Core 1, Ubuntu PowerPC edition, and more, for RM15/CD. I wonder why Linux costs more than Windows?
It brings me back to thinking about Software Freedom Day (maybe last year or the year before) where Aizat, Khairil and Ditesh stood at Low Yat and distributed free CDs, that were Ubuntu based. After all, Canonical do ship it for free, why not give it away for free?
Malaysians love free gifts, and a Live CD, that can be installed and distributed, for free, just sounds like a winner.
