Making sustainable open source software infrastructures by federating and learning in the global context

I think that if the developing country is serious about not just seeing ICT as a cost center, but as a requirement for national development, the real advantage of open source ends up being able to build up your own knowledge base. And that is not cheap in itself – you’ll likely pay as much for that as you’d pay for a proprietary software solution. The difference being that with the proprietary solution, you’ll never catch up, and you’ll have to pay forever, without ever learning anything yourself. (Linus Torvalds, quoted in Weerawarana and Weeratunge, 2004)

Related Subject(s): Environment and Climate Change