This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive. This particular segment features Lena Zuniga, a Program Officer for Bellanet International, a group which coordinates development with telecommunications in the developing world, from their base in Costa Rica. Lena's focus is Latin America and the Caribbean. In this snip, Lena says that free open source software is attractive to developing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean for several reasons. First, it lets them change open source software to make it more relevant to their needs. For example, no major international software company is going to translate proprietary code to indigenous languages, because the markets are too small. She says that the region lacks the "consumer base" for paid software that is present in North America, simply because many of the local economies in the region lack the means to pay for the software. So "selling" software into that region doesn't work. Instead, it makes more sense for them to draw from a software commons for them to innovate. Also, there is a problem with basic infrastructure for code development, so open source software helps them jump start the use of computers there. More about Lena is here:

http://home.bellanet.org/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=11

This segment is particularly important to our film, because we believe that developing countries are actually going to be key agents in bringing about the digital tipping point. Microsoft's business model currently is selling software into markets. By contrast, open source software vendors are more interested in selling software as a service, which significantly lowers the cost for the same functionality. By using and developing free open source software, developing countries are actually "making" the market. That is one of the ironies of our film. Microsoft had abandoned developing markets, because the price-sensitive customers in those markets couldn't or wouldn't afford to pay for Microsoft software. Now, that same market is going to use DIY (Do It Yourself) techniques with free open source software to seed the market, which we think will spill over into Microsoft's home markets. Essentially, it is those kinds of so-called "lower tier" customers who, in the past, have radically reshaped consumer appliance markets, according to Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen. Now that is happening with software, and Lena's interviews are a prime example of how it happens.

Tapes one through three were cut together for this segment. Hence the tape ID as given below:

tape id = e-dv100_pa_12_lena_01-03.mpg

The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt at gmail.com.

Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_100

and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under segment 001. You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

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