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Microsoft announced on Fri­day that it’s launch­ing ver­sions of Win­dows and Office in the Incan lan­guage in Bolivia. This prom­ises to help close the digital divide between the 2.5 mil­lion Quen­chan speak­ers (about a third of the pop­u­la­tion) and the bet­ter sup­por­ted Span­ish speak­ers in the country.

If we are to see tech­no­logy as a force for good (which per­son­ally I do) then open­ing up access is fun­da­mental to suc­cess. This is an area where open source has prom­ised so much (and delivered reas­on­ably well all things con­sidered). Because users have access to the code, they can tweak it for spe­cial­ist use and port it into new lan­guages (if they have the skills them­selves of course).

But, of course, Microsoft’s soft­ware isn’t cheap. This was high­lighted in a quote from Bolivia’s For­eign Min­is­ter, David Choquehuanca:

“We con­grat­u­late Microsoft for hav­ing facil­it­ated the use of com­puters in our own lan­guages, but we have to advance toward sys­tems that are more open because we still have to pay a license fee (to use the soft­ware) to Microsoft.”

Bolivia is not a rich coun­try. It’s some $6b in debt. Almost two thirds of the pop­u­la­tion live beneath the poverty line. And the Quen­cha are among the poorest groups. Given these factors, pay­ing out for expens­ive licenses (even if they are in your nat­ive lan­guage) is unlikely to be an option.
You have to applaud Microsoft’s ini­ti­at­ive. Its soft­ware is still the dom­in­ant force in busi­ness and giv­ing minor­ity groups access to it can only help improve their oppor­tun­it­ies. All we need now is a free devel­op­ing world edi­tion that deliv­ers enough func­tion­al­ity to make a dif­fer­ence without bank­rupt­ing the user in the pro­cess.
Source: Reu­ters