I'm back home now in Utah, but Venezuela is still with me. I had an excellent week of meetings with Alfresco's business partner there, Tecnocomputacion 3000, as well as prospective customers. It was an experience I won't soon forget.
The beautiful mountains. The dirty streets and stray dogs. The exhaust from ramshackle cars. The impeccable dress code for businessmen and women. Fascinating.
What struck me most, however, were the people. Everyone I met seemed to be earnestly, strenuously working for a better life. My business partners started work at 8:00 (if not earlier) and ended at 9:00 PM, or later. While there I received emails from prospective partners and customers in Chile, Peru, and Brazil, all sent "after hours." Clearly, this is a people who are willing to work.
One problem, however, is for whom they actually work. The United States, to a large, unhealthy degree. The software and hardware they were using comes from American companies, for the most part. Most of the products in the stores I visited were from American and European companies. In essence, they're trading Bolivares for dollars, and losing in every transaction. They are net buyers, not producers.
And they're not able to buy much. As I drove to the airport, I asked my driver how much a typical apartment (2BR, 1BA) costs. Answer? Roughly $218/month. I then asked how much the commuters we passed were paying per month for transportation to work ($145), and what they - largely manual laborers - made in a month ($227 is the minimum wage). I paid more for my taxi fare than they make in a month. It made me ashamed.
I don't believe it needs to be this way. I believe there are markets waiting to be born in South America. And I believe (finally - I've been a complete imbecile on this topic in the past) that open source is one way to grow them. Sure, open source is a more efficient way to develop and distribute software but, until this trip, I didn't really see the incredible opportunity it offers to developing nations. Open source is, essentially, a way to transfer wealth to these nations without them shipping dollars back to the US and Europe in return, and without these developed nations losing anything in the bargain. In fact, quite the opposite. It's a way to help others grow local economies, which growth we can share in, as my company does today.
While I feel a moral and ethical responsibility to help grow these markets, and you may, too, this is not about charity. It's about helping to create markets that we can sell into and, perhaps, disproportionately benefit from. Grow the pool of Bolivares for my Venezuelan colleagues, grow the local manufacturers earning them, and hopefully they will then share a small portion with me. Everyone wins.
[Note: BusinessWeek just ran an excellent article on admissions at Amherst, a premier US liberal arts college. The new president is trying to bring in more disadvantaged students, who generally are disadvantaged both economically and academically, without upsetting the school's academic standards/reputation. His job is much harder than the software world's, relative to providing increased prosperity and chances for others. In his world, he's dealing with a relatively finite number of incoming students - it's somewhat zero sum (let a poor academic performer in, leave a top performer out). In open source, there is no such quandary. It's just bits and bytes, so give liberally. There really is no tragedy of the commons.]
Posted by Matt Asay on February 26, 2006 01:48 PM
