http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/aug05/0805ahac.html
Profile of Hermann Chinery-Hesse, who runs a software business in Ghana. There’s an interesting section on “Africanized Code.”
Besides being compact, his programs also write frequently to disk, reducing the chances of losing data if power is lost, as it often is. Because Internet connectivity remains relatively expensive, his programs also work offline as much as possible. And to combat the rampant piracy, beta versions of software rarely leave Soft’s premises, finished products don’t have an autoinstall function (you need a Soft technician to launch them), and batches of bug fixes are often delivered individually to customers rather than generally released.
Why doesn’t Soft write everything in Linux, the open-source language available for little or no cost? It would seem a no-brainer for a software entrepreneur in a desperately poor region of the world. Not so, and the reasons show why Chinery-Hesse is no ordinary third-world software tycoon. Linux is simply impractical for his purposes. "It can’t be used for serious business," he says, because it would be too easy for employees of a business to learn to use—and abuse—the source code of essential programs.
"In Accra, an IT manager earns $100 a month," Chinery-Hesse explains. "He has access to all of a company’s data, including backups. With open-source, he can learn to generate bogus reports. He’ll delete charges and pay himself or others money." Besides, "if we went for open-source, we would be relegated to basically doing installation and training," he adds. "Do I want a country of software developers or a country of installers?"