🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <chari.645996536@fireant.ma.utexas.edu> chari@math.utexas.edu (Christopher M. Whatley) writes:
>arromdee@crabcake.cs.jhu.edu (Kenneth Arromdee) writes:
>
>>In article <3916.9006201817@murun.psych.sm.ucl.ac.uk> gnu-misc-discuss@cis.ohio-state.edu writes:
>>>On UK TV this morning I clearly saw Apple MAC's (or clones??)
>>>being used in a South African Newspaper office.
>>>That just about wraps it up for me.
>
>>Simple question: would GNU software be similarly usable in South Africa?
>
>I doubt that is the point he is making. I'm sure that any South
>African can use GNU software. The thing he is pointing out is that
>Apple is selling software to the South Africans which, in my opinion
>is a very bad thing. The problem is not their using them, just how
>they got them.

See the followup I just posted; they can get on a plane and buy the stuff
just about anywhere, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Kenya, Namibia.  Not to mention
anywhere in Europe, the Orient, the U.S.  The South African gov't is not
going to stop people bringing that stuff in (well maybe long enough to
collect duties.)  A Mac SE/30 would be a lot easier to bring in to S. Africa
than a grey market Mercedes into the U.S., and the Lord only knows how many 
grey market Mercedes there are.  I surmise they just bring 'em back in when 
they take a vacation.  It is, by an large, a free world; no one's going to
try and stop a guy from taking a Mac out of the U.S.

Selling to S. Africans, especially the press, isn't such a bad thing, in and
of itself; selling to repressive regimes is.  While Apple won't export to
S. Africa, I'll bet they were exporting to Nicarauga and El Salvador.  IBM
continues to export to S. Africa.  Neither would/will sell to the government
(see any of IBM's quarterly/annual reports for the last ten years or more.)

kaleb@thyme.jpl.nasa.gov            Jet Propeller Labs
Kaleb Keithley

"So that's what an invisible barrier looks like"