Day 3 of Linux.Conf.Au got underway with Bdale Garbe's "where would you like 100,000 users to do today?" keynote. Bdale looked at a couple of large scale Linux deployments around the world and explained why we shouldn't be surprised that these things are happening in less developed parts of the world.

He believes that the growing gap between people who can participate in online communities and those who can't (the "digital divide"), is sparking government interest in Linux solutions from parts of the world like Brazil, Extremadura and so forth.

Extremadura is one of the poorest regions of Spain. They've recently rolled out 80,000 systems into their public school system (enough for 1 for every 2 students). When they did the maths, they could afford either 80,000 PC's or 80,000 Microsoft licences, but not both, so they looked at Linux as a way of being able to afford more hardware. Extremadura didn't rush into their Linux rollout, the process took 5 years from start to finish. But this included localising Linux for their local language and building up an internet infrastructure in the region. Andalusia (another region of Spain) is now looking at a similar program.

Debian is a community-based distribution with no commercial entity driving its agenda or release cycle. The Debian Free Software Guidelines and the Social Contract set the values for the community, and as such acceptance of these values becomes a criteria for acceptance into the community. Because of its open, non-commercial nature, Debian has become the preferred distribution for deployments like Extremadura, and in other parts of the world. Debian also runs on a wide variety of hardware platforms from Handhelds to Mainframes.

Bdale's slides are available from here.