The $100 laptop

[Joseph Sinclair]

None of your examples is truly a vertical market application, they're mostly localizations of mass-market applications.  Furthermore, none of that supports your premise, since there's no incentive to write the software to run ONLY on the proposed laptop, in fact there's strong incentive to ensure it runs on a wide variety of systems, so that the investment isn't wasted if someone donates a large group of more capable systems to, for instance, schools.

FoulDragon at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 10/10/2005 2:20:35 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
> plug-discuss at stcaz.net writes:
> 

All of the applications you note will work just fine on a low-capability standard system, and would further benefit by being available to a widespread market.  None of them are truly vertical market applications (rule of thumb is that a vertical market application has less than 10,000 potential users worldwide).

> There are probably some "vertical" applications which might have great appeal.
> 
> I could imagine setting these machines up with complete copies of legal codes 
> and forms so people can apply for government services more easily.  
> Similarly, it might become appealing to develop specialised spreadsheets and databases 
> for compliance with local tax codes or trade rules.  I doubt TurboTax comes in 
> a Botswana edition. :D

What you describe here is just localized versions of existing software, in fact much of this is already available for Linux (besides, since when does a person living on < $1/day have any ability to pay income tax, they often have no monetary income at all).

> 
> Depending on the connectivity available, I could also see specialised 
> communications apps for different nations' infrastructures.  Some areas may set up a 
> BBS-style system if Internet access is limited or to provide a censored forum, 
> and others may want offline readers to keep communications costs low.

Again, this type of software is already available, and it wouldn't make sense to create it in such a way that it doesn't work just fine on any system running Linux.

> 
> The schools that get these will likely need localized, both in language and 
> content, edutainment and research tools.  Will a student in Brazil want an 
> Americocentric encyclopedia on CD?

Again, localizations of existing software that is in no way resource-intensive.

> 
> If a lot of distribution is done through governments, I'd fully expect each 
> government would have its own visions of what apps would be useful to include, 
> likely in synch with its particular motives, and they might front the money 
> for some of the development.

The governments are expected to play a strong role in distribution and support, and they have strong incentive to ensure the software is available for, and works well on, just about anything available, since they want people with money to use their specialized versions of software even more than people with nothing.

P.S. Perhaps this discussion would be better off-list, since it's not really directly related to Linux anymore?