Wednesday, 20th September 2006 at 1:15 pm

Mark Shuttleworth Soars From Space to Cyber Space

Believe it or not, but South Africans are infamous for complaining loudly amongst themselves about everything from government to bad service around the braai (barbeque), and yet never doing anything about it or directing their comments to the people/institutions who deserve to hear it.

Luckily, there are some exceptions to this rule, like local billionaire entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth.

Mark, who made his millions at a young age by starting a dot com from his Cape Town garage and then selling the company for a tremendous amount, went on to reach international fame as the first African in space and the second ever space tourist.

Ever ambitious, he has now set his sights on cyber space where he aims to take on none other than software giant (and monopolising bully) Microsoft by working to make open-source Linux-type operating systems available to Africans. If his appropriately named Ubuntu software (comprising of programmes with quirky and humorous titles like “Hoary Hedgehog” and “Warty Warthog”) becomes available, it would allow the African continent – where only a fraction of the impoverished population is computer literate – to catch up to the techno standards of the rest of the world.

Ubuntu is an African word that means caring for your community and humanity for others, and Mark is a living example of it, which certainly gives him a big thumbs-up from us.

Now, will it be too much to ask him to tackle high local Internet costs and throttled bandwidth? Uncap us, Mark, please uncap us!

Additional reading: Millionaire space tourist tackles Microsoft – BizTech.

Ubuntu: The Seabiscuit of Software - China Tech News.

Mark’s Blog.