Free Open Source Software has been around since the first commercial computers running on valves. Documentation was generally in (American?) English. Linus Torvalds who developed Linux was from Finland, The Debian distribution was started in Britain, but is being developed by a world-wide team, and although the primary language is still English, it is available in over 50 human languages, and there is little to stop the main correspondence and development moving to French, German, Spanish, any of the languages from the Far East, or anything else. We still have the advantage of not needing to learn a foreign language before we can learn about computers, but that could change. Some of the best software is still produced in the UK, but we already purchase huge quantities of hardware and software from the Far East and India, while Russians and eastern Europeans have been quick to learn.
Chris Bell ● 4984d