Red Hat Linux is now avaailable in Bangla (also known as Bengali). Bangla is the official language of Bangladesh, a country with more than 140 million people. Why Bangla you ask?

Because a growing number of programmers in India and Bangladesh want software in their native tongue. And, more important, because Microsoft has so far largely ignored this market.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

Javed Tapia, Director Red Hat India said “India’s domestic software industry resembles the TV industry around nine years ago when the programming was only in Hindi or English. Similarly, today computers are predominantly used only in English.” Over 90mn Indians speak Bengali language. He added, “Given that only a small percentage of our population communicates in English, it is imperative that software is available in Bengali and other local languages. The Red Hat Bangla desktop will definitely play a significant role in ensuring that benefits of the IT revolution are realized by millions of Bengalis,” he said.

The Bangla Linux desktop has the potential to change how education and e-government work. In education, teaching school children will be easier through computer user interfaces that are in Bengali. In e-Government, the use of Bangla Linux will enable users to access and/or create information in their own language. Citizens can access Government services in Bengali. Localization also expands business opportunities of Independent Software Vendors developing applications for education, e-Governance, Rural Banking, Community Information Centers (CICs) etc.

This is a major milestone in Red Hat’s long-term strategy for India. In addition to Bangla, Red Hat is working on localization of other Indian languages including Hindi, Gujarati, Punjabi and Tamil. All these will be available as a part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4 in February 2005.

I’m critical of Microsoft because the company has largely ignored countries like Bangladesh for years. Microsoft has been so consumed with software piracy that it figures any localization investment is a waste of money. And since they don’t provide software at a price that most consumers in these poorer markets can afford, they create a self-fulfillling prophecy. But then along comes Linux, a boom in outsourced software development, and, suddenly Microsoft is on the outside looking in.

According to this article Microsoft is now working on a Bangla OS, to be released in a year.

While Microsoft focuses on its “strategic markets” the rest of the world is making do with open source software. And they’re doing quite well, thank you very much.

There is now an OpenOffice software package available in Swahili. According to the release:

Swahili is the most spoken of the Bantu languages and conservative estimates indicate that is the first language spoken by more than 70 million people, chiefly in Kenya, Tanzania, Congo (Kinshasa), and Uganda.

I do not expect a Microsoft Office Swahili anytime soon.

Microsoft has the funds to localize its office suite into every human language and still have a few billion in change. But it chooses to focus only on those markets where it can make a big profit. It has no interest in “break even” markets.

Microsoft offers 47 languages the last I checked, a number that has increased only marginally over the past few years. Meanwhile, OpenOffice offers more than 30 localized versions with another 30 or so in the works.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Every culture that Microsoft ignores today is a culture that it will lose tomorrow.

PS: Here’s an earlier related Microsoft rant.

A great article about the growth of blogging in China. Chinese also happens to be the fastest-growing language on the Internet.