Mandriva has moved to open a direct sales channel to the 419 scammer set.

Okay, okay. The Linux maker actually pitches its new African headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria as one step toward bridging the so-called digital divide. "The goal of Mandriva West Africa is to provide local distribution of Mandriva Linux and other integrated open source applications in English and French throughout the West Africa region," the company said in a statement. Mandriva will try to work with local PC makers and sellers, software makers and educational bodies to spread the Mandriva Linux operating system love.

And why not? Even email attackers deserve a nice Linux distro.

Mandriva's opening of a Lagos office and West African aspirations appear in stark contrast to the work of open source bigots stateside. The free software crowd is calling for lawyers to shell out $7,000 a pop to hear the same old GPL 3 spiel.

With a little luck, Nigerian schoolchildren may soon have the opportunity to pay such exorbitant fees for cheerleading classes as well. ®

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• Mandriva and TurboLinux unveil 10-person strong Manbo (17 January 2008)
• Ballmerized Nigerian PCs might run Mandriva after all (9 November 2007)
• Mandriva bigwig (nearly) accuses Ballmer of b-word (1 November 2007)
• Mandriva Linux 2008 is out and about (10 October 2007)
• Dutch police arrest six in 419 scam (9 August 2007)
• Another 419 scam ring nicked (25 April 2007)
• Trial in 419-related murder under way (10 April 2007)
• Updated Nigerians launch fake Met Police site (12 March 2007)
• Industry comment Why the Novell and Microsoft deal is good for Linux (2 January 2007)
• Mandriva Linux 2007 outed (3 October 2006)
• Mainstream press goes down on Dell (21 August 2006)
• Stern response Linux zealots proud to be as miserable as planes (12 December 2005)
• And ninthly The only thing worse than flying is open source code (29 November 2005)