> Do the people in Zambia deserve an open, equitable web any less than Americans or Europeans do?
They deserve an open, equitable web as much as we all do. I'm afraid that Mozilla's tendencies to waste money on such projects instead of using it to improve their main product aren't helping though.
Yes, that's part of it. Guys in SV don't need help with access; women in Africa do - that's the place to hold conferences, and probably much more cost effective. (Whatever is mean by 'Africa', a very large area, and I know nothing about the conference.)
If we start with the propostion that all people are created equal, and have equal value, then adding some marginal value in SV seems to have lower ROI than transforming lives in a place where people have little access to the resources and people of the IT industry. And in many societies, women face discrimination that tries to exculde them from tech.
Intel isn't hosting a hardware conference in 99% of the world. It's a great opportunity for Mozilla's mission, for those people, and for the world.
They deserve an open, equitable web as much as we all do. I'm afraid that Mozilla's tendencies to waste money on such projects instead of using it to improve their main product aren't helping though.