Brazil says Yes to open source
p2pnet.net News:- “Looking to save millions of dollars in royalties and licensing fees, Mr. da Silva has instructed government ministries and state-run companies to gradually switch from costly operating systems made by Microsoft and others to free operating systems, like Linux.
“On Mr. da Silva’s watch, Brazil has also become the first country to require any company or research institute that receives government financing to develop software to license it as open-source, meaning the underlying software code must be free to all.”
Mr da Silva is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Brazil, and the two quotes above come in a New York Times story that suggests one country, at least, isn’t prepared to cave in to Bill and the Boyz – or any of the other monopolists who want the world to run according to their dictates.
“Now Brazil’s government looks poised to take its free software campaign to the masses,” the story continues. “And once again Microsoft may end up on the sidelines.”
The Brazilian government plans to roll out PC Conectado, or Connected PC, “aimed at helping millions of low-income Brazilians buy their first computers” – and it’s slated to start happening at the end of April, says the NYT’s Todd Benson.
“And if the president’s top technology adviser gets his way, the program may end up offering computers with only free software, including the operating system, handpicked by the government instead of giving consumers the option of paying more for, say, a basic edition of Microsoft Windows.”
Not that Microsoft has dropped its efforts to force Brazil into line with the rest of its client countries. In a statement, it says it’s still, "working with the PC Conectado project to see if there’s a way Microsoft can help”.
"Working with" is a euphemism. Microsoft recently ‘helped’ Denmark to reach a decision over the European Computer Implemented Inventions Directive by threatening 800 Danish jobs if the country didn’t go the way Microsoft wanted.
As things stand, the European Commission says it won’t go back to basics on the CIID which will allow the widespread patenting of software in Europe to the distinct benefit of Microsoft, et al.
In the meanwhile, Brazil wants to complement the PC Conectado program with stepped-up efforts to put more computers into schools, says Benson, going on that it’s also investing $74 million to open 1,000 community centers in poor neighborhoods by year-end, “with computers that run free software programs and offer free Internet access – supplementing similar programs by local governments and nongovernmental organizations”
Walter Bender, executive director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “was solicited by the Brazilian government” for his views, says the NYT, adding he replied that, " ‘high-quality free software’ has proved more effective in stimulating computer use among the poor than scaled-down versions of proprietary software’."
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
New York Times – Brazil: Free Software’s Biggest and Best Friend, March 30, 2005
threatening – Gates blackmailed Danish gv’ment, p2pnet, February 15, 2005
March 30th, 2005 at 9:55 pm
Yeah right,
When open source is the norm, not only will hundreds of thousands of jobs in the IT industry go but so will innovation.
everyone uses windows on the desktop because it is easy to use and doesn’t require new kernel builds and compiling of source that we all love and workshop.
I think the ‘war’ between open source and proprietary software is great but a fundamental shift in balance of power to just open source will never really benefit everyone just like the so called open standards Unix didn’t win the desktop because joe public didn’t like it
March 30th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
It is a pure ideological move. It is a very left-wing government and they are doing it just to “stick it to the man”. No real study was done before making this decision. They have no idea if the people buying those computers will be able to use Linux or if they even want Linux. Will the be able to watch streaming video from Quicktime on WMP on their Linux? no. Will the kids be able to play games? no. Upgrade their FLASH player? Very unlikely.
I love Linux myself, but this is not a technical decision. It is a purely political one and they are doing it with tax payer’s money.
March 30th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
Sorry but the 2 above readers are missing the point completely:
1) This people WOULDN’T have access to computers any otehr way
2) Open source supplies most of the necessities of a common user. There is no need toproprietary tecnology, to browse and to make office work.
3) Windows demands as much assistance as Linux. I have to reinstall windows completely on friends computers from time to time due to virus and miscelaneous unrecoverable malfunctions. A “normal” user is not capable of doing this procedures be it with windows or linux. So there is no difference. Assistance is required either way to install and maintenance, and a “normal” user can operate the programs they need to work in both plantaforms.
March 30th, 2005 at 11:40 pm
The best part about it is how Brazil will “require any company or research institute that receives government financing to develop software to license it as open-source.”
March 31st, 2005 at 12:46 am
Thank you for a mature response to the two posts (mine was the first).
I also frequently fix friends computers.
Windows is much better known and supported. You point 1 is excellent and I would concur that is very valid. However isn’t the price of a computer more than a cut down windows and home office suite. In comparison the software is less than 10%.
I personally don’t care if it proprietary or open source as long as it does the job. Somehow even though open source is free, apart from us computer geeks nobody seems to want to put it on their machines. They seem happy enough with windows.
In terms of Networking and Security Vendor appliances, pretty much everything uses Linux but in a strange twist it is pretty much all Red Hat based. The stuff they support it on doesn’t work that well on other flavours just like Unix before it.
March 31st, 2005 at 1:14 pm
Well, then, instead of paying big bucks to a company in a foreign land they’ll pay some local geek a local wage (probably a lot less than Mto sort their machines out.
Sounds good to me.
March 31st, 2005 at 3:05 pm
Good points all over…
My vision is that people will first switch to open source applications, more and more of them, and in the meantime open source OSes will catch up as well.
Just look at the case of Emule Plus – it is open source and has every bell and whistle anyone can dream about yet it is still newbie friendly.
Also, the community did manage to get rid of the many leaching clones quite rapidly… I would not have imagined it happening this fast.
The other model is Google. Their Gmail with spellchecker and other features practically beats most Email apps today (if not all).
March 31st, 2005 at 4:13 pm
Open source benefited me. I am a software writer, and I could never in my wildest dreams learned what I know with proprietary software. On a restaurant worker’s salary, I simply did not have the money it costed to buy all the developments kits at that time. I switch to Linux years ago mot because it was free as in speech but because it was free as in beer.
I develop innovative software to meet my needs and the needs of my neighbors all the time as a result of open source’s freedom (free as in beer as well as speech). Many people have not switch to Linux simply due to fear, and the fact that they have become so used to doing everything Microsoft’s way.
As a software developer, I find that developing innovative software for Linux is much less tedious than developing the same software for Winblows. I do not have to wade through as many api’s that i do with Windows neither do I have to deal with an operating system that inserts extra characters into data streams unless one specifically tells the operating system to stop interfering.
As far as innovative programs go, there is much more available for the people in Linux than in Windows, and we do not have to deal With the issues of spyware. Oh yes, there have been attempts to insert spyware, viruses, and other malware into software, but since most Linux software is open source (at least what I use), these can and have been quickly found and eliminated.
Even if Linux exploits do become commonplace, they will not affect my computer or my friends’ computers because I’ve made simple changes to the kernel and compiled programs that will stop any exploit written for the rest of the masses. The change is pretty simple could probably be easily bypassed if and when my friends distribute the code to ther people. However, by changing a line in the code, I will still be protected. linux gives me the freedom to protect my computer in ways that Windows based computer users could only dream of.
Linux allows even the common person to make changes. When using proprietary software, people are forced to live with whatever the writer decides he or she wants them to live with. I prefer free software to cartel software any day. The only people that I know of that reject free software are those who need perfect interoperatability with Microsoft based formats. Others who use Linux and stuck with Lnux until they gotten used to it say that they never want to use Windows again.
This is capitalism and fair competition is all about, people deciding for themselves and letting the best person win. It take capitalism over monopolism and corruption every day.
March 31st, 2005 at 7:49 pm
This is the only way that government subsidized programming should be allowed. If tax payers are forced pay for the work, then they should be allowed to partake in the fruits of the results.
April 1st, 2005 at 12:37 am
“Will the be able to watch streaming video from Quicktime on WMP on their Linux? no.”
I don’t see why anyone would really want to use WMP or view Quicktime files, even under M$, yuck. But if they really do there are plenty of prefectly good open
source alternatives under linux. And if you wanted to view some crap DRM’d WMV
format you can do that too. The beauty of open source is that you can get past
these proprietary formats and turn the media into something useful.
Of course M$ is trying to squash the open sources that can do this but I
say let them try. We’ll just see how well they can do against a few million
tech savy kids.
I do agree that consistency is a pain under linux but a few million Brazilian kids experimenting with open sources will nodoubt help the stabilty of the apps as well as building a better tech base for the country.