Peru to go open source
p2p news / p2pnet:- Peru’s Congress is telling Bill and the Boyz where to go.
It’s voted 61-0 to approve legislation, “which would prohibit any public institution from purchasing computer equipment that ties users to a particular type of software or “in any manner limits information autonomy’,” says the Associated Press, going on:
“It also bars public institutions from having a predetermined preference for either proprietary software, like Microsoft Corp.’s, in which the source code is mostly secret and licensing fees are charged for upgrades, or for open-source software, in which the underlying code is available to anyone wanting to revise or customize it.”
But whether or not the country’s president, Alejandro Toledo, will sign the bill is still an open question.
If he does, Peru will join Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and other countries in “actively moving toward the Linux operating system and other open-source alternatives that can mean millions of dollars in savings,” says AP.
Sponsor congressman Edgar Villanueva pushed three years ago for a law to obligate all public institutions to convert exclusively to open-source software but, “Microsoft and several Peruvian software companies lobbied hard against the measure, which garnered little support from lawmakers,” says AP:
“The new legislation wouldn’t mandate the software’s use but rather would require its consideration.”
But the Peruvian president has allied with the software industry before, says AP, adding:
“Toledo has 25 working days to sign the new bill into law or send it back to Congress with ‘observations’ to modify it, which would set back its passage and possibly kill the initiative.”
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See:-
Associated Press – Peru to give open-source software equal footing with Microsoft, September 28, 2005
