Venezuela Goes Open Source

Odinson sent in this news blurb from LinuxToday, reporting that Venezuela has adopted a policy for the use of Open Source software in government wherever possible. Apparently they have practical rather than philosophical motivations: keeping cash in the country and promoting local software development.

Comments

More Clever Spin on slashdot.

[puto]

I am a network engineer who by way of circumstance am a Colombian citizen. Grandfather was from Spain and my father was born there. I was born in the US, but have both citizenships.

I lived in Colombia for the past two years before coming home. And Colombia and Venezuela are both full of computets. All kinds. Though SCO is a pretty popular OS over there. Many old school cobol accounting apps running on it.

ANYWAY. I do not think MS is too worried about losing Venezuela. When you go to a computer store in either country they give you windows free with the pc. Not a licnesed copy. They give you the cost of the liscense, you can get windows with a liscense or without. Who the fuck is gonna choose to pay more money? Not Latin Americans. They gotta pinch pennies. And if they got the money they will not do it anyway.

If you buy that liscsense, you better call MS from the store and verify it is valid, cause it is probably hoked up anyway.

I installed several large networks and ordered Dell PC's for the warranties and I could be sure I was getting the licenses legally. And I did. All windows and my big Red Hat Server.

You think Chavez would actually pay Gates? With latins get the money up front. You think if Chavez used pirate software, gates could do something about it? NO. Venezuela is an entity for itself.

This might look like a win for us but is just clever spin from our community.

Venezuela could care less about its systems. What you got is some good sysadmins whispering free in Politicians ears, makes the Politicians look good, like they were paying for software anyway.

In those countries software, music piracy is an accepted norm. You can buy burned cd's in shopping centers on the streets. They will chip your playstation while you wait. This announcement will not garner any interest there. People are too worried about food and shelter.

And yeah there are nice areas. For the privileged few. The top 5 percent. Yeah I two ISDN lines in my apartment. And the montly cost would have fed a family of five.

Show me where opensource benefits latin america. Medical records, state agencies, but until then this announcement has all the weight of Pam Anderson announcing her new fashion line.

Puto