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Brazil Mandates Shift to Free Software
truthsearch writes "LinuxToday is reporting news and a response about Brazil making Open Source mandatory for 80% of all computers in state institutions and businesses, setting up a 'Chamber for the Implementation of Software Libre.'" This is a big win for Linux, but is making it mandatory going too far? It would seem wiser to support a solution that favors the best tool for the job, which may not always be an open source product.
Making this mandatory, in my opinion, goes against everything that open source stands for - choice. To not keep choices as free as possible to choose whatever is the best solution - be it proprietary or open - defeats the entire purpose of the choice open source provides.
The 'best tool' term can always be used to fit whatever system you're trying to push. If you're talking about desktop systems, there's always a reason that Windows is the best tool.
If, on the other hand, you are interested in making a change and making people aware of the choice out there, then yes it probably needs to be mandated - what the Government is saying is that it is more important that we have control over our software than features, necessarily. That's 'best tool', but more of a long-term view..
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
Brazil's not exactly overflowing with cash at the moment. A tool that does 90% of the job for free is better than a tool that does 100% of the job but that you can't afford to purchase.
This is a big win for Linux, but is making it mandatory going too far? It would seem wiser to support a solution that favors the best tool for the job, which may not always be an open source product.
I think an 80% mandation (is that even a word?) seems fair. You leave 20% left over for missions-critical applications (military and whatnot; remember, Brazil isn't like the US - they don't spend hundreds of billions on military, and therefore, I doubt their military computer systems make up even 10% of their infrastructure), on which you can chose software based on the best choice out there. But the remaining 80%, which represents mostly desktop applications for clerks and whatnot, will be running on OSS - this is good, because it prevents government from getting locked into restrictive licencing that usually comes with desktop production software, saves money, and encurages development of open software/standards.
I think they've met a good balance here, and I congradulate them.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
Is mandating across the board reductions in cash expenditures for non-domestic product unfair or counter-productive? Almost certainly not. When a second/third world economy is able to reduce its hard currency outlay for soft product, it's an across the board win. When it's further possible to use local labor for support and administration, at local labor rates, it's a larger win. When all of that can be achieved *and* they're able to use the initiative as a basis for improving the technical skills pool locally, it sure seems like a win to me.
It'll be interesting to see if they can leverage access to source and freely redistributable product into a long term cost reduction strategy. Short term the win is pretty clear. Long term, open source has some way to go in maintenance cost reduction, vis. Solaris vs. RedHat and Solaris vs. Win2k
This is just as wrong as if a country mandated 80% Microsoft. Mandate open file formats and protocols, but don't mandate people or agencies MUST use a specific type of software.
--
Who do YOU think owns UNIX?
Freedom Is Universal
Linux-Universe
It brings skills into the country and stops the export of programming jobs. It ensures that the organisatons you want to account are local. It means that all of your population can take advantage of gov't programming and development work. It reduces dependancies on countries which may or may not change their mind about you in the future. It means you aren't bound to proprietary standards (docs and APIs) which might be used to keep you on that platform. It means that the code can never be taken away from you.
Given that a countries primary mandate is social, it makes a great deal of sense to mandate free software, for the good of the country, unless you happen to be the country that is the home of Microsoft (and even then that's debatable - MS is perfectly happy to outsource programming jobs to wherever is cheapest).
Beep beep.
The best tool for a particular job might be proprietary software. However, maybe Brazil's long term goal is to alleviate themselves of proprietary software.
Certainly any software tool could be created using open source. After a few years of such creation all the best tools would be open source and Brazil will no longer be reliant any anyone but themselves. Sounds like a pretty good goal to me.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Free versus the two hundred some odd dollars for windows could save them a lot.
...is a tool that guarantees you it can still be used in 20 years. Only Open Source Software can assure you that. The manufacturers of Closed Source Software will eventually stop support, go backrupt or be bought by a large company that just kills it. There is absolutely no excuse to use closed source software. And "It's easier to use on the short term" is NOT an excuse if you cannot be 100% certain that your data will still be readable in 10 years.
0x or or snor perron?!
I dont recall ever hearing some consensus that Open Source stands for choice.
Free Software stands for SHARING SOURCE CODE. In fact, going by the GPL, you dont even get a choice about sharing it either.
So stop promulgating that stupid sentiment. I for one have no problem with mandatory open source.
So what if you lose the choice to be a slave, you still have all the choices that matter.
Are they really doing any mandating? I RTFA and it seems like they're only making the move to free software only because it's cheaper, not because they have to or anybody is forcing them to.
It only seems like they are mandating it because of the story title, even in the babelfish translation of the spanish original article title they're only 'migrating.'
I was wondering why they'd try to force open source software on anybody, isn't that against morals and such?
In this case I see some likeness to the case of Generic Drugs. Brazil forced lower prices of patented drugs by threatening with ignoring those patents and producing cheap, generic medecines.
They won because a state is still more powerful than any corporation. Imagine what would happen if SCO won the case against Linux, while Brazil would have most of the governmental IT run by Linux. Would the surrender to the power of SCO? I doubt it. So every such case is beneficial to the stability of Open Source community
You can defy gravity... for a short time
but is making it mandatory going too far?
In the transition to a fully open source office, the initial training expense is high (not because Windows is easier, but because everyone already knows how to use it). After the initial expense, and assuming a large installed base (to facilitate peer support), the cost savings are enormous. Government offices are the perfect places to take advantage of these facts - no quarterly stockholder reports to worry about means the initial expense won't affect anyone's bonus, and the massive user base makes peer support extremely cost effective.
Wholly aside from the cost efficiency aspect is the open government and independence issue. As things stand, Brazil is dependent on Microsoft, and runs on software to which Brazil's citizens have no access. This is hardly an appropriate position for democracy to find itself in.
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mandating open software over closed is a financial and logical extension of the notion that government should be more cost effective, accessible to all comers, more equitable and be able to accomplish it's tasks. What this does is to put a huge incentive on other software companies to compete on terms of usability and service, instead of locked in closed formats and inertia, ie, holding them ransom for money every year beyond what is really necessary to spend, which is the model most governments and busineses have been using for a long time, but times change now. Cost is a serious consideration, and open source has enough variety to do the bulk of what needs to be done, and shows every indication of soon doing *all* of it.. If-obvious reference- microsoft wants to still compete, the ball is in their court now, there's several avenues they can persue, either drop prices to a much more realistic level and open up their document formats in particular, or go full bore open source same as linux and bsd vendors,make their profit from service and reliability and security, and also the same thing applies to various specific applications they might require.
The "right tool for the job" is the correct assessment, but you must needs take all the variables into account when considering your selection. Example, I can dig out a small gadren spot to make a new flower bed, I could lease a trackhoe, by golly that thing is very efficient in digging out the bed, and it's sure a tool, but all things considered the better tool would be me, the garden sysadmin and my shovel I own and don't have to rent.
I don't think the brazilians are stupid, they can see the advantages in cost, long term viability, having the freedom to develop custom in house, having the notion that more of their people will have lawful access to the same tools for more universal access, and so on.
Put it another way, it would sure be bogus if to use the highway here I had to only drive a belchfire, and government wouldn't use anything but belchfires, and they were real expensive all the time with expensive parts and expensive maintenance. That's been almost completely "mandated" so far, time to move on to another idea.
One thing that really bugs me about many governments around the world is how they are never willing to touch the fundamental issue behind free vs. proprietary software. Copyright is a government-granted exclusive right to a work. If this government-granted right is hurting the society, the society should reconsider the principles behind the copyright.
I find it insane that the Brazilian government first grants each author with strong rights for the software they write and then they say that sorry, we can't use such software because you use the rights we have given you. I also find it insane that the US government grants software authors similar rights and when one company simply uses those government-granted rights (well, I guess you know what company I'm talking about), the government sues it for abusing those rights.
Making open source mandatory is pointless. The proper way to change things is not to grant anyone privileges that hurt the society. The copyright, to some extent, might be a good thing. If it becomes such a bad thing that the government itself wishes to use only copyleft software, there is something fundamentally flawed either in the government decision or the copyright law.
I think the real winner is the Brazilian citizens. Although the government is certainly not about to buy trhem a bunch of computers, thisis a big step towards spreading technological skills throughout the region, into schools, and into people's homes. Let's not forget that a society that cannot stay in tune with technology is doomed to be at a serious disadvantage on a global scale.
Wow. Get off the phone with the Microsoft rep. What mainstream category of software doesn't have an OpenSource counterpart. I say mainstream because I don't think the government of Brazil is going to be the next Pixar. They don't need some super-specialized software! OpenOffice or MS Office --damn what's the best tool for the job. Let's see they do the same damn thing. I should buy MS Office though, because it is the "best tool for the job." I'm sure the people of Brazil are glad you're not in charge cowboy. I'm not trolling here, just leave your unsupported flamebait comment out of the post; it has taken over the discussion here.
More importantly, they will be saving money. There's no way around that for them. They'll also feel less pressured by a company that's interest are far from theirs--the one's that are selling the "best tool for the job" crap like there's no alternative that wouldn't work just as well.
Ah well, just my two cents worth. They're using the BEST tool, they just stopped asking MS what the BEST(tm) tool is.
That money may very well stay local... building a local technology industry instead of outsourcing.
A lot. But only at the beggining, you know. Then it's an eternity of savings ;)
Unfortunately, the market isn't that "free" either. With powerful trans-national corporations being the only "real" players in the so-called "free market", it would be next to impossible for the Brazilian government to open up the competition.
Freedom != Market Deregulation
This is a compromise more likely to make it into law, and serves the intended purpose. This prevents vendor lock in of your data, and applies to databases as well as the desktop. (A much bigger concern for governments)
.rtf and other formats, but you have to jump through hoops to do it. They would presumably then be severely penalized in the contract bidding. This would push them to i) publicly document their file formats, ii) switch to an open file format by default, or iii) lose out on the bid.
It also kills off undocumented file formats such as the MS-Word defaults. In order to win the contract, closed source vendors such as MS would have to switch to a default open file format that any application could read. Of course, Word can save files in
My rights don't need management.
How American of you. There will be lots of work for engineers -- writing code and assembling code into systems in India, China, Brazil, and German city governments, British Local Councils, large corporate adopters. . . .
It is truly an industrial shift though. Taking the Linux as wood analogy -- we will need less loggers and more architects.
As a system architect, with FOSS you have choice of materials, contractors, designs, hardware, etc.
Or you can just let a few American corporations engineer a COTS solution for you while adding into the price tag: obscene marketting, legal and bureaucratic overhead, risk of license audits, vendor lock, platform dependance, anti-democratic barriers to data transparency due to proprietary formats, currency outflows, poor security, monopoly abuses, back doors(?), the list of cons seems virtually inexhastable.
Software is going, once again, to become a product of science (peer reviewed, open, iterative) rather than a corporate asset. That is a good thing, but it means that software as product is a shrinking sector, while software as service grows.
Lots of low-value salesman and marketing types (not to mention MSCE admins) will have to find another way to tax the productivity of end users.
OSS is like most social revolutions. It is for anything which broadens its agenda and power base. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
From a historical perspective, this news on Brazil is quite interesting. They have had one of the most meddlesome governments in IT. I was working with several Brazilians in the 80s. At the time, Brazil wanted to build up its computer manufacturing and had strict import laws controlling the importation of computers and computer programs. The hope was that by creating an isolated market, they would develop a flourishing IT industry. My friends, of course, thought the laws were extremely troublesome and oppressive, and were trying to find a way out of Brazil. They told stories of how most of Brazil's IT infrastructure was running on 10 year old software because companies couldn't import the new software. I was hoping the acticle would have more info on the history of Brazil's attempts to legislate its IT industry.
Anyway, mandating the use of OSS fits well within the social and political objectives of the movement. OSS does not stand for "choice." OSS stands for "open development." These are different ideas. In many regards OSS is in stark opposition to the notion of ownership of property. All the brouhaha about copyrights and patents is an attempt to create some sort of ownership to intellectual development; so that it would fit in a free market.
When the code is publicly developed, there is no longer any "ownership" of ideas or code. It is all a communal resource. Hence, the philosophies of ownership that were advanced by Smith, Locke and others are no longer applicable.
As for choice, for OSS to really excel it cannot allow companies to choose that this piece of software is open and this piece is closed. The goal of the GPL is to make all the software code "open." Otherwise the greed of software developers would be to take from the community without giving back. Government mandates simply add the power to the state to enforce the idea of open development.
OSS pretty much started as a reaction to the Microsoft monopoly. Since monopolies limit choice, I can see how people in the initial step of the revolution equated open with free; However, I suspect that it will be anti-US and nationalistic attitudes of countries like Brazil that will bring the OSS revolution to fruition. The fact that the revolution is different then what people thought the revolution was about is par for the course.
Playing devil's advocate, it might be fairly easy to make a case for mandatory free software in government. My argument for that would be that government, as a public entity, has special non-technical requirements. It's sufficiently important to insure that a) you know what's in that software, b) you can continue operating and accessing data for time periods literally an order of magnitude or more greater than the average software generation these days regardless of whether any single software vendor exists or supports the products you use, and c) your citizens aren't required to buy specific commercial products just to access government data and services, that those requirements trump any technical superiority of a proprietary solution.
When Company A decides to change from Windows to Linux, or from Photoshop to OpenPaint (ok, I'm making that up) nobody start to cry.
The decision does not apply to private-owned companies, nor to any specific-used software. Nobody will drop Oracle because they MUST use mySQL. You can't simply change tools like that.
The point is: 95% of every government-related office work is plain office stuff. Answer mails, type letters, fill forms... It can be done as easily with a Linux / *Office as with a Windows/MsOffice solution.
The living-hell I work right now is going to pay $20.000 in Windows/Office licenses. I tried and tried to show to my manager that a OpenSource solution IS much cheaper, but he doesn't want to bother with the tech support issues. He's not blind, he's a PHP Biatch, a rather good Linux/BSD geek, but your know what they say about power...
After all, how many people use 10% of MS Word's features?
[]'s Carlos Cardoso - Becoming a brazilian ProBlogger, typo by typo
People have been forced to use MS software for years. In order to really fix Open Source software, people will probably need to be forced to use it so that its issues are actually dealt with. I get the feeling that no-one who really writes is using OpenOffice (or whatever) to write, and no-one who really produces graphics is using GIMP. Until someone forces serious users to use these products they won't be fixed.
Most developing nations don't have English as their national language, so a lot of the "benefits" of doing things the Microsoft way are less apparent to begin with. (E.g. many of the rows and rows of Microsoft-product-related-books in your local Barnes & Nobel that folks buy when they can't figure out how to make their Excel spreadsheet work aren't translated into Portugese or Vietnamese.)
Microsoft and PC makers do a lot of dumping in the third world. E.g. in Viet Nam -- a country I have some experience with -- discontinued brand-name PCs are dumped on the market which serves the dual purpose of prepping the country for a full-priced MS invasion when it can afford it and getting rid of stock that would cut into margins in first world markets. Indeed, it's interesting that so much is made of piracy in such countries, since most of the PCs you see look like they would have come with bundled software.
It seems to me that many developing nations are not short of technical expertise, and developing local additions to a large Open Source base would be a good way of avoiding IT slavery, building up the national skill set, providing good localised software, and in general taking advantage of globalisation instead of being victimised by it.
Here's something to chew on: government spending LESS MONEY is about as far from communism as you can get.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
It is terribly short-sighted to allow the use of
closed-source solutions in cases where a
reasonable development investment can create an
open-source tool. The open-source tool will
continue to develop in response to the particular
needs of the agency, and serve other agencies
in the future at no additional cost, while the
proprietary solution will only cost more money
as it is used increasingly.
In short, the open-source solution costs less and
less per installation over time, whereas the
proprietary one often costs more and more.
The 80% number leaves abundant wiggle-room for
those rare cases where the development investment
or latency of producing a novel open source
solution where none exists, but a proprietary one
is feasible. That number should be gradually
pushed upwards, over time, however, so that the
long-term economies of open-source solutions can
be more thoroughly exploited for the public
benefit.
Public funds should be used in the public interest,
not to enrich a foreign monopolist.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-