Slashdot Mirror
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.
Your luggage is ready, sir.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Terry Gilliam must be happy.
In Soviet Russia, beowulf clusters imagine YOU!
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
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.
What, are you new around here or something?
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 even for Windows based software, such as OpenOffice and other desktop OSS software. And what about OSS server based software? That too.
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
If closed-source software is prohibited, there's no way for companies to buy their way into Brazil.
"It would seem wiser to support a solution that favors the best tool for the job"
That's very true, but only when you don't have mega-corporations and monopolies leveraging assets other than software (donating computer hardware, donating to social programs, etc).
While I personally believe in "the best tool for the job", governments are far more vulnerable to outside pressure than businesses.
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.
Implied :-) for those who forgot about all the "Open-this" and "Open-that" software being tossed about in the early-to-mid-90's that really had nothing open about it at all.
'Chamber for the Implementation of Software Libre.'" Libre = Spanish Livre = Portuguese Portuguese, not spanish, is the spoken language in Brazil...
...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?
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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
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.
Just a reminder of what just happened in Munich, Germany: while trying to convince public administration to choose Windows, Microsoft dramatically reduced its prices. So, if you're a big company or a public entity, the sole announcement that you consider the Linux alternative can save you a couple of million dollars. Not considering OSS alternatives will cost you or your taxpayers millions of dollars.
That's why competition is so good.
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.
We should mandate free software for government not because "it's the best widget for the woozle problem," but because it's _public_.
The government shouldn't be subsidizing some _private_ interest if there is a public alternative.
Yes, in an ideal world, everyone has choice.
We should all realize, though, that often the power to choose is wasteful, and unnecessary. What do I mean?
Do you know how much time, effort, and money gets wasted having some government committee trying to decide what software to use for something? How many factors are involved? And we're talking latin america here, don't forget bribes.
The choice to use free software is not the same as the "choice" to use Windows. Free software encompasses a whole range of things; somteimes, an edict like this is what it TAKES To change things.
Canada switched to the metric system in a very short time. How? It was forced on everyone. Once you accept it, it's EASY. Yet we still have people in the US with silly studies saying how it would take 100 years for the US to switch, the logistics, yadda yadda. Guess what, if it was actually decreed that you HAD to switch, you would find a way, it wouldn't be anywhere near as disruptive as everyone says, and so on.
The same happened with the switch to the Euro.. tons of people had studies and reports shownig how switching was going to be a HUGE disaster, how it wouldn't work. Guess what, it went rather well.
Given what government does, I'm sure they can fit whatever applications absolutely cannot be replaced by free alternatives in the 20% non-free they are allowed.
What I'm saying is, in practice, sometimes removing choice is the ONLY way to force a real shift in how things are done. I mean, people have had a choice all along, and the pressures involved caused them to chose proprietary things.
...when the right tool for the job can't be found then it will be sought by this gov't. That is excellent news, as it builds the open source pool of software, and pays (hopefully local brazilian) open source software writers for their effort.
KS
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.
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.
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.
Hey, if the FSF re-brands free software as Freedom Software for the US market, it might gain acceptance among certain government circles!
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Sorry replying to myself but I had formatting problems.
As someone who is a software engineer for the Brazillian government in São Paulo, I feel compelled to reply.
Open source is widely used and discussed as an option in almost every reguard. Yet virtually all server-based apps are run on solaris. In most cases you can choose to run linux on the desktop - some even choose bsd. Eclipse is fastly becomming universal. Yet virtually all development is being done in Java - pretty open for a closed standard but not exactly open source. Simple decrees will be hard to change that culture.
Still, the media I've read is not showing direct quotes from high level officials. The IT minister is quoted as speaking in the name of (chief of staff) ministro José Dirceu, and even that President Lula has stated software livre is "polÃtica pÃblica de governo". Pretty loftly claims from a lower level official - hope they are true but still as yet are unconfiremed in higher places recently.
It is my belief that the increasing amount of developers believing software livre is kool will have more impact than any law. I don't believe that software livre is really going to save much money as claimed because of wide piracy. Saying Public governments should use publicly available tools makes more sense to me. But seeing those numbers explains how the Secretaria de Fazenda do Rio (Rio IRS) created those swiss bank accounts.
iksrazal
"However, I suspect that it will be anti-US and nationalistic attitudes of countries like Brazil that will bring the OSS revolution to fruition."
ItÂs not an anti-US action, it is all about trying to have the most affordable solution. Brazil is a poor country and we are currently cutting costs everywere. ItÂs better doing this by saving money with M$ licenses than saving money with education and health care.
Brazil is also a large country with population about 180,000,000 distributed over an area 8,511,965 sq km (which is more than US, if you donÂt consider Alaska). I donÂt have many estimates about how many computers our government has, or how many M$ licenses per year are acquired, but I hope it will save us mony and improve our IT knowledge and skills.
We are not India, but we are ready for that. After all IT local costs are low. I have a MSc and BSc degree in CS on a top brazilian university and my salary is less than U$ 15,000 per year. And I am currently unemployed, I think if our government invests in local techonology it will help our country as a whole.
Nowhere does the Spanish article or its English translation state that the government of Brazil has made open source mandatory. It states that the government of Brazil chose free software because they believe it to be more trustworthy and reliable. It also says that they are conducting a pilot project within one ministry and that the project will be completed over a period of three years. When I did the quick translation and sent it to PCLinuxonline, I did so because the cited Spanish news source appeared to be the first organization reporting on it widely and because I thought it deserved further analysis and scrutiny. I believe Mr. Stanco created a strawman, maybe unintentionally, and that both Linux Today and now Slashdot fell for that strawman by restating that Brazil is indeed mandating open source. By arguing against something that the article never claimed, Mr. Stanco only leaves to wonder whether he actually even read the short summary or the other articles available in the Brazilian media. Making a choice about what software makes it easier for Brazil's government to respect the constitutional rights of its citizens to privacy and transparency of data seems like a perfectly legitimate choice to me. The fact that they will realize significant savings as a result also seems sensible for a nation facing severe economic problems. Ps: One note to all the Brazilians noting that the word in Portuguese is livre and used "software libre". This is not a mistake in my part. The words software libre are widely used and well known in English. I know many English speakers who prefer the terms software libre to the English "free software" because the former make it patently clear that we are talking about freedom not cost. It is in light of this usage that I felt and feel that the terms "software libre" are appropriate. People immediately understand the "libre" as in "liberty" where as the free as in speech not beer often gets you puzzled looks. Good day.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software