Brazilian Government Continues Push For Free Software

rmello writes "The 'Legislative Free Software Week' in Brazil ended last week, drawing 2,000 people, including 3 ministers and presidents of congress and senate. Computerworld reports (in Portuguese, translation by submitter), among other things, that 1) House of Representatives will NOT renew MS-Office licenses, but is looking at free software alternatives, 2) The free software parliamentary front was announced in congress, 3) The e-mail system of the house of representatives is being replaced by a free software one, 4) The federal government is looking at concrete measures to stimulate free software as means of saving money and stimulating the national software industry. Looks like free software is here to stay in Brazil. Kudos to the many Brazilian free software groups working to make such victories a reality."

Comments

Microsoft's reaction will be ?

[cfl]

I'm be interested to see how Microsoft react to this. E.g. Counter offers, as per the City of Munich decision to go with Linux desktops: Munich spurns Ballmer's rebates

Special Interest groups

[AftanGustur]

You always have interest groups pushing for one solution or another. In the case of free software, it's tens of thousands of people who will have jobs they wouldn't have otherwise.

Switching systems like this requires more people (more jobs) for training and support. And even though the cost for the governament doesn't dramatically shrink, the money, not only stays in Brazil, but also creates thousands of new jobs.

It's about time the politicians of the world understand that important part of using free software!

Re:Start of a change

[Daengbo]

Thailand formed the Ministry of ICT about a year ago, and one of the first decisions it made was to commit to 50% open source use in gov't within 3 years. They are promoting OS/FS with the sole intention of building their local IT talent.
Companies have begun to offer large prizes (4 years average programmer salary) for 3D games which run on Linux, and have fast tracked the certification of an "official" OS and office suite for the country, which have been developed by an arm of the gov't, NECTEC. My school will get free promotion from them when we open our OS/FS training courses next term.
The Thai goverment hopes to free itself from outside control. The national anthem says "None are allowed to oppress and destroy our independence." Thais are very proud of their colony-free heritage, and look at foreign software as part of that.

Pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Some pics from the event:
http://www.gulms.org/fotos/SL_congresso/.

Re:It's a step in the right direction

[kramer2718]

You're quite right. I think that Brazil is actually counting on those private developers. I think that their plan is to contract out the software projects that they need done while using Linux, and other free software as a basis for those projects.

Farming out developement of other software has got to be cheaper than paying M$ obscene liscensing fees. Furthermore, when you hire contractors, you can get a solution which fits better than an out of the package software-suite. At the beginning, they may have to send some of that work overseas, but they will probably find local talent pretty quickly.

Re:Brazil is the oddest place on the planet

[yuri82]

the country has widespread corruption, the rich people pretty much have owned it since the discovery days.

they buy the lawmakers who pass laws that help them get richer and richer.

in my opinion and experience the country doesnt grow because of the catholic church and what it does to poor people...

i am from brazil btw...

Re:Brazil is the oddest place on the planet

[Simon X.]

Is it much different in the USA?

Except that the government is supporting free software.

Free Software Creates Wealth

[jgardn]

You are thinking too narrow -- you only see the wealth created by the sale of the license to use the software, not the wealth created from the users of the software.

I know several companies in the Seattle area (still suffering high unemployment and economic recession) that are successful *because* they use free software. They are able to adopt a piece of software, extend it to incorporate the features they need in their particular situation, and then add enough value to their company that they are turning healthy profits while all their competitors are flailing.

Let's take one piece of software -- the Apache web server. Even though acquiring the software requires little or no capital expenditure, deploying the software is pretty easy, and extending the software is only slightly more difficult, it is the foundation for several companies. Without that particular piece of software, they could not have built their business. Just having the software available to people creates wealth and value.

When Brazil unleashes a couple of million dollars from its IT spending and turns it into the pockets of Brazilian developers, testers, and documentators, it is going to begin the process of adding value to Free Software in Brazil. The companies and businesses will be able to utilize this software in their organizations, and add a bit of their own as well. The increased value of having the whole country united behind free software will bring such wealth that the previous revenue that licensing would've created would be seen as a drop in the bucket.

You have to view software from a holistic economic approach.

Re:It said FREE SOFTWARE, not open source

[eliphas_levy]

In portuguese, we have TWO words to mean FREE. Simply the translation doesn't help. The "software livre" and "software gratis".
That's the catch: the original article has "livre" which means "freedom", as in speech.

Microsoft Sure Screwed the Pooch

[FreeUser]

I'm be interested to see how Microsoft react to this. E.g. Counter offers, as per the City of Munich decision to go with Linux desktops: Munich spurns Ballmer's rebates

Microsoft really screwed the pooch on this one.

• A plethora of countries announce various free software and open source initiatives, emphesizing a transition away from foreign proprietary software to home-grown, or at leat home-enhanced, free and open software.
  
• Microsoft panics, sends Balmer et. al. down to buy off politicians and entice officials with obscenely cheap ("dumping" prices) licenses, no activation requirements, and liberal sitewide licenses that expire in a few years.
  
• Microsoft clearly believes it has offered these foolish governments something akin to "sucker lines" of cocain: a free (or very inexpensive) hit followed by the client paying through the nose for additional fixes.
  
• Instead, all of these countries obtained the right to legally use Microsoft, for pennies on the dollar, for the time they needed to transition to a free and open environment. During this transition these countries would have had to run Microsoft products anyway, either dealing with piracy accusations or paying full price for licenses. It isn't like one can switch an entire country over to GNU/Linux overnight! Microsoft foolishly gave these governments extraordinarilly cheap licenses to run their products during this critical (and expensive) transition phase.
  
• Now Microsoft cannot go after them and harass them for "piracy", or even earn a one-off full licensing fee for the duration of the transition (which almost certainly will require a year or two to complete, during which time these countries still have to have Microsoft licenses: licenses Redmond was so good to give away for pennies in their institutional panic).
  

Whether this is an example of third world brilliance outthinking their arrogant American counterparts (getting Microsoft to effectively subsidize their move to free software by selling them such inexpensive, limited time licenses, thereby decreasing their costs of transition dramatically), or just countries getting incredibly lucky as a result of Redmond's panic, I don't know. Probably a combination (not to mention examples of outright corruption, with corrupt politicians being replaced by less corrupt ones who revive these initiatives, examples of short sighted politicans balking when it comes time to pay the piper and renew licenses, instead renewing the free software initiatives they tabled earlier, and who knows how many other variations on this theme).

In any event, the irony is delicious. We as a community lamented the short sightedness of so many third world countries selling out to Microsoft in exchange for cheap licenses that would expire in a few years, when in fact Microsoft was being far too clever for their own good, helping to underwrite all these nations' transition to freeer platforms. They squandered their last chance to get licensing fees from these nations, and effectively did nothing to prevent them from transitioning away from their product anyway.

Or at least some of these nations, like Thailand and Brazil. Who knows how it will play out elsewhere, but for now I'm chortling with delicious glee.