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Brazil Moves Away From Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "Citing economic as well as social reasons, Brazil's government is opting to move away from Windows, opting instead for Open Source (read: Linux) solutions. Interestingly, Microsoft's representative in Brazil decries this as a movement away from freedom and choice..."
"If this was a rich country, it wouldn't matter and we could buy Microsoft products, but we're a developing country and Linux is just a lot more accessible, so we're heading toward a Linux generation."
It is this attitude that probably got them in to the problems they are in now and it is the attitude that got California in the problems it has now. When the State is flush with cash, you still have to find ways to save money. Just because the State has money, it does not mean it should spend it. It should return it to the people who gave it really belongs to, the Tax Payers.
Run Linux, save money, lower taxes. Sounds like a good combination to me.
Linux O Muerte!
Interestingly, Microsoft's representative in Brazil decries this as a movement away from freedom and choice..."
The context in the actual story is:
Although Amadeu insists the government has no plans to mandate open-source software use, Microsoft is worried and is lobbying to prevent the policy from becoming law.
"We still think free choice is best for companies, the individuals and the government," said Luiz Moncau, Microsoft's marketing director in Brazil. "There is the risk of creating a technology island in Brazil supported by law."
Understanding the full context, I believe it's a bad thing to exclude one party and not the other, whether it's Microsoft of Linux being excluded. Yes, it sounds like good reasoning that the government would go with Linux and Open-Source because of the cheper prices. However at the same time they should not exclude other types of non-open-source software. Other than for reasons of anti-competitiveness I don't see a good reason to not allow other types of software to be used.
those are social reasons. The employment reasons, resourcre reasons, political reasons etc. are based primarily on replacing foreign software providers with local support and software firms, to keep Brazilian money in Brazil. Piping their funds to Cupertino does not put money back into the Brazilian economy.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
So MS bad if screwing over local companies/organisations but MS good if screwing over foriegn companies/organisations? Sorry buddy but you can't have it both ways.
Its called a global economy, something the US has been pushing hard over the last couple of decades. Mind you the US version of the global economy seems to think that everyone else should play by the rules except the US.
Yes, it will mean that brazilians will be more able to find holes on Open Source and Linux solutions.
Also, it means that they will be able not only to find them, but also to fix them.
Do brazilians 'hack' a lot? Sure, they do. Bu not because the tech is there, the same reason why people don't commit murder because there's a kitchen knife there.
There are good and bad sides of these observations. Why did you pick up the bad? Brazilians would know how to crack, and also how to fix it.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
I love Linux and free software as much as the next slashdot reader....and I'm not trying to troll...but there's a lot of free software which is neither well written nor well understood, particularly the latter...even by people like me who have been using linux for years personally and professionally. Case and point would be the linux kernel, which has dozens of options which for years have had no help, no corresponding HOWTO, and names that remind you of PlotHoleFillTech from Star Trek.
Please help metamoderate.
Most fund managers don't look that far ahead. They look at their numbers on a quarterly basis and make their decisions based on those. They care about things like cashflow, profits, earnings, assets not whether some customer or another has switched to a competing product.
Right now the impact of these countries switching or thinking about switching has not effected the undelying financial position of MS. OTOH MS is expected to grow a certain amount every quarter which is becoming pretty much impossible because they have saturated their markets and are so big that further growth becomes very hard. The expection by shareholders will switch to MS being something like GE or IBM that being a pretty much steady company with minor fluctuations in price from time to time.
If it turns out that these switches effect the MS bottom line one of two things will happen.
1) MS will increase their investments in non software fields like media (in which they have substantial holdings) and make a bigger push into their hardware business.
2) The stock will nosedive like a rocket.
I don't see #2 happening though. They have 40 billion in the bank and if push comes to shove they can manipulate their own stock price if they want to.
War is necrophilia.
It sounds to me like the argument you're trying to make is not that the Linux kernel is poorly written, but that it's poorly documented. The two are not the same, and in the case of the latter, I would agree. There are people trying to fill that hole, but there's no telling how long that will take, or if they can even keep pace with the development of the kernel.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
"If Brazil remains a locus of "grayhat" activity, could this mean more resources will be put toward finding Linux exploits?"
Let's hope so. How else would they get fixed.
War is necrophilia.
The bus is the transportation of choice for poor people.
Or for people who don't want to blow thousands of dollars on gas and repairs every year, or for people who can never drive due to disability reasons (raises hand), or for people who don't want to contribute to overpowering car culture, or for people who don't want to contribute to smog. Your post is so narrow-minded, I have to assume you're trolling. The alternative does not reflect well on your intelligence or range of life experiences. Or, to use a Slashdot cliche, "I can't drive a car, you insensitive clod!"
Linux and the BSDs might better be described as the operating systems of choice for people who really know how much Windows is worth, and act accordingly.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
but there's a lot of free software which is neither well written nor well understood, particularly the latter
But at least you have access to the Linux source code to know this. What does the Windows source code look like?
You imply that commercial software _is_ well documented and well understood. That is not always the case. Maybe if you're talking about Oracle, yes, well documented, but even windows is not always well documented and well understood. Especially with the more obscure features of windows.
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
I love the Orwellian Work Product known as MSFT. Every time somebody say they won't exclusively use Windows, MSFT says, "You Have To! If you don't you're Anti-Choice!"
I think you got that a bit wrong, yes they don't want the EU to have depend on the US for their wellbeing anymore (and heck, why would they want that), but it is by far not the idea to become a Superpower, at least not in the sense people see the US.
Seems like you haven't really learned a lot while you were living in Germany.
Most likely. I guess the main reason for this is that a lot of people in Europe see the advantage already, the press is in favour of it and more and more people (because of this) are converting. Joe Smoe doesn't care about the "It's not Microsoft", but rather the fact that he can do what he wants with it. For most European companies (Ironically enough) It'll be because of the money they can save. The US will lag behind because of things like the SCO crap (where were all the LUGs in the US when SCO started spewing their FUD? You heard some small reistance, but it seems the real big bang happened in Europe).
M.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Isn't it terrible that all that money will go to paying local programmers rather than the Redmond Marketing Machine? How sad it is that Brazilians will now be encouraged to join their own growing national software development and consulting industry.
t'nera semordnilap
Simply because one person out there understands something, does not mean that that knowledge is accessable to everyone else. Someone understanding a piece of software, and that software being well documented are two entirely seperate things.
Except in this case, the government is only mandating software for the government. They aren't telling the private citizens what software they can or cannot use. The government of Brazil is in the role of customer.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Yeah, like when you want to change the scheduling algorithm to tune for your servers load. How do you do that in Windows again?
Seriously, though, distros these days ship with all the drivers precompiled. Just use those instead of trying to fight your disto.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I would like to have heard more about how using linux would help accelerate education, technology development, and communication. Or about how it is superior to Windows in many ways. Or about what open source really means, or about how governments have certain obligations which can be best met with open source.
But the clanging, steel hard bottom of the pot truth is, Brazil and most of the states considering linux are absolutely correct to FUCK Micro$oft and their double-dealing ways. It just so happens that South Americans seem to have bigger cojones AND clearer heads about this, but most likely every local or national government in this economy would do better to steer away from megacorporations and spend less money on developing maintainable systems of their own which leverage the work of other states as well.
Of course it will cost money, but on the order of the first $20 which after passed through the economy hundreds of times has created an exponential amount of wealth. This will also create jobs! THERE IS NO REASONABLE ARGUMENT FOR BRAZIL OR ANY OTHER GOVERNMENT TO PAY THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD. So praise Brazil and Peru, and do your best to get people who understand what this is about - MONEY, JOBS, EFFICIENCY and FREEDOM FROM CUTTHROAT MONOPOLIES - into office where they can make similar decisions.
Of course, when I make a significant change in Linux, I have to recompile the FSCK'ing kernel.
Whereas to make a significent change in Windows you have to ask Microsoft and cross your fingers. Assuming they'll even bother to listen to you unless you have lots of money...