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We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin
tres3 writes "Wired magazine has an excellent four page article discussing Brazil's new approach to Intellectual Property rights. It discusses everything from battling with the international pharmaceutical industries, to song sampling, to the national adoption of Linux. Richard Stallman
stated that India's political commitment to free software is second only to Brazil's after attending a weeklong free software teach-in for members of the Brazilian national congress, where 161 out of 594 members of congress, from a broad range of parties, had signed up with the free software caucus - making it one of the largest caucuses in the Brazilian government."
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
This is about freedom of information, freedom of ideas. Linux is a part of that in that embodies freedom in software, but to only look at Linux is to miss the broader context.
There is no marginal cost to the sharing of digital or intellectual content, beyond the cost of transmission and storage. This fight is about taking ideas out of the hands of a few powerful entities with a vested interest in maintaining their power, and shifting it to everyone.
The world will benefit. The fucked nature of the existing system is no better demonstrated than in the US - where you'd think that having all the power would make life better. But medicine is more expensive there than in almost any other Western country.
-- james
PS please don't start feeding me bullshit about how you have to be paying more for drugs to support the companies. I cannot believe people actually tow this line. It's human health, for chrissakes
I'm all for free software and cheap drugs, but we still need to respect the copyrights and patients of the developers.
Like the hell we do. It's one thing to acknowledge their contribution to the world - it's another to assume that there should be some kind of a god given right for personal monopolies - even when millions of people in Africa are dying of AIDS. Like cows to the slaughter, people just assume that because a bunch of people declare something a glorious free market property right - that it must be so. But really, do you own slaves?
Which was exactly what America did when most of the IP was coming from the "Old World". Back in those days, English authors were up in arms about the blatent and widespread piracy of English books in America because of lax IP laws and enforcement. It was only after America started producing stuff on its own that it became an IP Nazi. India et al. are only doing to America what America did to the Old World when it was still young and developing.
Many of these comments are weak. It's not just about getting free stuff, and it has nothing to do with the fact that Brazil exports very little IP. It's about big, important, multinational patent holders playing fair. Notice that Roche sat on their patent throne until Brazil threatened to make their own drugs. Notice that they were able to sell the stuff at *less than half the original price* when Brazil actually held good on the threat. Is this unlike Microsoft's behaviour? I think not. They crank up the prices of their OS and Office constantly, even though they are raking in the dough - that is until emerging markets are unwilling to put up with it. All of a sudden code starts to be released, discount editions are offered, and cooperation with foreign governments begins. And guess what? They are still raking in the dough. Who would have thunk? Just because Americans are willing to put up monopolies, inflated prices, and unfair patents doesn't make it right. Maybe it's time to learn something from the third world.
Some of us contribute to the cause, be it with code, with documentation, with support... Do you know who brought the wonders of Debian's APT to the RPM world? Conectiva, the leading Brazilian Linux distributor. WindowMaker? A brazilian wrote it. How about the kernel itself? The 2.4 branch is currently maintained by a brazilian, too. OpenOffice.org has received many contributions from the Brazilian team, as well as GNOME, Debian, and so far so on. Therefore, while not everyone has the skills to contribute to free software, those who have them more often than not do contribute to free software.
And yes, some of us brazilians also actually pay for our distros; the biggest problem with that is that it is more difficult to pay for a foreign (read American) distribution, due to rate changes and bureaucracy. However, when there is an easy way to pay, we do; Conectiva is there to prove it.
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
The project that started it all is called FUST, a nationwide initiative to connect schools to the Internet. The project, in its first release, required Microsoft Windows in all servers and clients (such preferences are irregular in Brazil, by the way; one should only specify features and technical specs, not brand names).
Microsoft, of course, was OK with being named the sole participant in the project and saw nothing wrong with it.
But the project was changed under the new government and now it requires open source (any open source software, not just Linux).
And now you see Microsoft going around saying how wrong it is for the government to leave them out of the party. It's rich!
However, they misrepresent the situation. They were not left out of the party. All they have to do is open (really open, not "share") the source of their OS (yes, they can continue to charge for it; free as in freedom, not price). FUST is not a Linux-only project.
Microsoft IS invited to join in. They won't, of course, because they can't meet the technical requirements, but that's their choice.
In order to use M$, Brazil has to pay $$ (as in "USD"). And because Brazil does not (you inconsiderate clods...) have a convertable currency, it has to convert something tangible -- soybeans will do -- into $$. Since the marginal cost of reproducing open-source software is more or less zero, whereas the marginal cost of producing soybeans (or whatever) is decidedly greater than zero, it's an easy decision.
The US, in contrast, simply prints more dollars (figuratively -- actually we sell treasury bills) and, as long as other countries (read: China, Japan) accept those freshly printed dollars, we get stuff without necessarily having to generate a comparable amount of items (a.k.a. "trade deficit").
Nice deal, as long as it works. And it will work forever, won't it? Won't it???
Start practicing your Portuguese...
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon