Venezuela Moves Further Toward Open Source

baquiano writes "Today the Venezuelan press reports that the government has formally issued a decree (English translation) which prioritizes the use of free/open source software over proprietary systems in government entities. This follows a year of pilot deployments in Venezuela's Info Centros (Internet public access points) and some ministries. (Past attempts, reported by Slashdot, by former Minister of Science and Technology Felipe Perez Marti to push ahead this initiative were allegedly foiled by Microsoft.) The decree calls for plans to actively deploy FOSS during a 24-month period."

Comments

Don't really see this having much effect

[LocoMan]

This is the first time I actually reply to the article instead of to another discussion, but it's also the first time I've seen slashdot discuss something about my country so here goes.. :)

Personally I don't see this having any effect other than public offices changing to linux and open source programs. It will give more jobs in the public sector to programmers, which is a good thing considering the huge unemployment right now, but the regular people will just continue using their pirated copies of programs. To put things in perspective, I live in the 4th biggest city in the country, and where the electricity (hydro) for most of Venezuela and part of Colombia and Brazil is generated, plus a big producer of iron, steel, aluminum and lots of other minerals exported worldwide... but yet I don't know of any place here where I could buy legitimate software.. while at the same time just walking from my home to work everyday I pass in front of at least 4 places that sell pirated DVDs, music and software.. and I don't mean shady places in the back of a van or soemthing, but huge places with neon signs advertising pirated stuff for sale... heck, I've seen several next to police stations with police people buying on them frequently. People here just don't know about open source, because there's just not a culture of paying for software at all, most people don't even realize that buying a burned CD with the latest software on it, a crack and a serial written on the label is illegal... and last time I heard of something being done about it was 4 or 5 years ago when the BSA did a campaign against piracy, closed down several stores and placed fines on people... and things were back again like it was before within a week.

If I had to guess, I'd say this is more about president Chavez sticking it up to the US in any way he can (after all, we're talking about a guy that called Bush an asshole in public chained TV.. and for those that don't know "chained" means that the president can "chain" all the public TV and radio stations so that they're forced to display whatever he wants, usually him giving one of his 2 or 3+ hours speeches, which he does very frequently... times like those makes me feel pity for those that can't afford cable TV), and as I said, I really doubt it'll have any effect outside of the public offices... and if the ones I've gone to, in this city and in the capitol, even then they have so few computers and so outdated the effect will be minimal... we use to joke around that anytime we hear the sound of an old style typewriter (that old tac-tac-tac), that it sounds like a public office.. :)

Re:Victory?

[baquiano]

Nice troll... but since I've seen other misinformed posts been modded up, I feel the need to reply.

First, Chavez is not a dictator. He was democratically elected, and recently won a referendum on his mandate, which was endorsed by international observers. Also, I can personally tell you that the Venezuelan media enjoys a high degree of freedom and independence, the opposition has never been outlawed, and Venezuelans have all their civil rights protected by the Constitution. The problem with Chavez is his tendency to inflamatory speeches, his ultra-nationalistic rhetoric, and his close friendship with Fidel Castro, which gives the casual observer the impression that he's a classic communist dictator. But if you dig a little deeper you will find out that's far from being so. If you judge him by what he has actually done (opposed to what he merely said in ultra-patriotic rallies and speeches directed toward their partisans), you conclude that's he's no more left-leaning than Brazilian President Lula or Argentinian Nestor Kirchner. And no one is accussing the latter two of being dictators.

Second, this step from Venezuela may have important implications for Latin America. If a country manages to successfully switch an important part of his governmental software infrastructure to FOSS, it might start a landslide of investment in FOSS in other Latin American countries, as the local goverment is usually the biggest spender in IT in Latin American countries.

Third, this is not a ploy to getter deal from Microsoft (they already did that), since is a decree -- that means it's official policy, not something you can casually use to bargain a better deal from a vendor.