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John Barlow Pushes Open Source in Brazil

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

greysky writes "This story on Foxnews.com reports that as part of the larger World Social Forum, Barlow spoke on how open source software can help alleviate financial problems of developing countries: "Already, Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger"." NPR talks about how Brazil plans to switch 300,000 machines over.

2 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hunger? by spif · · Score: 5, Informative
    By the way, just how long is Barlow going to coast on co-writing some Grateful Dead lyrics forty years ago? Isn't there a statute of limitations or something?

    Yeah, you're right, it's not as if he co-founded the EFF or has a fellowship at Harvard Law or anything like that.

    hmm.

    --
    fnord.
  2. Da numberz... by jorlando · · Score: 5, Informative


    The budget for the fome-zero (zero-hunger) program of hunger erradication among porr families is R$1.68 billion (around US$630 million)

    Source: Orçamento do programa Fome-zero (budget for the zero-hunger program)
    http://www.camara.gov.br/internet/direto ria/Conleg /notas/2004_4758.pdf

    its a official document from Camara dos Deputados (brazilian federal legislative house, deputy chamber)

    The stimated value spent by the brazilian government (cites, states and federal government) is R$2 billions (around US$ 740 millions). that info is from the consulting firm 4Linux http://www.linuxplace.com.br/sqush_place/105898724 2/index_html

    There is a specialized secretary for IT strategies (Secretaria de Logística e Tecnologia de Infraestrutura) that is collecting data to present "official" values expent with licences.