John Barlow Pushes Open Source in Brazil

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.

Comments

Licensing Fees

[teiresias]

"Already, Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger"."

A point most modern countries should take note of. When licensing fees make up such a large part of your operating budget, it seems foolish to simply accept it and continue with business and not look for other options.

I'd prefer my country spending a little bit less on licensing fees and a little more on it's people.

Of course, without the newest version of Office, I suppose they couldn't make neato graphs to justify the latest software licenses expenditures.

Re:As a Libertarian

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a hint; the first sign you are an idiot is when _you_ start to tell people what _they_ think, according to the little mental boxes _you_ have fitted them into, and that _you_ have defined characteristics for.

Hunger?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for governments saving money -- here, Brazil or anywhere else. But it's worth pointing out that what Brazil spends on "hunger" is constrained by the fact that there isn't widespread starvation there. (There are plenty of desperately poor people, obviously.) Brazil isn't Sudan.

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?

Numbers Please

[Ironsides]

"Already, Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger".

Can anyone provide the numbers to back this up? Also, I would like to see about what the ratio is between the two.

Re:Numbers Please

[Cyberhawk]

Links in portuguese:

Some numbers:

- Budget on Federal IT spending: R$1,9bi (~US$ 720 mi)

- Budget to spend on hunger and income rdistribuition iniciatives : R$1,1bi(~US$415mi)

- Brazil's GNP in 2003: R$1,5trillion(~US$565bi)

- National Debt/GNP ratio: 58%.

- Money saved from not acquiring licenses: R$28mi(~US$10.5mi)

Some ranting:

- There is way too much hype about this technological policy in Brazil. The largest part of public spending in IT has never been on acquiring office licenses or MS-Windows stations. The largest piece of the pie has always gone to enterprise-wide systems. Unysis and Oracle are everywhere in government servers, and they get the big bucks. 28 million compared to a billionaire budget is pocket change. If they wanted to actually reduce costs, they would have to go after these guys.

- This stupid leftist (real left, not the Democrat Party kinda thing) government decided they should go after Microsoft because they are part of the Evil Empire. As an example, Lula refused to meet Bill Gates at Davos, just to show that they don't need MS anymore. He might get huge support from the open source crowd, but still think it was moronic attitude, politically speaking.

- Famine or hunger has hardly been a real problem in Brazil. Poverty and terrible distribution of wealth certainly are a bigger cause of concern. And the budget shows that: 0,1% of the budget spending hardly makes a "War on Hunger", as our beloved president wanted.

- As someone said above: Brazil is not Sudan. It has a huge, diverse economy, and is not by dictating one particular policy that they are going to solve our bigger issues.

Re:Maintenance

[acariquara]

It usually isn't if you are at home, but businesses do have to pay for their licenses, or they may be charged with tax evasion, and that is a serious offence even here in Brazil.

That being said, I have some expericence in setting up networks for my former college (federal institution, here the best colleges are the public ones, usually) and they *really* don't give a flying shit about using warezed copies of Windows in their labs, and no one ever has complained/charged/arrested/whatever.

It makes sense.

[cabazorro]

You run a government agency in Brasil.
You use your budget to:

A. Pay a team of OSS programmers for IT support and in the meantime create jobs and promote domestic-grown-owned-designed and controlled IT resources.

B. Pay for comercial software licenses and thus cut jobs and have the Brasilian tax-payer money go to some trans-national company and meanwhile turn your back on domestic-grown-own-designed IT resources.

MS will shove enough free or discounted mackerel down your throat so you don't learn how to fish and remain somewhat hungry.

Funny Fox News-peak

[br00tus]

"The activists in Brazil are generally united in their oppositon to what many call unbridled capitalism and the policies of the Bush administration." - Something said so often that it's practically a mantra of WSF activists is that they oppose unbridled capitalism (or capitalism, period), and imperialism. It's funny how the US corporate media chokes on printing that word, even when describing what someone else says, and changes it something vague like "the policies of the Bush administration". They won't even print the word when they're reporting on what activists say, it's like the BBC using an actor for Gerry Adams voice. I mean, go to Google News and search for the word imperialism - the first hit is a paleo-conservative web site, the second hit is a communist web site, then a South Korean site talking about Japanese WWII imperialism, then Al-Jazeera. It is one of those words commissars, I mean, editors, excise, even when they're just reporting about what someone said. The thing that gets me is not only do the mainstream corporate media not use the word, they won't even report when others use the word. Fox takes it to the point of ridiculousness, but it's not much different with NBC and so forth (owned by GE, which makes billions as a military contractor by the way).