Brazil: Free Software's Biggest and Best Friend

soneca writes "From the last two years, Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has turned the country into a tropical outpost of the free software movement. The government is switching from costly operating systems made by Microsoft and others to free operating systems."

Comments

More power to them

[rodgster]

US needs to follow that path.

Re:More power to them

[lasindi]

Yes, but unfortunately, that probably won't be what happens (at least for a very, very long time). If GNU/Linux becomes a major desktop OS, the beginnings of the movement will happen elsewhere. China is pushing bigtime for it, other Asian countries, Brazil, and patches of Europe. The US is where Microsoft is more entrenched than anywhere else, and it will probably be last to fall (if this change does indeed occur).

lasindi

Re:More power to them

[btnheazy03]

i think billy boy wouldn't let one of the world's biggest economies just dump windows. the brazilian market is relatively smaller and negligible compared to, say, the north american or EU markets, plus it's infested with piracy, so brazil migrating to open source initiatives probably won't bother bill gates that much. heck, if it were up to me the whole world and not just brazil wouldn't be using M$ software, but money talks. that's just the way things are.

Re:More power to them

[Zemran]

There is more reason for China etc. to switch than most people think of. Try installing Windows or Office on a machine and ignoring any text written in English. Even after you have got the OS on, when you try to install Office, if you have set the machine to Chinese (or whichever) it pops up windows in English to ask you questions. China and most other countries in this area realise that they want to be able to have an operating system that suits their needs (which Microsoft does not) and to be able to use that OS to communicate in a local as well as a global economy. Many people over here do not understand a word of English. Many educated people do but computers are now in the homes of those that do not, so they want something they can use. Linux allows them to create that OS and stay in touch with the rest of the world. Cost has nothing to do with it because as has been said elsewhere, I can get a copy of any software for 2-3 dollars per CD regardless of title. If they bring out Red Dragon Linux, or whatever, it will still cost the same as XP. The cost of bringing out tailor made versions of XP would be ridiculous, so most asian countries have got together and decided to work on their release of Linux that can be tailored to each countries needs. They know that they will be able to do the same with OO etc.

Brazil may considering the cost as they are trying to get away from the 2 dollar per CD image (no pun intended) but the same sentiment will still be there when they try to install Office. I have had Office refuse to install on a machine that no longer had English on it.

Re:More power to them

[xtracto]

Thinking about using a specific distro, I am thinking in Mandrake-Conectiva here. And here is where I think Mandrake really made a good move buying Conectiva .

As for the government decision in spending tax payers $$ in FOSS instead of a proprietary system I think is the most sensate thing a government can do.

You see, in some undeveloped countries as Mexico (mine), Brazil, there exists corruption and often people from some offices buy Adobe Acrobat (no, not the reader) or other expensive-like-software just to spend the money the government gives (so the government give them more money the next cycle). They usually use it only to create PDFs... from .DOC or things like that (yes, i saw it myself at least in Mexico).

So, at least as a tax payer, I will know that the money (at least some part of it) I am paying is ending in something specific (those Government-funded-OSS) and that, at the end, they are mine, I can use it I can destroy it I can install, uninstall and do whatever the hell I want with them.

I think that was one of the motives for the government to use OSS, as some politic (don't know who) from Brazil told to someone from Microsoft, it is not possible for the government to be "transparent" and use some proprietary software (at the end, it IS information no?).

Well... I think more countries should learn from the example. For me it is a really good move, not caring about the OSS advocacy, but about the government/political side of the coin.

Re:More power to them

[tacocat]

You're on crack right?

I don't know that the US needs to follow that path and I'm not sure I personally want the US to follow that path. Here's why:

The US will not willing choose to follow that path. They will only do it out of international/grassroots pressures.

• USA is the home of Microsoft and most of the other major players in Private Software industry.
• As such, any individual or company that chooses to use something else is a loss of market share.
• Microsoft et al has Billions to invest in the US Government to develop rules & regulations to limit, block, and discourage the incorporation of FOSS into the American market or government. FOSS has... less.
• Since the government is elected based on political contributions, there is no way to win on that front. The only alternatives are EU incentives (see Steel Tariffs of 2004) or through some kind of grassroots effort, but this is highly unlikely considering how owned grassroots methodoligies have become.

For the most part, the US Software industry will exhaust themselves financially trying to block any kind of adoption of FOSS unless they can be convinced that they can make more money with FOSS, and the "more" part is where you can't sell it.

On a more personal and light hearted note: I don't want the US to adopt Open Source because I'm enjoying a wonderful hiatus from being the Family Computer Guy (Nick Burns style) because anytime I go to someones home, I have the ability to say, "I'm sorry, I can't do anything to help you. I haven't used Windows since Windows 95b". No questions asked. It's kind of nice.

If everyone in the US adopted FOSS, say Debian (for sake of argument without financial endorsements, pick what you want), then you will have to deal with the onslaught of problems this will introduce.

• Virus writers have been steering clear of Linux because it's such a low ROI. Linux may be better but you're a fool to declare it is immune.
• Today mailing lists are more/less populated with people who have some element of Clue. If all those really fucking stupid windows users starting using the mailing lists we would all experience a lowering of our own personal IQ as the result of it.
• Personally, I enjoy the elitism. Not altogether healthy, but I can't deny it isn't there.
• Politics: Imagine the politics that will ensue if everyone is trying to get their hands into the cookie jar. Look at the UN and the Internet..
• Peer Pressure: FOSS will be pulled into some really stupid directions because of really stupid user pressures to do really stupid things. For example, "I want to install anything I want without being root all the time!" and "why can't you do (all the stupid crap) that Microsoft does (which makes them fundamentally insecure)?".
• Personally, I would avoid pushing this faster than it needs to go.

If FOSS is the Right Thing then it will eventually win. Nothing anyone can do will prevent this from happening, only delaying it. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy it for what it is.

Re:More power to them

[tacocat]

Absolutely right!

The interesting part of this is to consider the damage this will do to the American Economy. When we become the last of the olde guard, we will be in a position of catching up to the rest of the world. We haven't had to do this for a very very long time.

The Corporate America will push on this until it starts to damage the American Economy enough that they have to migrate in order to remain profitable.

We've done this before and we will do it again. Probably the best example I can think of is the 1970's automotive industry. We just decided to keep making big cars because we assumed people would buy them out of habit. The Japanese and Europeans proved us wrong by providing better products. And nothing the Big Three could do would stop it from happening. Trade tariffs delayed the process, but did not stop it.

The same will happen with software. Only this time there will be additional damage becuase the labor force will not be American in America, it will be someone else (Indian, Chinese) and we'll have to export even more money to do any business.

We are a nation in trouble.

Re:More power to them

[Total_Wimp]

Of course this is a perfect argument for open source as you don't need to rely on a company to add or improve the functionality of the software if it is lacking (if you know how to do it of course).

Very important. They'll have all the tools at hand to make the improvments too. Will the reduced cost version of Windows ship with Visual Studio?

The article insinuates leftist leanings of the president, but I see his choice as a very practical one. It's the choice of a man who will either get a free fish or free fishing lessons. Is it communist to want your people to be able to be independant and self sustaining? (sarcasm)If it is, them maybe those pinko bastards are smarter than we thought.(/sarcasm)

TW

Re:More power to them

[vettemph]

>>>When we become the last of the olde guard, we will be in a position of catching up to the rest of the world.

Your kidding right? this shift will only damage microsoft. More money in your pocket, your employers pocket and your local economy.

Re:More power to them

[tacocat]

No I'm not kidding, I'm completely serious.

Most of the money spent on software is not Home Use. It's companies. No money in your pocket and money in your employers pocket doesn't go to you. It goes to the subcontractor who supports the software.

Consider the Enterprise Software business model. You don't own anything, you rent it from someone else, like EDS. They in turn rent out hardware from someone else, like Sun or HP. But you are spending the lions share of your IT budget on the people supporting the software, not the licensing costs. Especially after you purchase site licenses for software.

But the problem with the money in your local economy argument fails when you consider what happens when a market economy collapses. What you describe is an absence of Microsoft. That's a multi billion dollar flow of money in the American Economy. Now that's a lot of people who will have to find a new job. And it will take time for retraining. Now consider your choices when you have some Windows retrainee just out of the vocational retraining classes, or some green card dude with 10 years working with FOSS overseas. Who are you going to pick?

You aren't going to put money back into the local economy. You are going to go with the highest ROI available, and that's not the local dude.

Re:More power to them

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part, the US Software industry will exhaust themselves financially trying to block any kind of adoption of FOSS unless they can be convinced that they can make more money with FOSS, and the "more" part is where you can't sell it.

The "US Software industry" includes companies like IBM, Intel, Redhat, Novell, and Google. There are some very big players lined up behind OSS in the US.

Re:More power to them

[fitten]

There are other issues as well. For instance, if the entire world were to switch over to FOSS today, we would degenerate back to nearly the same conditions that were around in the late 70s and early 80s (only a little better). You know... those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

Here's a quick/brief/skim history lesson:

Back in the 70s and early 80s, every Tom, Dick, and Harry made a computer and put it onto the market. The didn't work so well (or at all) with each other either the software or the hardware. Every one of these companies had their own standards and pushed them. It was basically chaos, although it was fun.

There were many "standards" for anything you wanted to do, depending on things like what platform you were on. 2D graphics is a good example. On one system, you had player/missle graphics, on another, you had sprites, and yet on another, there weren't any special things at all. This made porting software fairly painful. It also made making hardware add-ins hard. You had to target any number of hardware platforms in order to get a wide market.

One of the things that came out of all that (that Linux, for example, uses to a very high degree) is that one company came out ahead of the rest (for whatever reason) and standardized the landscape. At first, this was IBM. ISA cards started becoming *the* platform for hardware even to the point that other systems (Amiga, for example) started including them in the system.

This didn't clear up the landscape for software though. VESA had some standards that people tried to conform to, but these were loose at best. Many times if you bought a game, you had to make sure that your specific video card was supported before you bought it because the game developers had to target individual cards for ports. Many times they'd fall back into a VESA mode for minimal compatibility but for the good stuff, you had to have one of a short list of well supported cards. Likewise, many hardware devices had very specialized software (scanners, printers) to be used with them. If you wanted to use a particular software package, you had a short list of hardware that it could be used with at all.

Later, Microsoft came out of the pack and standardized video card interfaces. Now, game developers could write to one interface and target any card that supported the interface. Also, a number of other interface standards came out in the DirectX packages. Now, hardware vendors and software vendors alike had a common platform to design towards. This made large software and hardware markets available and companies could take advantage of this and make money.

Anyway, to shorten things up, Linux makes great use of a common hardware platform (the x86 box that we know and love/hate today). It also makes use of many consolidations that were made due to a single big player (hardware/software interfaces). However, the FOSS world itself is still fairly fractured. Many think choice is nice, and it is a lot of the time. However, choice also tends to dilute efforts. For example, you have KDE and Gnome, both with a religious following. That's not only duplication of effort but it's also two paths that a software company has to follow if they want to reach as far and wide as they can with their software. A company could just follow one, but what if that was the wrong choice (that path dies off or basically loses to the other path). If they target both, then they have to double their efforts and this costs time and money. Some developers can afford this. I imagine that many FOSS developers can't. This doesn't even come close when comparing it to the number of Linux distributions out there. Where I am, we target two distributions right now and that's mainly because we can't afford to target more. Even those two distributions (two of the widest used) cause us software compatibility problems. Things that work on one do not always work on the other. Sometimes they are easy to work around (locations of certain resource

erm, duplicate

[badger.foo]

This story was posted yesterday too, wasn't it?

Re:erm, duplicate

[mfearby]

Yes, it was. Perhaps they're trying to make sure that it gets noticed, as it wasn't a headline by itself, before. I know that I, personally, wouldn't miss an opportunity to thumb my nose at Redmond :-)

Re:erm, duplicate

[rm999]

Agreed. I somehow miss all the original articles in these so-called dupes, and find many of them interesting. I agree that it is somewhat unprofessional of a website to have very common duplicates. Oh well, I'm not paying for it, so I can't complain!

And to some of you:
If something is free, DON'T CONSTANTLY COMPLAIN ABOUT IT. If it's unbearable, don't use it. In this case, duplicates are easy to handle: read the next article, or go to another webpage. Duh.

Re:erm, duplicate

[amanox]

Not everybody is on Slashdot 24/7.
Although I read slashdot on a daily basis, this is the first time that I see this, and I'm glad it has been brought to my attention.
Ah.. Brazil... it just moved up on the list of countries that I want to move to.

Good

[Handbrewer]

Its great to see governments spend their taxpayers money wisely. Also it helps their trade balance positively, it makes sense in so many levels to not use Microsoft software for every other country than America, so im surprised only Norway, Germany and Brazil are seriously rolling it out. And for the projects i heard about in Norway and Germany its just a few counties. But, 5, 10 and 15 years from now i would be very surprised if Microsoft had a dominance of even more than 70% of the shipped OSes.

Re:Good

[kwoo]

Its great to see governments spend their taxpayers money wisely.

This is true, but I think there's a lot more to it than that.

What I see as the biggest benefit to government adoption of open source operating systems is that it means local demand for developers for those systems. The cost of entry for people who want to develop for the systems is low, so it's possible for more people.

Another high point is that when the government wants a skill set in the populace, it tends to be pushed a bit in schools. I would love to see the results of fifteen years of open source software use in schools in any country.

Re:Good

[RoLi]

Hopefully MS will go under, so thousands of employees become unemployed. A true victory.

Actually, unlike IBM, which is spread over the whole world, Microsoft prefers to do almost all things at home in Redmond, Washington state. (like development, accounting, etc.)

The outlets in other parts of the US and other countries are usually just sales outlets and don't do anything but marketing and little support.

Microsoft does keep some bought companies around (like the one in Denmark) but in the long term they seem to get closed down and integrated into the big Microsoft campus at home (just like what happened to WinTV AFAIK which had to go from California to Redmond)

So I wonder how many people Microsoft employs in Brazil. 10? 20? Maybe 50? I would be really surprised if they were more than 100. And of course only salespeople, lawyers and maybe some support stuff, no developers.

On the other hand Linux will create many local jobs.

Re:Good

[Nik13]

The governments going for microsoft software isn't necessarily not spending the money in a wise way. The cost of licenses is only a small part of IT costs, and keep in mind that switching away from windows doesn't bring licensing down to 0$ either (last I heard, they're not giving Oracle away).

What switching to linux means in a gov't setup:

-All gov't employees (users) have to learn to use a new desktop. For some people that aren't really computer literate, it already took years to be functionnal and learn to do the basic stuff. Take that away from them? You'll decrease productivity by a LOT, and you'll have a lot of training costs.

-All gov't employees in the IT support field would need to be retrained for this new OS (can't just fire them or replace them, doesn't work like that). That alone could cost WAY more than licensing fees. Salaries might go up over time too...

-All the in house applications. Just about every desktop (or employee) makes use of in-house software, and a lot of our corporate apps runs only in windows. Port all our in-house built apps? Replace all them big corporate apps? That's far too time/money consuming to even be considered. Best case scenario, users would have to login to remote servers (citrix or such) or something along those lines. 99%+ of our intranet is ASP/ASP.Net pages too (using SQL server too)... This alone is a good reason to stick to windows.

-Management. I'm no linux guru, so there might be (very good) alternatives to do this with linux, but I'm not 100% sure. Everything across country is monitored by a central NOC 24/7 easily. We have Active Directory, SMS, VBScript/WMI and a whole lot of other mangement/scripting/automation/(...) options. Again, not too sure of what linux has to offer here... Sure thing is, you just can't take away all our tools, you'd definately have to have equivalents.

-Exchange-like calendaring and everything else (shared mailboxes, boardroom booking, ... the whole 9 yards). AFAIK, there is no real replacement (I very well may be wrong). Add to that the tons of ms office (proprietary) format documents... Using an office suite that may open most of your word & excel files isn't good enough here, you pretty much need 100% support. Again, that point alone is also a big factor making the gov't stick to windows...

There's even more reasons, but I think this helps to show why windows may not be so much of a bad choice after all. There's many valid reasons to stick to it. Not that linux is bad, but it's not the solution to everything, and it's not always cheaper. It's not impossible to make the switch, but it's not going to be as cheap or easy as most people think.

Their stance is probably a consequence of..

[Xiph]

The fact that Brazil does not have any major IT industry that will benefit from Brazil only using propriatary software.
Though i do admit to not knowing the ins and outs of Brazils software business, i know that governments in contries that do have those IT-Giants are under all sorts of pressure to accomodate for their companies.
Something that would be far more interesting was if a Microsoft nation would adopt similar policies.

What will be really interesting is to see which benefits they do reap from opensource, and whether others will follow suit.

Re:This is just what open sauce needs.

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

GPL code has already ended up in unauthorized programs in the US and other countries which recognize IP. In any case, the GPL is about copyright rather than patents, which is what your link was about. This is no reason to keep open-source products out of Brazil or any other country.

Given the president's insistence on using FOSS products, I think most people assume he will help them out if GPL copyright is violated.

I don't believe Slashdotters are against copyright, but they are against patents. I suggest you read a few of the comments Slashdotters have posted before trolling.

Why is OSS equated with Leftist ideology?

[isorox]

FTA: But the preference for open-source software has been controversial, with critics inside and outside the government saying Mr. da Silva's administration is letting leftist ideology trump the laws of supply and demand.

I really fucking hate this. This is the typical newspeak propaganda used by companies terrified of losing their stranglehold on consumers by loudly bleating "Communist" into the air in order to get support from the more paranoid fringes of society, such as politicians who get kick backs from such companies.

What Supply and Demand is this guy talking about? Does he mean to infer that all those people should remain uneducated because they can't afford to buy some bullshit company's overpriced product? Tell that to the people yourself, you cunt. Also tell them that buying Microsoft's Windows will make them even poorer than they currently are, since the only way Microsoft is ever going to sell Windows at a low price is to sell some ultra crippled piece of shit such as the Starter Edition which no one wants.

(P.S. Mods, +5 informative, thanks)

Re:Why is OSS equated with Leftist ideology?

[A beautiful mind]

Yeah, I remember that Windows NT waves it's Common Criteria rating so boldly. Ms just forgets to mention that the Common Criteria rating was given in a non-networked environment.

Re:Why is OSS equated with Leftist ideology?

[vidarh]

Banning propritery software at all cost, yes. However there's more to a government than the cost of the software itself.

For instance, if the money is spent locally instead of sent out of the country to a foreign company the government can easily be better off even if more resources need to be spent to support that software.

And one of the elements of the freedom of open source is that you can hire someone to make improvements if the gap to properitary alternatives are small enough.

Also, a good government needs to be open and transparent, and it's much easier to be so if you're not beholden to a company who may end support for the software you use and leave you with large amounts of files in formats you'll have increasing problems accessing. Archival is a bad enough problem without having applications default to proprietary and regularly changing file formats.

So any discussion about the merits of open source alternatives without proprietary alternatives needs to take into account whether any deficiencies of current open source alternatives could be fixed and still bring the project in at a competitive price compared to the proprietary software, where "competitive" doesn't necessarily mean "less than" depending on the weight you add to other qualities of the open source solution (such as no "forced" upgrades to keep getting support and no problem with proprietary data formats, etc.)

There is too much focus on TCO - TCO is only comparable if the products you are comparing offer you the same advantages, and many such advantages may not be easy to set a price on.

so....

[Anonymous Coward]

Something more to think about: Microsoft Office XP Standard costs $479.95.

$479.95 isn't that much in USA. I bet most of the people here make *at least* this over a week - probably much more. However, right here, getting that much money *a month* is considered more than average. The minimum wage is like 1/10th of that.

This is not to say 'the country is a poor country, boo-hoo sell us cheap software' (although it *is* a poor country). The thing is, values here are different; a software like that is *too expensive*. You can buy food here for a tiny fraction of how you'd pay for in on USA. Wages here are also a lot cheaper than they are in the States - even for the same job with the same qualifications. It's just that not only the country is poor, but living cost is also low; the values and the scales are different. You can get to a really good grill restaurant and get totally wasted with so much good food - and spending less than us$ 10. The same thing would cost around us$ 150 on USA - with the same restaurant chain! (Fogo de Chão - there's one around Detroit I think).

When selling software, people don't think "ho well, I'll use one third/half/quarter of my salary to pay for this software..".. they usually think "ho well, I'll use 1/2/3 months worth of salary to pay for this software.. well nevermind, I'll just buy a copy next corner for $3".

There are lots of wrong stuff going on the government of this country. And one of them is the coice for Microsoft Software. My dad used to work for the state a while ago.. Basically the entire office ran on pirated win95 with microsoft office, and of course, they had no 'central' support or IT management so I used to go there fix their computers. Switching to some linux based solution with open office (or whatever) would pose an obstacle at first but would be just as it was before on the long run. With less virus and trojans, that is (I remember I spent an entire weekend getting the entire office rid of macro template virii - man that was fucked up).

I, for one, commend them on this choice. On the long run, this will prove to be the best choice, contrary to the FUD the local Microsoft is spreading.

Of course, money saved from going to Microsoft's pockets will end up going to some politician's bank account, so who am I fooling. Nothing of this matters.

Re:Isn' CowboyNeal Free Software's BIGGEST chum?

[Anonymous Coward]

'free software needs copyright' 'Brazil doesn't respect intellectual property, so this is a risk to the GPL' etc.

It seems difficult for you all to grasp, but if there was no copyright and no trade secrets, all software is naturally "free". Source code used to be traded and so on. Binary releases would be unsustainable.

The GPL doesn't need "IP" laws. It is a partial solution to the problems they cause.

As noone seems to dare to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

... I'll ask since I'm an anonymous coward anyways.

Got samples to prove your claim? 8-)

Re:This is just what open sauce needs.

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Brazil is only breaking patents so that it can produce anti-AIDS medication for its people, as it can't afford expensive drugs. Brazil is breaking patents, because it can't afford anything else.

GPL code is usually free. I don't see how Brazil can not afford free.

In any case, if there was a choice between life and death for millions of people (like there is with AIDS), and using Microsoft meant life for those people, I'd be ok if they used Microsoft. Of course, that's not happening.

Also, I meant that the OP was trolling in the sense he was accusing Slashdotters of doing something they aren't.

Re:Wonderful! So, let's kill the spammers already!

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

I can understand your frustration when you get flooded with spam, but I suggest you see an execution first before suggesting death sentence as a punishment. There is simply no reason to use the death sentence for anything.

Life imprisonment is a far worse punishment. As an added benefit, it also allows prisoners to redeem themselves and make themselves a useful part of society.

Also, if death sentences worked as a deterrent, violent crime would be far lower than it is.

Don't expect Lula to be reelected.

[Anonymous Coward]

The US administration and/or Microsoft will make sure that his political opponents get plenty of advice and money.

And the biggest thief

[tacocat]

I heard on NPR yesterday morning that they are also the biggest software thief in the world today.

Don't which one, or both, are true, but you can be pretty sure that if Brazil is the most active software pirate out there the closed source companies will do what they can to set OpenSource==Piracy and imply Evil

KISS

[kokoko1]

The beauty of open source is that anyone from poor to rich can afford OSS. All other plateform M$, Mac sucks in this context you have to play billy or the others for each line of code you use. I'm wondering which linux distro president of brazil is using? May be my favorite .....slackware :D

That's a common misunderstanding.

[khasim]

Virus writers have been steering clear of Linux because it's such a low ROI. Linux may be better but you're a fool to declare it is immune.

It doesn't have to be "immune". A virus is a failure in the security model/implementation.

All Linux needs is for the infection rate to be lower than the identification/repair rate.

If the viruses cannot spread faster than they are identified and dealt with, then they will "die" and Linux will be "immune" as a whole.

But that doesn't include trojans. Trojans will be with us forever. They use social engineering, not flaws in the OS. Most of the email "viruses" that you see on Windows are actually trojans.

But trojans can be dealt with much more efficiently on Linux than on Windows. See the next section.

Peer Pressure: FOSS will be pulled into some really stupid directions because of really stupid user pressures to do really stupid things. For example, "I want to install anything I want without being root all the time!" and "why can't you do (all the stupid crap) that Microsoft does (which makes them fundamentally insecure)?".

That's mostly solved already. Look at Ubuntu. Anyone can install anything. But the system will ask you for the root password.

The extra steps that people would have to go through (assuming no Outlook-type email app becomes popular that runs installs from email attachments) will cut down on the number of email trojans that get installed on Linux.

The more work the trojan writers have to expend
+
The more work the end user has to expend to get it installed
==
Fewer trojans installed on Linux.

Spyware crap that the user installs himself is a different category (Bonzai Buddy).

Because...

[Kjella]

Why is OSS equated with Leftist ideology?

...it is remarkably similar to some of the core ideas like this one: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". With OSS, there is no requirement to contribute anything (usually money). You can have as many copies as you want.

In itself, it is a wonderful idea. But imagine OSS was a "real", physical product. There'd be replication costs, and even if there was enough for everyone, people would hoard it so as to make it scarce. That has happened many times with food and famine throughout the world, also in capitalist areas.

In addition, you'd have real bit rot. A physical product decays. Who would maintain it? What if noone wants to? Either you decend into using force (as communist countries/dictatorships have), or using money (as capitalist/facist countries have).

OSS software has no natural bounds on quantity, no upkeep. It has all the good sides of society collaborating to achieve something without any of the downsides. OSS is the way the dreamers, the idealists wanted marxism/communism to work.

So if people draw the parallels between OSS and leftist ideology, it is not so strange as they're quite clear. As an ideology for goverment it is terrible, as an ideology for software development it is brilliant. That's the difference.

Kjella

Re:Because...

[DarkSarin]

Frankly, I find the connection as annoying as can be. First, there are a LOT of folks who equate communism with Soviet Russia and the nutjobs who run many communist dictatorships. Seeing this connection causes them to equate communism with evil. Of course, you probably know this. Whether or not you like it or agree is immaterial to this conversation, so forget about that for a minute.

The sad truth is, however, that many people hate communism for some very poor reasons. Personally, I think that communism has some good points, but that too is immaterial.

Now, with your description of OSS, I must assume you mean F/OSS, which is different. Free OSS is exactly what you say it is, but OSS may cost money. There is NOTHING in the license that requires it to be free of cost, just that the source is available (and I think at no extra cost). To me this is important, because it allows a company to sell the software and make a profit. Yes the customer may take the software, make changes and resell it, but it generally doesn't make sense to do that.

The advantage of open source for the customer is NOT the ability to modify & sell, but in the ability to modify & use. I am not a serious developer, and so I will probably never modify an office suite or linux distro source to fit my needs, but I like to know that I can.

Not really.

[khasim]

-All gov't employees (users) have to learn to use a new desktop. For some people that aren't really computer literate, it already took years to be functionnal and learn to do the basic stuff. Take that away from them? You'll decrease productivity by a LOT, and you'll have a lot of training costs.

Nope. The desktops can be configured to appear almost identical to the Windows desktop.

The switch to Linux would be easier than the switch from Win2K to WinXP's layout.

All gov't employees in the IT support field would need to be retrained for this new OS (can't just fire them or replace them, doesn't work like that). That alone could cost WAY more than licensing fees. Salaries might go up over time too...

Yep. They'd have to be re-trained. But salaries wouldn't need to go up. It takes less time to manage Linux systems than it does to manage Windows systems.

-All the in house applications. Just about every desktop (or employee) makes use of in-house software, and a lot of our corporate apps runs only in windows. Port all our in-house built apps? Replace all them big corporate apps? That's far too time/money consuming to even be considered. Best case scenario, users would have to login to remote servers (citrix or such) or something along those lines. 99%+ of our intranet is ASP/ASP.Net pages too (using SQL server too)... This alone is a good reason to stick to windows.

The Windows-only apps are the only real block to migrations. But, if you have a migration plan, you can deal with these apps over time, before you actually move off of Windows. Simply start porting your apps to an Open Source database and scripting language now and don't do any new development in ASP/ASP.Net.

Open Source is a strategy, not a drop in replacement.

-Management. I'm no linux guru, so there might be (very good) alternatives to do this with linux, but I'm not 100% sure. Everything across country is monitored by a central NOC 24/7 easily. We have Active Directory, SMS, VBScript/WMI and a whole lot of other mangement/scripting/automation/(...) options. Again, not too sure of what linux has to offer here... Sure thing is, you just can't take away all our tools, you'd definately have to have equivalents.

Linux easily beats Windows here. Linux's scripting ability (from shell scripts on up) is beyond anything you've seen in Windows (unless you're running perl on Windows).

The only thing Linux doesn't have is the group policies capability of AD. But if you're deploying Linux, you don't really need those. Everything is locked down already.

-Exchange-like calendaring and everything else (shared mailboxes, boardroom booking, ... the whole 9 yards). AFAIK, there is no real replacement (I very well may be wrong).

There are a few Open Source projects, but nothing that is a drop in replacement for Exchange. That still needs work.

Add to that the tons of ms office (proprietary) format documents... Using an office suite that may open most of your word & excel files isn't good enough here, you pretty much need 100% support.

You can't even get 100% compatibility when using MSOffice. My HR department has tons of trouble with resumes that come in, in .doc format, that just don't print correctly. There are too many variations between printers and fonts and so forth and those all get included in the documents.

BUT from a GOVERNMENTAL standpoint, they SHOULD be demanding plain text files. Having your data in a proprietary format (which may not be supported in future releases) means that you can lose those documents and the data contained within them. That is unacceptable.

There's even more reasons, but I think this helps to show why windows may not be so much of a bad choice after all.

Re:Not really.

[TheKidWho]

"Yep. They'd have to be re-trained. But salaries wouldn't need to go up. It takes less time to manage Linux systems than it does to manage Windows systems."

I stopped reading there.

Do you REALLY think linux is easier to manage then Windows, because for some reason I don't think it is at all. Especially considering all the constant pains in the ass I have been having with it(OHH BUT ITS EASIER TO MANAGE#%@#%!@#) How about the fact that my friends who have been using linux for at least 4 years still have many problems with their systems.

My windowsxp box, 1 year no viruses, no spyware, only problem I had was getting Independence-War1 working on my XP box. Everything else I use for school works perfectly, no fiddling needed.

Although I do like my OS X box even more =)

Re:Too bad there are only two outcomes

[Begossi]

That's a very poorly informed opinnion, and you should seriously consider reviewing it.

Brazil may have a lot of poverty, but the educated class (the ones with a degree, or at least complete education) are usually very efficient and hard working professionals, even compared to international levels. On all fields. When we speak of Market, specifically IT market, that's the people we are talking about here.

The problem is that this educated class is dwarfed in comparison to the poor/uneducated masses, and being poor is not a choice, much less a matter of lazyness. We're talking about a government that does not provide easy access to public schools. That does not guarantee some access to education on any level. And yet, has the highest taxes (either on income or services/production) of the entire planet.

Re:Nothing but politics

[shis-ka-bob]

This is silly. Try and get a data center running with $300 PCs running XP. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm thinking Brazil's governments are going to need some databases. Ask MS to run SQL Server on that $300 PC and see what happens to the costs. Now replace that cheapo desktop with a server that can acutally handle a large database and install Windows 2003 (the SERVER edition) and see what happens to the cost. Now repeat that exercise with PostgreSQL, any Linux/BSD distro that you choose and some of the servers advertised in any Linux journal. If you can't cut the cost by 40%, you aren't trying hard enough.

Microsoft has established an effective monopoly. The ONLY point of establishing a monopoly is to allow the monopolist to make more money. Microsoft isn't 'evil' any more than a dog is 'evil' for killing rabbits. Its just what they do. Rabbits run from dogs and customers try to avoid the 'monopoly tax'. I think it is the responsabilty of the Brazilian government to lower computing costs AND to foster technologies that allow the Brazilians that are so inclined to understand the software they are using. FOSS makes perfect sense under those conditions.