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

[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

[ppz003]

The US will switch to a free OS about the same time it adopts the metric system, which according to my 1980 something encyclopedia set, should be around 1990.

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.

Reg-free links

[icejai]

Google news (includes reg-free nytimes link).

Since this is a dupe...

[nate nice]

... let's have a discussion on how hot round booties in Brazilian thongs are. Better than porn I argue! Seriously, if you mod this down as offtopic or whatever, you are seriously messed up. These amazing butts warrant a good discussion. What do my fellow slashdotters think of these things? I can hardly wait for summer! Shawing!!!

Re:This is just what open sauce needs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope nothing under the GPL is being used, as Brazil has a pretty sketchy record of recognising intellectual property rights.

The article you link to is about breaking patents and manufacturing their own AIDS medication. Before someone jumps up and down screaming "so it's OK if it's medicine?", read the linked article to realize that this is A-OK according to a UN rule stating that nations can break the patent and produce their own medications in the case of an emergency. From the numbers I've read, it wouldn't be un-reasonable to say Brazil does have an emergency.

Brazil has demonstrated that they have tried to play fair, and have paid for the medications from multinationals until now, despite being vocally against the said multinational corporation's tactics. They also make clear that they are "breaking" the patent, not outright ignoring it, in accordance to UN rules.

I think we can jump up and down and throw a fit after some other more serious, blatant and un-ethical IP violations are put under the light. So far I don't think there's anything wrong with the Brazilian gov't using OSS. Or home-brewed HIV/AIDS medication.

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:This is just what open sauce needs.

[leecn]

I'll probably get modded down for saying this, but I would rather open sauce stays out of Brazil until they clear up these little problems

I hope you do get modded down! The discussion is about free software. Keep your critique of Brazillian food out of it.

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.

Re:This is just what open sauce needs.

[kfg]

Dude, you make it sound like it's ok to violate essentially arbitraty "intellectual property" laws just to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor people.

Have you no sense of ethics?

KFG

Re:Their stance is probably a consequence of..

[Koyaanisqatsi]

That is not entirely correct. Brazil does have very strong software companies that build business apps; invoicing, accounts receivable/payable, supply management, tax automation and the whole nine yards. Only that software tend to be targeted at Brazilian companies mostly (Portuguese language, sometimes Spanish as an option) and to small to mid-sized businesses.

We don't have anyone writing operating systems (out of academia, that is) and office applications, so it's natural that FOSS look appealing in those areas.

Other than that, IT is very strong in services, support and custom apps, here, and in that realm FOSS is again a very good fit, as it allows one company to fully customize a package to suit special needs, while not being encumbered by proprietary licenses.

Brazil FS Best Friend? Ask Miguel de Icaza

[TheBoostedBrain]

I know he can tell you why Brazil is so great for FOSS Projects and developers