Peru Passes Free Software Law

wlan0 writes "Peru has passed a law favoring Open Source in the Government (translated using Google translator) after some time and some fights thanks to the help of Peruvian Congressman Villanueva and APESOL(Peruvian Free Software Association). OpenSource.org also provides the full text of the Bill."

Comments

At which point

[Anonymous Coward]

They had a massive earthquake, killing all who could testify to its occurrence.

_Epp.

[Anonymous Coward]

GNAA and suuport

I'm still waiting

[RingDev]

for the free lunch to get moldy.

I'm going to get modded down to -16 for this, but I'm sticking to it. There is no free software. Someone must pay the developers who write it(not necesarily TOO write it). Removing sales revenue from the developers will reduce their ability to write code. And now development companies need to look elsewheres for money. Support is the golden goose that everyone screams for. But if I release a piece of open source software that cost $500,000 in labor alone to develope (1 year with a small team of developers(5) and support staff), I need to recoupe that cost, and the cost of continuing development. Which means I need to sell atleast 100 $5,000 yearly support contracts. But then I'll also need a staff to run support, so toss in another $200,000 for 4 decent support techs. So we have 140 $5,000 yearly support contracts to break even on labor alone (not including bandwidth, phones, location, power, etc). Now let's say support person A and a few OSS community friends decide to open their own support company. They don't have to cover the cost of development, just their own $150,000 labor plus other expences. So if they can get 75 contracts, they only need to charge $2,000 a pop.

Ask your local CFO if he'd like to cut $3,000 off his annual IT support costs. ;)

In any case, the development company hemroges money as their clients jump to the cheaper, and just as effective support company. Cost cutting measures take effect and developers are layed off, salaries are cut, and the work environment becomes over stressed. Quality drops, and eventually the company folds, is bought out, or the developers split and fork the code.

There is no free lunch, and the is no free app. And I'm not looking forward to the day that the job I love so much is delegated to either high end research at universities, or a hobby that you can't make money from.

-Rick

great notice

[NeuronalTraining]

Sin duda una gran noticia para todos, espero que no solo quede en leyes, ya que existe demasiada corrupción dentro del gobierno. Saludos!
Viva el PERU!
Y ustedes se animan visitar el PERU, Machu Picchu?