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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."
Free software In peRu; outSTanding PrOmiSe for The open source movement.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
I say, GO PERU !! No against at all.
I'm continually amazed that MS has such traction that F/OSS has to fight to get anywhere. If MS and Linux were cars (never mind old jokes) people would be buying magazines to compare, taking test drives, and asking their buddies which one to buy... but with an OS, OMG, if you don't use MS, you must be one of those Linux geek nutjobs... and surely FREE software can't be as good as stuff you pay an arm and leg for... righ?
Why do we have to pass laws to compete with MS? That is the real story! I bet its an interesting read too... Shame that weather is the only thing that gets full coverage these days.
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Here's a complete waste of a politician's time -- laws that only make a statement, but don't actually change much. I see so many laws (daily) that don't actually do anything, they just say things:
H. RES. 99: Expressing the condolences of the House of Representatives to the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks in Madrid that occurred one year ago
H. RES. 59: Providing for consideration of the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 36) expressing the continued support of Congress for equal access of military recruiters to institutions of higher education.
Expressing? Providing? Favoring? What exactly are these public figures DOING?
I don't think this law is honestly going to create more open source usage by their government, nor is it really going to change much. Even laws requiring the use of open source are only as good as the government can enforce, which is probably nil. I did some consulting a dozen years ago for a government organization, and I couldn't get one office to settle on a single application -- everyone had favorites they wouldn't give up.
Good luck.
In both the text translation (of Google) and the English text posted at opensource.org, the term used is "Free Software", not "open source." I wonder why the title and the text here at Slashdot use the term "open source"?
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
Prior to the vote, Steve Ballmer testified on the issue before the Peruvian Congress. During his testimony, he removed his shoe and banged it on the podium, while announcing that he was going to "fucking kill" them if they went with Open Source. For his closing statement, Ballmer said nothing, but fumed a bit, then tossed a wooden chair across the stage.
Unknown host pong.
Absolutely, they don't have money to waste on expensive imported buggy software. The US gov doesn't care what software it wastes its money on, since most of it stays in the country. To other countries, it makes a huge difference whether they spend money in their country or outside their country. If Microsoft was based in Russia, you can bet your bottom Dollar that the US gov would pass a similar law. The only thing that surprises me is that it took other countries so long to start doing this.
Oh well, what the hell...
Willing or unwillingly you are spreading FUD.
The Peruvian congress is just guaranteen that Peruvians have free and unrestricted access to their information. (i.e. no propietary formats)
Microsoft (or any other company for that matter) is welcome to compete for the market by supporting open formats.
Now that this is clear, to counteract the mis-information your comment may spread, please say outloud 100 times: "This Law Has Nothing To Do With Microsoft"
This is the old version of the law. The bill that was approved is: http://www.congreso.gob.pe/relatoria/documentos/PR OY1609Software.pdf
This is not strictly speaking a free software law. It is a law that norms the use, adquisition and adjustment of software in public administration.
I do however know for a fact that some are true because I seen the result.
The story is simple, large trucking company A finds it is time to replace its fleet of trucks from brand B. However the salesrep from B is for some reason not all to willing to give the discount company A wants. So company A makes sure when the salesrep visits that there are a couple of trucks just parked outside the company of brand C. If the salesrep still doesn't get the message, they usually do, then brand C will be the brand company A drives around in for the next 3 yrs (average truck live) unless salesrep C is smart enough to give a company buying a 100 trucks a big enough discount.
There are plenty of versions of this story from big to small. Everyone knows you can always talk down the price when buying even the smallest car. When your purchase order comes into the millions the sales people WILL have to bend over backwards, plenty of other truck manufacturers.
But I noticed something very strange, when talking to some smaller transporters who pulled the same trick but with a mere 10 or so trucks being part of the purchase order and therefore getting far smaller discounts, I found that it was very difficult to get them to accept the idea that a similar stunt could be pulled when it comes time to upgrade their PC's.
That just forking over whatever MS demands is like just forking over what your truck seller wants.
Business men who would think nothing of buying a handfull of different brand trucks (trucks are EXPENSIVE) just to make a point could nonetheless not understand that having a handfull of linux machines might make the next purchase from MS a little cheaper.
Directors who would never EVER allow their operation to become locked into ONE truck brand nonetheless happily say that they can't switch from MS because of lockin.
It is amazing, it is like when it comes to IT, the best brains in business suddenly loose their intelligence, as if different rules apply when it comes to computers.
So I have the following suggestions to any business leader:
At the moment MS has a chokehold on business. It can demand whatever it wants and you will just have to cough up. It is insanity. Install a few macs, install a few linux boxes, then call your IT salesrep and tell him to give you a discount or to get out.
Get out of the lock-in and make IT subject to the same rules as you do all your other purchases.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Actually, Congressman Villanueva is very clear that software freedom is what he was after, what the bill seeks, and why he asks for free software by name ("software libre"). Read Villanueva's letter to Microsoft's rep who tried to reframe the debate in the same way.
The reason why Microsoft tried to reframe the debate away from software freedom and why Villanueva was so insistent that Microsoft not do so is clear—the open source movement dismisses software freedom. The open source movement does not stand for the same philosophy as the free software movement. Software freedom is what proprietors fear. They have no argument against it. As we see with Microsoft's reps talking to Massachusetts, they are constantly trying to frame the debate around the cost of software. As if what you pay for software is the single most important issue to consider. Congressman Villanueva and the rest of the free software movement know that this is not so ("It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions."), therefore they don't stand for such misrepresentation. Properly, Villanueva also insists on calling proprietary software "proprietary" and not "commercial" as so many (even on /.) will do.
The theme here is on what rights users have with the program, not how quickly it can be developed, how much money one can save, or how few bugs there are in the software. The free software movement has nothing against the development methodology that the open source movement stands for, but the free software movement says that the open source movement's philosophy isn't enough.
Digital Citizen
Yes. And they did.
The governments of several South American governments have realized this already, that software used for all the government purposes should follow these guidelines:
- Be transparent to the government. The government MUST have a way to verify if no malicious code, country-hostile elements, backdoors or other such insecurities exist. Without source - impossible.
- Be transparent to the citizens; any citizen of the country should be able to analyse and examine how the government handles the data, verify that no illegal activity is being performed using the software. Required: Access to sources, access to specifications.
- Countrywide Integration: Any citizen should be able to integrate systems used in government with systems they use privately, (e.g. in private business - taxes) to increase efficiency, removing need of manual conversion between two closed standards or such. Req: Open standards, access to hooks/API.
- Free access for citizens to the software. No need to sign NDAs, no fees to access the sources, freedom to use and examine the software at will. If they pay taxes to fund the software for government, they shouldn't be forced to pay again to use it themselves. Req: Free as a beer, no "don't copy" style licenses.
- Indepence from vendors. The country can't be held hostage by any vendor because they are the only entity that can implement/change/fix some essential feature. Any developer should be able to come along the way and continue the work, where the previous one left it. Req: Access to sources.
- Supporting local economy: Making development of software for government, easy for local businesses, no matter what their size. Because anyone can develop the software, the government isn't tied to a single corporation creating the subsystems and won't be locked with expanding underperforming system because cost of total replacement is too high and there's nobody else besides the corporation that could fix the software (and the corporation lacks skill/resources to do this). Req: Access to sources for everyone.
As for now, Open Source/Free Software fulfills all these requirements "out of the box". Getting them all from any commercial vendor would be near-impossible, or at least a true torment in the means of negotiations.
Also note it doesn't lock out any commercial vendors. It just changes what the government buys: They buy THE software (binaries+sources+specs+IP) and not just license to use the "borrowed" binaries which they wouldn't really own.
What the government does with the purchased software shouldn't be your concern, you got paid for selling all rights to it to them. Well, they open-source it. For the better of the nation.
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Giving preferential treatment to software just because it follows some creed is not the way to choose the best tools for the job and save the tax payers money.
What are you talking about? The Peruvian government just passed a law that says one criteria of software is important to them and if at all possible software should meet that criteria. It is a functional specification, not a creed and it is well defined in the law.
If the U.S. government passed a law that said, "to insure the safety of government employees all garments purchased by the government for employees should be flame retardant, unless there is a good reason to use flammable garments" would you complain that they were unfairly favoring the "inflammable" creed of clothing manufacture? Now maybe other factors like cost, warmth, resistance to small arms fire, etc. are more important for a given application, but there is nothing wrong with trying to get all clothing that does not easily burn.
This law is the result of lots of publicly owned information being available only by paying a toll to one foreign company. It addresses a real problem. It is giving preferential treatment to software that is better in one specific way (that they deem very important to them). It is just like making sure government clothing buyers don't skimp on clothing and buy unsafe garments to save money in the short term. Peru, and many other countries are tired of getting burned and are taking action. I applaud them.
Well, first of all, I live in Peru. Even more, my employer is currently a ".gov.pe".
Here in Peru, a law means *nothing* until the "reglamento de la ley" is approved (it's some specific regulation concerning exactly *how* will the law will be applied). It can take months, or more realistic, years until that is done. In many cases, the regulation is never approved, so the law is useless.
will be extremely difficult to implement FOSS in a user level (heck, how will we replace Oracle? Or even MS Excel, Word & Powerpoint? Its still a long way for OO).
I'm not against open source, but what the law states is unenforceable.
PS: However, cheers to APESOL for the effort.
We'd like to remark that even this is not a free software specific bill, It was based on all the previous proposals made on the subject.
I and many of us believe that its a important step towards making free software a truly and goverment supported alternative, since it also remarks, and will be regulated after making the official announce, through its own reglament, the benefit of free software when choosing alternatives for projects, avoid work duplication and saves money. Although for most goverment agencies free software it something already being deployed and used on many of them now, for instance the army is just moving their computing infrastructure to free software, training their personel and so.
This law exists to prevent things like state secrets being stolen through backdoors, data loss due to proprietary formats, the state being held hostage by their proprietary software vendor, exclusion of minorities (e.g. the poor) from the democratic process, loss of transparency of government, etc.
You know, just those insignificant details that are essential to maintaining a sovereign democratic government. That's all.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz