Continued Look at Global Open Source

sebFlyte writes "In the second part of its look at open source in governments around the world, ZDNet takes an interesting look at open source in the developing world. Pricing obviously is an important factor (if you look at GDP, MS prices in Vietnam are the equivalent, for local people, of charging just shy of $50,000 for a Windows XP license in the US), but other issues arise, such as Brazil's 'sense of community', a certain amount of security-related worries from the Chinese, and language issues in India. A good analysis of the advantages of open source generally, the huge benefits it can have in developing markets, and the fact that open source is on the up despite massive amounts of lobbying and pressure from some proprietary vendors."

Comments

Re:Awesome

[captain igor]

Mostly US? Last I checked a LARGE portion of OSS developers were from Europe.

Here in mexico

[Spy der Mann]

we went thru a HORRIBLE crisis on 94, the dollar was valued 3 pesos per dollar. Now it's near 11, meaning software costs about 3 times more.

Would you be paying 600 dollars for a legitimate copy of Windows XP? And here a very good pay is $1000 dollars a month. It's no mystery then that most software in Mexico is pirated.

Still it's an awful dependance on foreign products (businesses MUST use legitimate software), which is another reason why i support the OpenDocument initiative.

Comparison to GDP ... pretty strange

[courtarro]

I was planning to write a long comment concerning how retarded it is to compare prices on the basis of GDP [1], which makes about as much sense as comparing price ratios to the ratio of the number of sheep in a country. It's misleading at best, considering the large difference in the populations of the two countries. It's probably more accurate to compare the per-capita GDP [2], which yields the result that Windows (which costs $200 in the US according to the summary writer's numbers) would cost about $15,000 in Vietnam. However, this too is somewhat inaccurate because a) no one pays full price for Win XP Pro non-upgrade, b) You don't have to have XP Pro to get most of the benefits of Windows, and c) MS offers XP Starter Edition in Vietnam, which is supposedly offered for as low as US$15 [3]. Then again, when you figure that price based on per-capita GDP, it still comes to the equivalent of $1120, which isn't small change. So yes, the price is still pretty terrible, but when it comes to the intricacies of currency exchanges, is it fair to pound Microsoft on the basis of price comparisons when they're already discounting a product roughly 75% ?

Oh wait, free products aren't affected by currency exchanges. Oh well ...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ GDP_(nominal)
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
[3] http://news.com.com/Windows+for+India,+others+wont +run+on+faster+chips/2100-1016_3-5704942.html
[4] 1 - (Price of XP SE) / ((Price of XP Home non-upgrade) * 0.60), assuming SE has roughly 60% of Home's features ... wildly estimative!

Re:EXACTLY!

[microwave_EE]

Don't forget that here in the states, the drug companies also market directly to the doctors. I know several medical assistants, and the drug reps regularly would come in and leave "samples" for the docs to give out, and they'd buy everybody lunch. All of this is done in hopes that the doctors would prescribe their company's meds...and once a few folks get hooked on claritin (sp??), or Zoloft, or whatever, then the drug company will more than have recouped their investment.

As a Brazillian citzen...

[vhogemann]

... and a government employee, I have one or two things to say:

First, actualy there is no coerent effort to push OpenSource solutions in the Federal Government. There are isolated efforts, and little coordination between them.

I work at the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Dept. of Health Care (Secretaria Municipal de Saude), we has been working on a really open framework for the past 3 years, based on Java + Tomcat + Hibernate + Firebird runnig on Debian. It's already used on a social program called Medicine at Home (Remedio em Casa), that delivers medicine by mail for people with diabetes and high blood pressure.

We had plans to extend this, and use the same framework to devellop a full hospitalar management solution, based on opensource sollutions, and enterprise ready. But it has been put aside, in favor of a project develloped by the Federal Ministery, called SNIS.

SNIS (National System for Health Information), is a nightmare of ill concepted technologies. Everything is based on proprietary solutions, such as Oracle Forms, Windows and even WindowsCE.

But the worst part are the special build PCs running WindowsCE, made of an ITX motherboard, 320x240 LCD touchscreen, termal printer, and SmartCard reader. They are meant to be used for data input, such as schedule consults on a ambulatory. The idea is that those custom "thinclients" would be cheaper to mantain than regular PCs... This could be true, if they didnt cost U$900,00 each! And, to make things even worse... the only firm that makes those babies is Procomp, a firm that is owned by DIEBOLD!!!

So, belive me when I say that OpenSource is a priority for the Brazilian government only when there are political interests behind it.