Windows in Brazil Costs 20% of Per Capita Business Income

mjasay writes "Ever wonder why open source is so popular in Brazil and other BRIC nations? As one study suggests, one big reason may well be Microsoft's punitive pricing, which exceeds 20 percent of Gross National Income for businesses in Brazil (and 7.8 percent of consumer GNI). This leads to a second, related reason: At those prices, there's little hope that Brazil can build a home-grown software economy on the foundation of proprietary software. This factor is exacerbated by Brazil's widespread disdain for the United States, which also tends to favor software that is not perceived as American. Of late the free and open-source Brazilian dream may be fading a little but its importance to the long-term growth prospects of the Brazilian economy shouldn't be understated."

Comments

20%? What are the customs duties?

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

Duties on imports may have something to do with the 20%. Right as Intel started putting manuals online, I was working on that project, and Brazil was high on the list of downloaders. We tracked them to a technical university, did some emailing, and found that the duty on a printed manual nearly tripled the cost of the manual (in USD).

Re:20%? What are the customs duties?

[Flavio]

That's weird, I'm brazilian and last time I checked, books (and possible other printed materials) weren't taxed when imported. It's why I tend to buy books at amazon.com.

If you ever imported _anything_ in last 10 years (which i doubt) you surely knew this is not the reality.

Eerything you import, even those things that are explicitly not taxed, gets abusive taxing. Brazillian Customs sets tax according to their mood, and if you ask for a tax analyse, consider your tax doubled.

In brazil, the product price plus shipping (yes they tax shipping too) gets taxed 60% (import tax) plus 20% (ICMS, another tax).

Bullshit. I import goods at least once a month, and this is not the case. Printed material, such as books and magazines are NOT charged an import tax. Software is also exempt from import taxes.

The tax for imports over the mail are very clear: 60% over the value of the goods and shipping. The 20% ICMS charge only counts if you're importing with a courier such as FedEx or UPS. Regular mail does not get charged the 20%.

If the package does not accompany an invoice, or if the invoice's value is obviously fraudulent, then the customs official has can attribute a value which he believes is fitting. If you disagree with this value, you can challenge his value, but this will entail a lot of effort and you will most likely lose. You may also not import used goods, or prohibited items (such as firearms, explosives, live animals and organs).

Customs officials are corrupt bastards if you have to deal them in person (for instance, if not importing through the mail), but I've never had them charge me anything other than 60% over mail order items. In particular, I've imported at least US$ 5000 in books over the last 10 years, and I've never been charged an import tax.

Not quite the price

[iris-n]

I live in Brazil. The anti-american wave has largely passed away: you don't find love for US here, but neither hate.

As for the pricing scheme, it is really outrageous for the average income here, but I don't think that it has much to do with the linux adoption here. It's very rare to see someone that does care about copyright here. Even if Microsoft sold at reasonable prices (yes, it is the government's fault), just the fact we need to register, call for license keys and all that bullshit makes us just pirate the damn thing. And if it's hard to pirate (wga and all), we go away. And there's linux. It's free and it doesn't hassle us. Oh, it's open source and all? Cute. But that's not the main point.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people that care a lot about FOSS philosophy (myself included) but for the masses, the "software that don't get in my way" is more important.

Re:Time for us westerners to wring our hands...

[gregorio]

Backwards place to live? You get that from experience?

I don't know about him, but I do get that same impression, and from experience. A lot of it. Brazil IS a backwards place to live. While people from the US do complain about taxes and how their money is used by the government, things in Brazil are not simply "worse" on that point. They're completely different, as the people who pay taxes in Brazil are not the ones using governmental services at all. EVERY SINGLE NEED of the brazillian middle class (the ones who pay for that big joke named Brazil) is provided by very expensive private services.

And the impoverished are not just "poor", as in "lacking money for basic elements of life". They're also extremely indolent and dishonest. They lack basic culture and effort to achieve any kind of progress.

They have access to an infrastructure that would be considered an impossible dream decades ago. The things is: a lot of jewish and italian people arrived at this very same land of crap, decades ago, without any money at all and none of the thousands of schools and no universal and free healthcare at all. Yet they managed to educate themselves and provide good education for their children (who are now 40-50 years old), without a single cent in their pocket. Their sons and daughters (who were impoverished children) are now members of the upper-middle class.

I'd live in any brazilian coastal city over any US coastal city. Warm climate, nice girls, drinking caipirinhas all the time, hapy music, happy people.

You forgot to mention "random drug-motivated murders". And also forgot to mention that all those "happy people" are actually impoverished idiots who would rather spend their entire day partying around the city than working hard to improve their lives. Remember the Ant and the Grasshopper? If not, it's a classic that explains a lot about those bozos you call "happy people".

And if booze is something that motivates you to some kind of decision about where to live, you need treatment, not a better city.