Open Source, Open World

New submitter Ian Grant writes "This article takes a brief look at open source software in Brazil and how it's transforming tech use in South America: Bringing free software to Brazil, however, is not just a matter of copying North American practices. The idea of free software has also been substantially transformed through contact with Brazilian politics. In the United States, the open source software community has long had libertarian leanings, which have only strengthened over time. The core tenet of free software, after all, is giving the users freedom to do what they want. ... And when free software was finally embraced by business, many members of the movement welcomed it as a validation of their ideas. The business-friendly side of free software is easily visible in Brazil, too. Many Brazilian companies, for example, use Linux. At the forum in Porto Alegre, commercial free software was well represented by large foreign companies, many of which appeared to be there primarily for recruiting. Yet the forum also showcased another side of Brazil’s place in the world of free software — a key meeting place of free software and leftist politics. "

Comments

Re:libertarian leanings

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything runs counter to libertarian philosophy it's free software. It's a culture of giving and sharing, a cooperative community, where a libertarian would want competitive market forces, "rational self-interest" and "rugged individualism" to govern.

This much is true: the term "open source" was and is an ideological hijack attempt in order to make the "free software" concept more palatable for business. Quoting Wikipedia (emphasis mine)

Perens poses Open Source as a means of marketing the free software philosophy of Richard Stallman to business people who are more concerned with profit than freedom, and states that open source and free software are only two ways of talking about the same phenomenon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_perens

Quoting Bruce Perens directly:

About a year ago, I sent out a message announcing "Open Source". Eric Raymond and I founded the Open Source Initiative as a way of introducing the non-hacker world to Free Software. Well, thanks to Eric, the world noticed. And now it's time for the second stage: Now that the world is watching, it's time for us to start teaching them about Free Software. Notice, I said Free Software, _not_ Open Source.

Most hackers know that Free Software and Open Source are just two words for the same thing. Unfortunately, though, Open Source has de-emphasized the importance of the freedoms involved in Free Software. It's time for us to fix that. We must make it clear to the world that those freedoms are still important, and that software such as Linux would not be around without them.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/99/02/18/0927202/bruce-perens-resigns-from-osi

So no, I don't appreciate the subtle political hijack of the free software community by some weird market cult cleverly crafted as an ideological buffer between the rich and the poor, who are led to believe their liberation will come through the same rotten capitalist system that robbed them of their dignity and liberty in the first place.

Worlds apart

[iksrazal_br]

I've programmed professionally in both the USA as an American in the 90's, and in Brazil for about 6 years until I started doing remote contracting for US companies. I contributed modestly to open source in both countries.

In Brazil it was pretty eye opening to see how the programming market is pretty much 90% paid by the government in one form or another. Truly private companies are few, even fewer are smaller startups. In the USA I didn't even know anyone employed by the government as a programmer - I guess because I didn't live in Virginia or Maryland (Pentagon and NSA). And in Brazil for white collar work, its jobs for life as its mostly impossible to get fired - there's very little turn over.

I mention this because while I worked with Brazilian programmers that were often great - I suspect because in Brazil you mostly need a degree for a job so the bar is higher - but its about as far from USA style libertarian culture as you can get. One quick example: There is a 60% VAT on imported computers and anything electronic, in effect about double the USA retail price on Chinese imports. There would be a revolution in most world countries if that was tried there.

Brazil has greatness in many ways - its where I live happily. But there is nothing libertarian about it currently or trending that way. I say that as someone who often votes and supports USA libertarian candidates.

Re:Not this again...

[dryeo]

Linux and dialup has been getting worse and worse though it probably depends on distribution. I have a Ubuntu install, it doesn't even come with a dialup client besides good old pon and poff and even pon is broken. I've setup dialup on various Linux dists since Slackware 2 so do know a bit. On Ubuntu, the dialup group is broken. Pon seems to work, the chat script runs correctly, papsecrets is correct but it doesn't connect to PPP except when first booted it does it automatically. Then of course there is the /dev hell. Not only does /dev frequently change but plug in the USB serial port and what device is it? (sttyUSB0). Plug in the USRRobotic USB modem and what device is it? I can't even remember though it was only last week when I used dmesg to figure it out.
VXdial and the Gnome dialer also don't work worth a shit anymore.
This is probably due to all the developers having long moved away from dial-up as well as the majority of users.
Then as others mention, install a package and it wants to pull in a 100 MBs of dependencies. The system continuously complains about updates that need installing and such.
The days of Linux and dial-up seem to be over so I'm typing this from OS/2 ver 4.5 where my USB modem works fine if I leave it plugged in, I have a developer trying to fix the unplugging breakage, I have a decent dialer that does NAT so I can be the gateway for the rest of the household. The only positive about Linux is it is better then Win7 at sharing.