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Brazilian Gov't May Pass Pro-Free Software Law
Kaufmann writes "More news from Brazil... this time it seems to be good news, though; this page describes a law project, already on Congress, which, if approved, will obligate all sectors of the Brazilian Government - agencies, public corporations, et cetera - to use only free (as in speech) software (unless there is none that provides the required functionality). This is rather surprising news, considering the incredible power wielded by Big Software Companies in Brazil (their puppet, the Brazilian Association of Software Corporations, is conducting a massive anti-"piracy" witch hunt, with some success). Email the author of the bill, congressman Walter Pinheiro, and show him your support! (Most links are in Portuguese; you might want to use your favourite text translation tool.) "
This is interesting... Slashdot is encouraging citizens of other countries to try to affect decisions in nations not of their immediate concern. Why should a Brazilian representative care about what some fool in New York thinks? Great, the rest of the world supports it, but his constituents just care about getting those damn strip miners out of their backyard.
The CD-R tax story from a couple days ago also comes to mind. Non-canadians are probably signing it with something like "Toronto, Ontario" so that the petition people can say "this many canadians voted for it" and then the officials can reply, "there aren't even that many people in that city."
I'm all for the ideals behind the story, but I'm curious as to what influence a non-national has over a delegatory representative...
-- adraken
It makes use on the use of programs opened for the beings of public law and private law under shareholding control of the public management.
Article 1 - the public management, in all the levels, them To be able of the Republic, the state-owned companies and of mixing economy, the public companies, and all the too much public or private organisms under control of the Brazilian society, is obliged to use foreground, in its systems and equipment of computer science, opened, free programs of restriction proprietor how much its cession alteration and distribution.
Article 2 - that one Is understood for opened program whose license of industrial or intellectual property does not restrict under no aspect its cession, distribution, use or alteration of its original features.
Article 3 - the open program must assure to the using the unrestricted to its code source, without any cost, with sight to modify program, integrally, if necessary access, for its perfectioning. Only Paragraph. A code source must be the foreground feature used by the programmer to modify the program, not being allowed to dim its accessibility, nor neither to introduce any intermediate form as output of a daily pay-processor or translator.
Article 4 - the license of use of the open programs must allow modifications and derived works and its exempt distribution under the same terms of the license of the original program.
1 - the license will only be able to restrict the distribution of the code source in form modified in case that it allows to the distribution of programs modified jointly with the code original source, objectifying the alteration of the program during the compilation process.
2 - source Must allow also the distribution of program compiled from the modified code explicitamente, being able in such a way to demand that the derived programs have different names or version numbers, that differentiate them of the original.
Article 5 - it will not be able to have clause in the license that implies in any form of discrimination the people or groups.
Article 6 - No license could specific for be determined product, making possible that the extracted programs of the original distribution have the same guarantee of free alteration, distribution or use, that the original program.
Article 7 - the licenses of open or restricted programs, will not restrict other programs distributed jointly.
Article 8 - the licitatórios certames that objectify to do business programs of computer with the beings specified in the article 1 of this law, will have obligatorily to be conducted by the principles established in this legislation.
Article 9 - 1 will only be allowed to the use for the beings of the article, of programs of computer whose licenses are not in agreement with this law, in the absence of open programs that do not contemplate content it the solutions object of the public licitation.
JUSTIFICATION It has more than fifteen years argues in the whole world the free manipulation of the computer programs or " free software ". In 1984 proprietor, supplied by means of restrictive licenses of ample specter was impossible to use a modern computer without the installation of an operational system. Nobody had permission to freely share programs (software) with other users of computer, and hardly somebody could change the programs to satisfy its operational necessities specific.
The design GNU, that dates of the beginning of the Movement of free Software, was established to change this. Its first objective was to develop a compatible portable operational system with the UNIX that would be free 100% for alteration and distribution, providing to the users who contributed with its development and alteration of any part of its original constitution.
Technical GNU is as UNIX, but it differs from the UNIX for the freedom that if it provides to its users. For the confection of this opened program, many years of work had been necessary, for hundreds of programmers, to develop this operational system. In 1991, the last more important component of a similar system to the UNIX was developed: LINUX.
Today the combination of GNU and the Linux is used for million of people, of free form, in the whole world.
This program is only one example of as the freedom in the alteration, distribution and use of programs of computer to be able to transform still more quickly, and in more democratic way, the profile it social and technological development in the world. The State, as fomentador being of the technological development and the democrátização of the access the new technologies for the society, cannot be to steal its responsibility to prioritize the use of open programs or " free software / open source ". E if small, the average and great companies multinationals already are adopting opened programs, thus preventing the payment of hundreds of million of dollar in licensing of programs, because it would have the State, with a infinity of devoid social causes of features, to continue buying, and expensive, the programs of market.
We all love free software... but personally I don't like the idea of forcing it. I'll admit forcing people to use free software does have some useful applications... no backdoored programs for example. I wasn't able to make much sense out of the article... I speak spanish, english, german, not portuguese. Anyway I don't think that "forced" and "free software" should be in the same sentence. The idea of free software is freedom, isn't it?
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Heh! Slow down!
Open Source Software is a wonderful thing, for innumerable reasons, but I'm not sure upper management(i.e. Congress/Parliament/Whoever) should be mandating its usage any more than it should be mandating its avoidance.
Res Ipsa Loquitar--Let The Facts Speak For Themselves. In this case, let the value of the software speak for itself--I'm a hardcore advocate of Open Source, but let the engineers on the front lines make the technical decisions, not someone whose top priority is to Cut The Budget. It's one thing to have a policy that explicitly states that it's acceptable--even encouraged--to use (L)GPL'd code for your projects. It's quite another thing to demand it, and to stigmatize the use of anything else.
Closed Source code shouldn't be presumed better because it costs many; Open Source shouldn't be presumed better just because it's free. Let the engineers be free to make their choices regarding what to use--hopefully, the track record of our development model, the quality of our code, and the immutability of our support(hi, RSA) will convince them to operate within the system we've created.
I'd rather convince the engineers than threaten their jobs. But that's my opinion.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Required functionality usually means being able to use Microsoft Word documents. Since no vendor but Microsoft produces such a thing
.doc files. I'll agree that netscape sucks, but you can't very well run internet explorer on a free software OS, can you? Maybe this undermines the whole law... I can't use IE in linux (or some other OSS operating system), and I need the functionality of IE, so therefore linux is no longer required. How about "I need to play Duke Nukem (hehe)... That is required. Therefore I can't use Linux." or "As a pawn of Microsoft, I am incapable of using any software not derived by them." As you can see, the "required functionality" clause can turn useless pretty quick :-) wait i'm ranting... ok sorry :-)
Last time I checked, Staroffice worked fine with
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Engineers need funding. I work in the private sector, and in order for me to buy software for my network, I must first accrue(sp?) the funds.
In a government model, these same funding decisions are made by the Government (i.e. Congress/Parliament/Whoever).
I would like the funding and the freedom to make the decision that best solves the problem, and this kind of legislation (passed or defeated) calls attention to a software development model that we all should be using.
In our public university, the witch hunt has began. Last month, there was a big shift of operating systems on machines. A lot of machines changed from NT to Linux. Our lab, was the only which used mostly linux for research, and so we gave a lot of support to the other people. It was a lot of work, but we did meet a lot of new people. :)
Sorry for the bad translation of the law, but I hope you can get the idea.
I would like the funding and the freedom to make the decision that best solves the problem, and this kind of legislation (passed or defeated) calls attention to a software development model that we all should be using.
I'm not sure we're disagreeing at all.
I want you, as an engineer, to have the funding to best solve a problem. Maybe that funding means that you'll devote five man-months to improving the SCSI stack on Linux, or maybe it means you'll just buy a farm of Solaris machines.
Whatever you do, the decision should be made on technical grounds, based upon available resources and the ability for you to amortize the value of the project across multiple tasks, departments and maybe even agencies. Open Source has some definite advantages here! But those are advantages for the engineers to evaluate, not for the long-disconnected politicians to order them to choose, unless they're willing to put their jobs on the line saying what's out there Just Isn't Good Enough.
If Microsoft got a law passed ordering departments to only use the most popular closed source software available, it'd be wrong. The opposite, in my mind, is also true.
That being said, there is assuredly resistance at the direct managerial level above the engineers that makes free software a touchy subject. That resistance should also disappear, but not by mandate of law, but by sheer fact that the reasons behind that resistance are antiquated and just no longer valid.
I'll admit, this is a very strange side for me to be taking, and actually feels kind of out of character, but I just don't feel it's right to speak of freedom and higher quality software out of one side of my mouth while mumbling about forcing the use of free software unless there's nothing that even comes close to finishing the job out of the other.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I'd be happy to offer assistance to the people who are pushing this bill, if anyone can put me in touch with the right people.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
If a government wishes to use Free Software for itself, then go for it. But they have no business whatsoever mandating non-governmental groups to do the same.
If the only way Free Software can get marketshare is for governments to require its use, then it's not really free anymore. What happened to the free choice in Free Software? Or are we sacrificing our principles for the "greater good".
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Here are some issues to consider:
Fascinating! Unless one cops the plea that libraries aren't programs, so aren't covered by this bill, it sure sounds to me like only LGPL'd libraries would be permitted, not GPL'd ones.
One fo the major reasons for the creation of the open source movement was to create alternatives so that people wouln't be obligated to buy M$ crapware or other stuff that they didnt want, there is no reason for people to be obligated to use open souce.
Obligation and the freedom for which the open-souce movement stand for simply cannot coexist.
--Ed
By the way, I'm running around with a 2+ threshold because Slashdot seems broken when a critical-mass threshold of messages is passed. The comment page gets cut off mid-way; the high threshold is just to keep the pages short, not to avoid reading. Is there a fix in the works for the html problem?
If you use free software, there is no public money to reroute to your pocket :-(
Or to reroute to improve the development of OSS! So you end up with just a crew of government leeches, underfunded to improve but mandated to use...
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
OSD: The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
Law: The license of use of the open programs must allow modifications and derived works and its exempt distribution under the same terms of the license of the original program.
OSD: The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
Law: The license can restrict the distribution of the modified source code only if it allows the distribution of the modifications along with the original source for the purpose of modifying the program at build time.
OSD: The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time.
Law: The license] must also allow the distribution [in binary form] of the program compiled from the modified source code, and may require a different name or version number [to make it clear that it's a derived work].
OSD: The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
Law: the license can't discriminate a person or group of persons
OSD: the license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
Slashdot goes into "overload" mode when there are too many top level comments (50 IIRC). You can view the next pages by choosing the "2" link from the bottom of the page.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
No problem. I really didn't write those Brittany Spears songs... And I'm not really bigger than Cher :-)
Bruce Perens.
I have no problem with you personally, and I don't particularly mind your sig, but I wish you would use the standard method of attaching it.
:-)
If Taco gave me enough room to have both a quote and a sig, I'd gladly use the standard method. It's annoying retyping it every time
That being said, I sign my name because, as the WELL saying goes, You Own Your Words.
Didn't know the retyping was annoying anyone but me. I'll try to do something about this.
Well, first of all, I would like to make a few comments, as KGBear does sometimes :):
1) We are not talking about explicit open source software. It is FREE. The source is closed? It doesn't matter. If they can give us, we will use it. That's the idea.
2) Probably that will save huge amounts of money, of course. But there is a lot of piracy, even into the government (many agencies have illegal copies of very expensive software). That will keep going.
3) The lack of supervision will probably throw this law into complete dust. Who will be assuring people are using 'as much as there is possible' of free software? What will be the _penalties_ for people running commercial software? Those questions intrigate me.
Now to the good point. This will lead to something very very good, and completely new: thousands of people using software like *nix. That will make the understanding of such systems much more common between everyone. And, we all know no jobs will vanish from such acts. Software bought was bought. Future software running will be free, and programmers won't have to work more (or less) so they can sell his new applications. If the functions of the program are very needed, like, let's say, PhotoShop (there is always GIMP =D), the program will be bought. What I mean is, good programmers will always have their places.
So, concluding: why not? less budgets, and, besides, just wonder how much people will begin using real os'es? how many people will get to know the real possibilites his computer had but he never experienced?
I think some other countries should take a look at the idea.
What, with the high cost of living in silicon valley and total lack of nightlife, wouldn't you rather be hacking code on your laptop on some beach in Brazil? Carnaval is coming!
Viva Brasil!
Yeah the free market works, but only in the longer term. Stop being against the Brazilian government on the principle of non-interference. Who says they're forcing anyone to use anything?
The public bodies still get a choice of _which_ free software to use, there's still competition between different projects.
Also, they'll have to pay money whatever software they use. Either they can pay a lot for the software, and that money will go abroad (closed software), or they can pay their own citizens for support and customising the software. Given that choice, it's easy to see why they're trying to boost their own economy by mandating that they keep the money in their country. After all, it's in their own interest as the Government to do so.
For the rest of us, we should be glad that such a large organisation as a government is prepared to invest in free software, which benefits everyone.
Which influence ? The project _ALREADY_ is in congress and for sure were a Brazilian initiative.
Beyond any SlashDots encouragement there is the reality: We do not have money. You certainly would realize if you ever see one of our Uptown Hospitals, which hasnt room for half of the people (even those who are actually one step to death). No beds, No medicine, No doctors, Nothing, that this decision should be made not based on a fool opinion from a foreign fool, but on the real need of the Government. What should they buy ? A shiny new copy of Win2k or some medicine ?
More yet: Ill be very happy if other under development (tah certo isso?) coutries could be influenced by our attitude. Free software is a viable, no-cost option that wont just make the SlashDot readers proud by being a free software defender, but will give some money to us instead to Bill Gates. He already has enough.
And besides, What makes you think that we had foreign influence ? We have some good ppl here. Did you ever checked WindowMakers Info Panel ?
Go check the Linux kernel CREDITS file and get ready to see that Free Software doesnt obey frontiers.
Think about it.
PS: Please ppl, forgive me for my bad english.
Don't you just hate that?
Looks like you got moderated back up, though.
I bet that the moderator won't post their reasons, sadly. The same thing happened to me a couple of days ago, and I did what you did, and my question to the moderator got marked Off Topic which, while I guess was true was a little annoying considering the number of "Grit" posts still with a Score of 1 and 0!
Someone (I'm assuming it was the same person) disagreed with my views enough to burn 2 moderation points on it! I should be flattered, I guess.
It's a perfect example of why moderation should not be anonymous.
I agree with your post, BTW.
Trust me, if marketing, advertising and sales techniques didn't work, capitalism would have saved that money and stopped using them a LONG time ago.
So, point 1: superiority based on the merits of the software is not enough; it is perception and business relationships that matter, and point 2:even with these big old market caps, I can see no way for free software to fund the marketing and sales forces needed to compete with the closed alternatives, since per-seat licenses generate so much revenue so quickly. Only Apache and some infrastructure software is exempt from this situation, because infrastructure software is sourced and implemented by IT people, who are more likely to be informed of the actual options.
I see the strongest model for free software development in the public sector as coming from a commission model: the water utility needs to upgrade its systems, it looks for bidders to design an open/free solution, and then pays them to do it. The product of that work remains public and available for peer review and improvement, and available to other water districts. Software development becomes a service industry with a collegial environment - and, without all the detritus from trying to ape a manufacturing model replete with sales and marketing forces (above a bare mininum) I think you could expect developers to make a LOT more.
(By Mr. Walter Pinheiro)
Disposes on the utilization of open source programs by public and
private entities under stockholder control of the public administration.
Article 1 - All levels of the public administration, the Powers of the
Republic, the Government owned and/or controlled companies, the public
agencies and all other institutions under control of the Brazilian
society are obligated to use preferencially, in its systems and
informatic equipment, open source programs, free from proprietary
restriction as to its licensing, alteration and distribution.
Article 2 - Open source programs are those which adhere to a license of
industrial or intelectual property that doesn't restrict in any aspect
the licensing, distribution, utilization or alteration of original
features.
Article 3 - The open source program must assure users unrestricted
access to its source code, without any cost, with the intent of
modifying said program, in its entirety if needed, to promote its
development.
Paragraph: source code must be the preferential resource used by the
programmer to modify the program, not being permited obfuscating its
accessibility or introducing any intermediate form of output from a
pre-processor or a translator.
Article 4 - The utilization license for open source programs must allow
modifications and derivative works and their free distribution under the
same terms as the license for the original program.
1 - The license may only restrict distribution of a modified form of
the source code if it allows for the distribution of the altered
programs together with the original source code, aiming at the
alteration of the program during compilation.
2 - It must explicitly allow the distribution of the program compiled
from the source code, and it can require that derived work have
different names or version numbers so as to differentiate it from the
original work.
Article 5 - There must be no clause in the license that implies in the
discrimination of persons or groups of persons.
Article 6 - No license shall be specific to any one product, so that
programs extracted from the original distribution have the same
guarantee of free alteration, distribution and utilization as the
original product.
Article 7 - The licenses of open or restricted products shall not
restrict those of products in the same distribution.
Article 8 - Bodies intending to commercialize computer programs with the
entities described in Article 1, shall mandatorily be regulated by the
principles established in this legislation.
Article 9 - Entities described in Article 1 shall mandatorily use
computer programs distributed under licenses not in agreement with this
law only in the absence of open source programs contemplating the
solutions required by the acquisition process.
JUSTIFICATION
For more than fifteen years the free manipulation of computer programs
or "free software" (in english in the original) has been discussed in
the whole world. In 1984 it was impossible to use a modern computer
without the installation of a proprietary operating system, distributed
only under broad spectrum restrictive licenses. No one was allowed to
freely share computer programs and it was very hard for anyone to change
the programs to satisfy their specific operational needs.
The GNU project, dating from the beginning of the Free Software
Movement, was created to change this. Its first goal was to develop a
portable operating system compatible with Unix that would be 100% free
for alteration and distribution, making possible for users to contribute
with its development and to modify any part of its original
constitution.
Technically GNU is like Unix, but it differs from it in the freedom it
allows its users. Many years of work by hundreds of programmers were
needed for the development of this open source operating system. In
1991, the last major component of a Unix like operating system was
created: Linux.
Today the Linux/GNU combination is used worldwide, freely by millions of
people. This program is just an example of how the freedom to modify,
distribute and use computer programs can influence in a faster and more
democratic way the profile of social and technological development in
the world. The State, as a facilitator of technological development and
of the democratization of access to new technologies by the society, has
a responsability to prioritize the utilization of open source programs.
If small, medium and large multinational companies are already adopting
open source, thus avoiding paying hundreds of millions of American
dollars in program licenses, why should the State, with its infinite
social causes in need of resources, continue to buy - and at premium
prices - commercial programs?
Sessions Room, December 15 1999
Congressman Walter Pinheiro
HTH.
Sorry to disagree with you here, Bruce.
Obviously this "representative" has a son (or cousin, or...), probably a university CS student, which is a recent convert to the Linux "movement", and who is poised to get a big government contract for Linux tech support. Assuming that Walter Pinheiro has even heard of you (or even touched a coomputer in his life) is just wishful thinking. There's an abundance of legislation here in Brazil with similar underhanded purposes, some of which thankfully didn't pass - more out of a general cluelessness of Brazilian Congress, rather than a wish to curtail such sleaze - and this is simply one more example.
I'm amazed how the general /. response, usually a knee-jerk response against government abuse of "free speech" or "free enterprise", becomes a knee-jerk response in favor of any harebrained government initiative which happens to pay lip-service to "open source" for its own purposes.
Interesting that /. is asking /.ers - most of which probably are Americans - to write to a Brazilian congressman in support of legislation which certainly will benefit only a few American companies like Red Hat. I'm all in favor of breaking the stranglehold Microsoft has on the Brazilian Government. If you don't run Windows you're practically locked out of any web site or data interchange with any public agency - official documents are in Word format, official databases are in Access format, income tax software is Windows-only. But, kicking Brazilian software companies in the nuts in favor of "open source" software, which is just starting to find a viable commercial model in the US, and has none at all here, will just add to the massive unemployment figures.
I have the proposal here in front of me. Article 9 clearly states that any public agency (this includes govt. companies, public schools, and universities) will be forced to use "open source" software in preference to other options unless none at all is available for the intended use. This clearly opens the way for all sort of shenanigans, as any such acquisitions are approved by local committees - and the proposal nowhere spells out any requirement that the software should work at all for the intended purpose. And, let's face it, to assume that any agency will go, every time, through a months-long rigmarole of examining source code, is to be completely unfamiliar wih the way these things are done here. Either some "consultant" will be hired at an inflated salary to approve some package which interests himself, or another "consultant" will be hired to recompile something which has been bought already by some other agency, since the source code will be publicly available.
I have personal experience with selling software to the Brazilian government. The first package I did (on spec) had no copy protection - I finally managed to sell one in every major city, and then, no more sales at all. And even for these half-dozen copies I had to go to court to see my money... I've been looking into writing a legal dictionary - where presumably at least half of the sales should go to government agencies - but if this thing is approved, I'll be out of business.
I'm cautiously in favor of "open source" for operating systems, for a limited number of cases - but to extend this to application software is madness. This effectively legislates a well-established business sector - non-"open source" software companies - out of existence.
Consider the education sector. Public schools here are often constrained to install Windows-based systems, which end up underused or even scrapped because of huge support problems. I've worked for over a decade to open up more schools to Macintoshes, which are much easier and cheaper to support. If this legislation passes, do you think schools will be able to use Linux systems? This is just ridiculous.
Well, I'll be e-mailing lots of people next week and lobby to get this nonsense scrapped.
See the problem with netscape is that it is just as bloated as IE. Of course IE runs constantly so it seems less bloated than netscape, because when you're looking at the speed of IE, it's the speed of IE alone, but the speed of netscape is hampered by IE running in the background. Of course us linux guys don't have to deal with that :-).
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.