Slashdot Mirror


User: gnrfan

gnrfan's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
8
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 8

  1. The FUD translated into English on Peruvian Congressman vs. Microsoft FUD · · Score: 1

    Go check for the yummy stuff:

    http://www.pimientolinux.com/peru2ms/

  2. FUD translated on Peruvian Congressman vs. Microsoft FUD · · Score: 1

    Go for this URL:

    http://www.pimientolinux.com/peru2ms/

  3. Original FUD translated into English on Peruvian Congressman vs. Microsoft FUD · · Score: 1

    San Isidro, March 21st 2002

    Mr:
    Edgar Villanueva Nuñez

    Congressman of the Republic of Peru

    Presente.-

    Dear sirs:

    First of all, we want to thank you for the chance you gave us to inform you about our work in
    the country in benefit of the public sector, always looking for the best alternatives to
    achieve the implementation of programs that will let us consolidate the iniciatives of modernization
    and transparency in the State.

    In fact, thanks to out meeting today you are aware of our global achievements at the international
    level in the design of new services for the citizen, among the framework of a model State that
    respect and protects intellectual property.

    This actions, as we talked about, are part of global iniciative and today exist several experiences
    than have let us collaborate with programs supporting the State and community in the adoption of
    technology as an strategic element to impact the life quality of the citizens.

    Besides, as we arrenged in this meeting, we assisted to the forum organized in the Congress the
    day March 6th regarding the law project that you are leading, where we got the chance to listen
    to several presentations that takes us now to expose our position so you have a wider lanscape
    of the real situation.

    The proyect establishes as mandatory for every public organism the deployment of free software
    exclusively, that's open-sourced software, something that transgress the principles of equality
    in front of law, of no discrimination and the right of free private iniciative, freedom of industry
    and contracting protected by the constitution.

    The project, by making mandatory the use of open-sourced software, establishes a discriminatory
    and non-competitive treatment at times of contracting and adquisitions by the public organisms
    violating the base principles of the "Law of State Contracting and Adquisitions" (Number 26850)

    In this way, by forcing the State to favor a business model supporting exclusively open source software,
    this project is only discouraging local and internationl software manufactures who are the ones that
    make the important investments for real, the ones that create a significant number of direct and
    indirect jobs, besides contributing to the National Net Income vs. a model of opensource software
    that tends to have every time a lower economic impact due to creating principaly jobs in the services
    area.

    The Law project imposes the usage of open source software without considering the dangers that
    this carries from the points of vie of security,warranty and posible violation of intellectual
    property of third parties.

    El proyecto maneja de manera errónea los conceptos de software de código abierto, que no
    necesariamente implica que sea software libre o de costo cero, llegando a realizar conclusiones
    equívocas sobre ahorros para el Estado, sin ningún sustento costo beneficio que valide la posición.

    The project erroneously handles the concepts of open source software that not necesary implies
    that the software is free software or has no cost, arriving to wrong conclusions about money
    savings by the State without the suport of any cost-benefit analysis to back this position.

    It is wrong to think that Open source software is free. Research by Gartner Grouo (and important
    market researcher in the technology world well-known worldwide) has poited that the cost of
    software adquisition (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost of ownership
    that enterprises and organizations must face as consequence of rational and productive use of
    technology. The other 92% is made of implantation costs, capacitation, support, management and
    inoperativity.

    One of the arguments that support the Law project is the supossed gratuity of opensource software
    when compared to commercial software costs, without considering that exists volume licensing
    models that can really benefit the State, in the way that has already been achieved in other
    countries.

    Additionally, the alternative adopted by the project (i) is clearly more expensive because of
    the high costs of migration and (ii) puts at risk compatibility and the chance for interoperability
    among informatic platforms inside the State and between the State and the public sector due to
    the hundred distributions of open source software in the market.

    Opensource software in the most of the cases doesn't offer adequate levels of service nor the
    warranty of well-known manufacturers to achieve a bigger productivity by its users, something
    that has caused many public entities to go back in their decisions of using opensource software
    the ones the are using commercial software right now in its place.

    This project discourages creativity in the peruvian software industry that sells US$ 40 millions
    every year, exports US$ 4 millions (10th place in the ranking of peruvian exportations, more
    than handcrafted goods) and is a source of highly qualified jobs. With a law pushing for the
    use of opensource software, software programmers loose their rights of intellectual property
    and their most important source of retribution.

    Opensource software, by having the chance of being freely distributed also fails to make any
    money for their developers by means of exportation. In this way, the multiplier effect of
    software sales to other countries weakens affecting the grown of this local industry that the
    State should be stimulating.

    In the forum the importance of the use of opensource software in education was discused without
    commenting on the mayor failure of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely
    the State officers that supported this project now say that opensource software didn't allowed
    to provide a learning experience to childs at schools, the adequate levels of capacitation
    nationwide were missing so no adequate support for the platform was provided and the software
    didn't showed not shows nowadays the needed levels of integration with the existing platforms
    at schools.

    If opensource software fullfils all the requirements of the entities of the State Why
    a law is needed to adopt it? Shouldn't the market freely choose which products provide
    more benefits and value?

    I really want to thank you for your attention to this letter and we want to reiterate our
    interest in meeting you to expose to you in more details our points of view about the project
    you have presented and be at your complete disposition to share experiences and information
    that we are sure can help in a better analysis en implementations of an iniciative that looks
    for modernization and transparency for the State in the benefit of the citizen.

    Sincerely,

    Juan Alberto González

    General Manager
    Microsoft Perú

  4. Re:Congressman at Free Software Forum in Brazil on Free Software Law in Peruvian Congress · · Score: 1

    Cool! He seems to have met John "Maddog" Hall and Larry Wall at that conference.

  5. Congressman at Free Software Forum in Brazil on Free Software Law in Peruvian Congress · · Score: 1

    Dr. Villanueva is participating in this Free Software Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Many people related to GNU are there. So he takes things very seriously.

  6. FYI: There's YET another LAW like this in Peru on Free Software Law in Peruvian Congress · · Score: 1

    Yes, It's not just Dr. Villanueva but also Dr. Daniel Estrada a proponent of a free software law in Peru. As you can see here there's another law proposal. They are both projects No. 2485 and 2344

  7. Re:Couple possabilities on Has the Development of Window Managers Slowed? · · Score: 1

    Check this:

    http://www.handhelds.org/z/wiki/ePAQ

    ePAQ is a new window manager I started writing today to replace blackbox / ion on the iPAQ. I have a lot of thoughts / experience doing user interface stuff, so I am going to try to build a system that will work well running on a 240x320 and a 320x240 display. Until I have a working bootstrappable system I will use this page to leave notes on what I'm doing.

  8. Next wave: windowmanagers for handhelds on Has the Development of Window Managers Slowed? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hey.. Now a whole new group of windowmanagers is needed for all those devices running linux. Mandrake co-author of recent versions of Enlightenment was running Blackbox on his IPaq but has coded a handheld-specific windowmanager he's calling ePaq (http://www.handhelds.org/z/wiki/ePAQ)