Brazil and free software
This story has been percolating for a few years all over South America. More and more governments in the 3rd world are repudiating microsoft in favor of open source. There’s a Wired story about Brazil from 2003. In 2002, there was a ruckus in Peru when Peruvian Congressman David Villanueva Nu–ez wrote a letter to Microsoft outlining why Peru had decided to go open-source and dissecting Microsoft’s official position vis-a-vis open-source. It’s not just happening in South America. Last month, I posted here about the Government open code collaborative repository, a voluntary group of state government administrators and agencies who encourage open-source within state governments.
Looking to save millions of dollars in royalties and licensing fees, Mr. da Silva has instructed government ministries and state-run companies to gradually switch from costly operating systems made by Microsoft and others to free operating systems, like Linux. On Mr. da Silva’s watch, Brazil has also become the first country to require any company or research institute that receives government financing to develop software to license it as open-source, meaning the underlying software code must be free to all.
Now Brazil’s government looks poised to take its free software campaign to the masses. And once again Microsoft may end up on the sidelines.