Brazil an open source haven

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 30 March 2005 15:30

IT Industry - Development

Since taking office two years ago, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has turned Brazil into a tropical outpost of the free software movement, reports The New York Times (29 Mar).

The NYT says that 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. 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, the paper reports.

The paper also says that 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.By the end of April, the government plans to roll out a much ballyhooed program called PC Conectado, or Connected PC, aimed at helping millions of low-income Brazilians buy their first computers.

And, says the NYT., if the president's top technology adviser gets his way, the program may end up offering computers with only free software, including the operating system, handpicked by the government instead of giving consumers the option of paying more for, say, a basic edition of Microsoft Windows.

The paper says Microsoft has offered to provide a simplified, discounted version of Windows for the program. Though a final decision on which software to install has been delayed several times, as has the program's rollout, Mr. Amadeu and some other government officials have publicly criticised Microsoft's proposal, calling the version's abilities too limited.

Under the program, which is expected to offer tax incentives for computer makers to cut prices and a generous payment plan for consumers, the government hopes to offer desktops for around 1,400 reais (US$509) or less. The machines will be comparable to those costing almost twice that outside the program, says the NYT.

According to the NYT., the program aims at households and small-business owners earning three to seven times the minimum monthly wage, or about US$284 to US$662. The government says seven million qualify, and it hopes to reach a million of them by year-end.

The paper says that may seem ambitious in a developing country of 183 million people where only 10 percent of all households have internet access and just 900,000 computers are sold legally each year, although including black-market sales, the number is closer to four million.