Linux Today reports that Venezuela is adopting a policy to use Free Software in government. (GPL'd software, specifically.)
The reasons are practical, like the ones cited by Dr. Villanueva from Peru:
- Stay in license compliance (and purge all unlicensed software from the gov't)
- Support the local IT sector
Venezuelan minister Dr. Felipe Pérez-Martàcites that 5% of IT spending stays in Venezuela, while 75% of IT spending goes abroad to pay for software licenses, and 20% of IT spending goes abroad to pay for software support.
Dr. Villanueva painted a similar picture of Peru. In an ironic twist, the Peruvian agency that investigates and prosecutes users of unlicensed software uses unlicensed software itself, as do the attorneys and judges (and presumably other parts of the government). Reducing licensing costs is simply a practical matter in developing countries, not a political one.
This turn of events was expected; the reason why Microsoft took an interest in subsidizing IT costs in Peru was to slow down the similar free software mandates in Boliva, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Venezuela and the other nations in Latin America.
It's also starting to happen in Brazil.
godoy on 2002-08-31T18:01:48
In Brazil our data processing center -- SERPRO -- is also switching to Linux. The reasons are the forced obsolescence of applications and hardware.
There's one article in Portugues
here and another
here.
I see that this will be more frequent in 3rd world countries, since the investment is lower and we don't need to pay royalties or send money outside the country (although Brazil adopted RedHat, due to its applications compatibility list, I think that United Linux will be something they should be looking at when it becomes true).
