Saturday, October 27, 2007
Free Brazil
"Brazil: Free Software's Biggest and Best Friend", written by Todd Benson is about how Brazil's President is trying to create a program where all Brazilians can have access to computers and internet in their homes.
"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."
Once they have a significant number of agencies using the free operating systems, the general public will have equal access. The program is called "PC Conectado".Microsoft does not want to see this happen because they need to make their money so they are trying to work with the government to help without making it free.
"We're not going to spend taxpayers' money on a program so that Microsoft can
further consolidate its monopoly. It's the government's responsibility to
ensure that there is competition, and that means giving alternative software
platforms a chance to prosper."
The main focus of the article was to put computers into the homes of Brazilians but critics say that the focus should be to put computers in the schools. I think that there should be a combination of both but if I had to choose, I would say to put them in the homes only because it would provide more access to everyone.
Labels: Brazil, Microsoft, PC Conectado
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A good post. Is Brazil on the right track? Should other developing countries be looking for alternatives to the expensive software packages? Will this movement threaten the contol of Microsoft over the world market? Or is this just a negotiating tactic?
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