Followup on MS and Brazil in NY Times 386
putko was one of dozens to submit a story running on the NY Times about Open Source and Brazil. The choice quote is
"We're not going to spend taxpayers' money on a program so that Microsoft can further consolidate its monopoly..."
NYT article. (Score:5, Informative)
By TODD BENSON
SÃO PAULO, Brazil, March 28 - Since taking office two years ago, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has turned Brazil into a tropical outpost of the free software movement.
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.
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 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.
"For this program to be viable, it has to be with free software," said Sérgio Amadeu, president of Brazil's National Institute of Information Technology, the agency that oversees the government's technology initiatives. "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."
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 criticized Microsoft's proposal, calling the version's abilities too limited.
Still, Microsoft has not given up just yet. The company, which declined to make an executive available for an interview, said in a statement that it was still "working with the PC Conectado project to see if there's a way Microsoft can help."
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 ($509) or less. The machines will be comparable to those costing almost twice that outside the program.
Buyers will be able to pay in 24 installments of 50 to 60 reais, or about $18 to $21.80 a month, an amount affordable for many working poor. The country's top three fixed-line telephone companies - Telefónica of Spain; Tele Norte Leste Participações, or Telemar; and Brasil Telecom - have agreed to provide a dial-up Internet connection to participants for 7.50 reais, or less than $3, a month, allowing 15 hours of Web surfing.
The program aims at households and small-business owners earning three to seven times the minimum monthly wage, or about $284 to $662. The government says seven million qualify, and it hopes to reach a million of them by year-end.
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. (Including black-market sales, the number is closer to four million, still a small fraction of the number sold in the United States last year, according to the International Data Corporation, a technology research firm.)
"We're well aware that we're talking about doubling the domestic market for personal compu
Another sources - no registration links (Score:5, Informative)
News.com [com.com]
International Herald Tribune [iht.com]
Google News [google.com]
Btw, does anyone know why does the link from slashdot asks me for registration, but not the one from Google News?
It doesn't matter... (Score:5, Informative)
P.S. - I'm Brazilian and despite the fear of fraud, like it is happing with the Zero Hunger program, I strongly support this initiative.
Will this really help the poor in Brazil? (Score:3, Informative)
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 ($509) or less. The machines will be comparable to those costing almost twice that outside the program.
You can already get a dell for R$1499 which is very price competative with what your selling people.
Re:Sharing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I love Brazil! (Score:1, Informative)
I'm happy with the open-source initiative, I'm just sad with everything else. And with the people who elected our governors.
Re:NYT article. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Bankrupt?... (Score:0, Informative)
Re:What a load... (Score:5, Informative)
Cut the drama. The government is not FORCING anyone to buy their computers. People can still buy Dell's equally priced PCs with MS on it if they wish.
(was commodities) (Score:2, Informative)
Brazil has a huge "cliff" between social classes so as I take it for granted to have broadband at home, at my office and wifi connections at coffee shops, there are people who never touched a computer -- other than atm's or voring machines...
Re:Best news I have read in ages (Score:3, Informative)
You keep using this word - here and in other posts, where there is no force involved.
It's not only about cheap software (Score:2, Informative)
I read somewhere (don't remember where, don't have a link now, sorry) that it was expected that by 2008, Brazil (including public and private sectors) would be expending more money importing software than importing oil.
So, economically, it's a sane, smart move, if it's going to keep the money in Brazil.
Re:Come up north! (Score:3, Informative)
GOSLING [goslingcommunity.org] aka Getting Open Source Logic INto Government.
Their website is a bit out of date, but there is people working on it. Last I heard, the groups leader is helping set up a working group to investigate cost savings from using Open Source products, and he spoke of the savings that could be acrued from using a version of an Open Source product like Open Office vs. the continuing licenceing costs of using MS products. Yes, the price saving were evident even if they customised the suit to do the things they need, and doing their own maintenance.
Help? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What a load... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:commodities (Score:1, Informative)
Chances are, the government made some agreement with AOL, or some other provider, that paid some money to include a CD in the pc's box.
Re:What a load... (Score:4, Informative)
And... (Score:4, Informative)
$479.95 isn't that much in USA. I bet most of the people here make *at least* this over a week - probably much more. However, right here, getting that much money *a month* is considered more than average. The minimum wage is like 1/10th of that.
This is not to say 'the country is a poor country, boo-hoo sell us cheap software' (although it *is* a poor country). The thing is, values here are different; a software like that is *too expensive*. You can buy food here for a tiny fraction of how you'd pay for in on USA. Wages here are also a lot cheaper than they are in the States - even for the same job with the same qualifications. It's just that not only the country is poor, but living cost is also low; the values and the scales are different. You can get to a really good grill restaurant and get totally wasted with so much good food - and spending less than us$ 10. The same thing would cost around us$ 150 on USA - with the same restaurant chain! (Fogo de Chão - there's one around Detroit I think).
When selling software, people don't think "ho well, I'll use one third/half/quarter of my salary to pay for this software..".. they usually think "ho well, I'll use 1/2/3 months worth of salary to pay for this software.. well nevermind, I'll just buy a copy next corner for $3".
There are lots of wrong stuff going on the government of this country. And one of them is the coice for Microsoft Software. My dad used to work for the state a while ago.. Basically the entire office ran on pirated win95 with microsoft office, and of course, they had no 'central' support or IT management so I used to go there fix their computers. Switching to some linux based solution with open office (or whatever) would pose an obstacle at first but would be just as it was before on the long run. With less virus and trojans, that is (I remember I spent an entire weekend getting the entire office rid of macro template virii - man that was fucked up).
I, for one, commend them on this choice. On the long run, this will prove to be the best choice, contrary to the FUD the local Microsoft is spreading.
Of course, money saved from going to Microsoft's pockets will end up going to some politician's bank account, so who am I fooling. Nothing of this matters.
Re:NYT article. (Score:3, Informative)
"'The government shouldn't be the one who decides what hardware and software will go into these computers,' said Júlio Semeghini, a member of Congress from the opposition Social Democratic Party. 'That's undemocratic.'"
It may be handpicked by the government, but (unless there's something very important left out of the article) it's not mandatory software. Someone could buy one of these machines, and then install a different operating system on it once they get it home.
(This is really only slightly different than what US PC suppliers do now. Suppliers choose an OS to preinstall, and if you don't like it you can change it once you own the hardware. Of course, the way it works here is that you pay for the MS OS, whether or not you intend to use it. In this proposed program, the customer will never pay for software they don't use, because the included software is gratis.)
Again, from TFA:
"But the preference for open-source software has been controversial, with critics inside and outside the government saying Mr. da Silva's administration is letting leftist ideology trump the laws of supply and demand."
It seems to me this is a very demand-driven product. Or rather, it's an attempt to get a dormant market to bloom, and the success of the attempt is heavily dependent on the price point. At the price point they're looking to hit, they are required to make tradeoffs on cost.
At this point, there's no denying that free software is completely adequate for a cheap, preconfigured internet PC. Ideology aside, the program's directors have to ask themselves if the targeted market would be better served by spending money on a commercial OS instead of using free software and spending that money on better hardware. Given the price of regular Win XP Home, the price and capabilities of the stripped Windows that Microsoft offers for third-world customers, and the amount of RAM that same money would buy, it's hard to see how that cost tradeoff could possibly come out in favor of Microsoft's commercial software as a baseline for the entire program.
If XP Home cost $20 instead of $100, maybe Microsoft could win here. As it is, though, I don't see how they possibly could win a fair contest in this context.