Hi Cedar, As a brazilian, I think it is important for us this change for free software to save money. But on the other hand, what I see in the brazilian government policy is a lack of training and support for the workers, teachers od the public schools to make this transition and use free software in the their daily activities and become more technological fluent in that too. For example, I am aware that this lack of training for the teachers makes them decide to do not make activities in the computer lab with the students because the teacher is not fluent on Linux and does not know how to integrate the activities in the curriculum. I think it will change, but the great majority of the work places in Brazil still use the Windows plataform. So I think it is a complex issue for the education system. One of the problems that I think that the free software view of the brazilian government is that a bit technocentric, and it is paying more attention to get access to software or hardware an! d less attention for training people to use those free softwares. I also look this brazilian government view with certain cautious, because I dont that a software should be considered 'better just because it cost no money". It should be considered better if this especific software atends the necessity of the user/or certain community (example: technology developed for people from poor comunities in developing countries and not just for office). What kind of people/community the software engineer had in mind when they developed a certain software should be considered when we are choose one, independently if it is a free software or payed one. I think that countries like Brazil, should choose for options that are more sustainable for the country. The governamental policy to use free software is also a making a big change in the brazilian digital inclusion movement. The idea of opening a telecenter with the donations of used computers and free software is very attractive for the poor communities and a lot of experiences like that are emerging in Brazil. But some communities are having difficulties with issues of sustaintability of the digital inclusion project and also to make this transition to open source and it created other problems and chalenges to the brazilian digital inclusion movement. So things are not so simple as it seems in the begining and a lot of experiences are emerging and disapearing too, and this creates other challenges for the construction of a brazilian policy for the digital inclusion movement. Obs: Sorry for my English.... Sincerely, Ana Maria Moraes. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://br.geocities.com/bibliotecamicromundos
Cedar Pruitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: At the World Social Forum, a protest gathering that runs concurrently with the World Economic Forum, the use of software in the developing world is under scrutiny. Activists urged Brazil to discontinue the use of proprietary software from Microsoft and replace it with free open source software developed cooperatively by groups of developers. "Already, Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger," said John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a speech there Saturday. Reports the Boston Herald: "Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's administration says the open-source policy makes sense for a developing country where a mere 10 percent of the 182 million people have computers at home, and where the debt-laden government is the nation's biggest computer buyer." This morning, National Public Radio announced that Brazil was planning to switch all 300,000 government computers to rely exclusively on open-source software. NPR also announced that Microsoft founder Bill Gates has requested a meeting with da Silva to discuss the situation in more depth. I'd be interested in hearing from others on this list on this topic. What direction will this action take? Could Brazil be the first step in an open source revolution among developing nations, and if so, is that a good thing? Are there any potential drawbacks to Brazil's action that we can think of? It would be especially great to hear from people living and working in developing nations right now, and their immediate reaction to this news. Thinking ten years into the future, what will give the most advantage to the citizens of today's developing world? -Cedar For more information: Distinguished copyright expert Lawrence Lessig blogged his reaction to the Forum: Slashdot takes notes: -------------------------------------------------------- Cedar Pruitt Online Content Manager EDC Center for Media & Community http://cmc.edc.org cpruitt @ edc.org (617) 618-2185 --------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. __________________________________________________ Converse com seus amigos em tempo real com o Yahoo! Messenger http://br.download.yahoo.com/messenger/ _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
