http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,51902,00.html
Very interesting article from Wired Magazine about a bill in Peru's Congress that would mandate the use of Open Source software in government use. It talks about the challenges that the bill faces, a letter from Microsoft Peru, and an AMAZING letter in response from Peru Congressman DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ that blasts every point from the Microsoft letter. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=32114&threshold=1&commentsort=3&tid=117&; mode=thread&cid=3463723 His letter (mirrored at this URL) is very good reading too. I am very much impressed by the Peruvian government and especially this Congressman. A few of the better quotes from this letter: "The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietry software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity)." (and perhaps one of the best portions from his letter) "In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidising the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money." Slashdot Discusion on this subject http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/04/220237&mode=thread&tid=117 Warren Togami [EMAIL PROTECTED]
