http://www.it-director.com/blogs/Sageza_Amok/2007/2/cuba_and_venezuela_-_unlikely_good_.html
Cuba and Venezuela - Unlikely Good Examples of Open Source Preference
By: Lawrence Dietz, Research Director Sageza Group, Inc.
Published: 21st February, 2007
A recent headline in my local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, attracted my
attention: "Cuba moving to ditch Microsoft, its products" (1). While many
would tend to chalk this up to anti-US security paranoia, in my opinion this
would be the wrong conclusion.
During 2006 I had the opportunity of meeting with many government officials
from around the world and uniformly they were all interested in one thing:
saving money on their software license costs. While this was especially
prevalent in Asia, this goal was not unique to developing countries. Even
the most developed of nations such as Japan is aggressively exploring ways
to make better use of open source software and reduce their dependency on
Microsoft.
Government users, particularly those in the defense sector have always
harbored a distrust of commercial software for sensitive applications. The
cry of "Commercial Off the Shelf" (COTS) or "Government Off The Shelf"
(GOTS) does not echo as loudly as the crescendo of less budget dollars going
out the door. Many organizations will likely be able to increase their size
through the promise of reduced software purchasing and support costs.
The article mentions China, Brazil and Norway as countries that have
encouraged the development of Linux and the move from Microsoft. They are by
no means alone and it would follow that the Cuban model of mobilizing
university students to develop open source products is a model that could be
easily emulated by many nations. In fact, once upon a time (1997) in a far
off land called Bosnia I suggested to the US trade officials that the
country's universities would be ideal places to check Y2K code. Engineering
students and graduates had been trained in the old Soviet mainframe mold and
could easily adapt to the tasks inherent in riding any code of a potential
Y2K problem. Alas, no one thought this was such a good idea.
When I look at this open source movement from a geographical perspective, it
strikes me that the big winners in open source product trade are likely to
be China, Brazil and India.
In the case of open source the innovator's dilemma may be more of how to
make a profit than to make a usable product.
(1) http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/16721400.htm
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