Brazil is one of the most active countries in the development and use of FOSS. It has developed its own version of Linux, named Conectiva and many of its vital software systems are run by FOSS; it also has the largest number of FOSS developers and contributors. It has developed laws and allocated funds to promote the use of FOSS.
Brazil was described by Jonathan Schwartz, Chief Executive Officer and President of Sun Microsystems in 2006 as being one of the most progressive nations in the world when it comes to the use FOSS.
Contents
Why to promote FOSS
The ultimate goal behind the Brazilian policy to promote FOSS is to ensure that citizens have the right to access public services without requiring them to use specific platforms.
The reasoning behind this policy and its subsequent activities to promote the use of FOSS are:
(1) Economic reasons (the government estimates savings from the switch to open source to be about $120 million a year)
(2) Developmental reasons (to decrease the digital divide, create initiatives and opportunities to bring technology to the poor and other reasons related to the implications of intellectual property systems in the developing world)
(3) Ideological reasons (the freedom to borrow from available ideas and thenadjust them into something new and original).
In addition to the above mentioned reasons, it is believed that the Brazilian open source policy is an expression of national notions related to anti-Americanism, anti-globalization or anti-capitalism. It is also an alternative to Microsoft systems and policies.
Implementation
Brazil has developed the world’s first bank ATM network operated on open source software. The army has adopted free software as well as the main data processing entity at the government. There are also many other public systems and institutions which are now operated via open source software, such as: the voting system in Brazil, State-owned Banco do Brasil SA, the postal service, the state oil company, the national statistics agency etc.
In 2004, the government embarked on a project to convert 80% of department's computers from Windows to Linux. The project proved to be successful. As of 2005, about 60% of state departments were already using FOSS solutions.
Moreover, a presidential decree was drafted in 2005 calling for making FOSS compulsory for all Brazilian federal departments to switch to open source software. In the state of Ceara, a law was passed in April 2008 requiring the state public administrations to give preference to FOSS systems and programs. Furthermore, Brazil has allocated funds for FOSS research and training. For example, the Ministry of Science and Technology had allocated funding of $2.1 million in 2003 for open source software research and in 2004, the government provided training for about 2,100 municipal, state and federal public employees in the implementation and management of open source platforms for government administration.
Brazilians FOSS Community
The profile of FOSS Brazilian developers is comparable to the profile of European developers with highly professional developers, and diversified portfolio that consists of systems managers, network technicians, entrepreneurs, researchers and college students. As for FOSS development companies, there is a prevalence of smaller sized companies.
The profile of FOSS users is different where large organizations prevail such as communication and information technology sectors, government, commerce, and education. Their main drives in adopting FOSS are economic (to reduce costs) and technical (to develop new skills).The role of the local government was vital in the Brazilian experience as it supported FOSS activities and was able to link the efforts of universities, companies and individuals in the Free Software Project.
The policy of adopting FOSS into the government bodies was strongly supported and projects to implement it were put in place promptly in several cities and municipalities. Some of the cities have approved laws making the adoption of Free Software Solutions the preferred one, and requiring technical evaluations of proprietary solutions if they were the ones recommended.
For example, in the city of São Carlos, in the state of São Paulo, a “Free Software” law has been approved in October 2001. The city has installed eight free software based labs in public school libraries and a couple of “telecenters” in the poor areas of the city, where they are also providing training to the population, facilitating the citizens' access to technology and helping them finding jobs.
The role of research and support from universities is also a highlight in the Brazilian experience. One of the universities in Brazil, UNIVATES hosts a portal of FOSS (now cohosted by UNICAMP, the State University of Campinas, in São Paulo, Código Livre), which serves like a bank where developers and users contribute to its funding stash.
UNIVATES has been producing FOSS since 2000, and has reported that their savings from using FOSS was sufficient to pay the salaries of FOSS developers.The Brazilian experience in adopting open source has been successful.
Weakness
However, some researches have highlighted some weak points in the experience such as (a) poor coordination of the implementation of the policy between the relevant institutions charged with its execution. For example, while the congress of Brazil tried to impose a time frame on the proprietary software use by announcing in August 2003 that proprietary software once expired will not be upgraded and shall be replaced by open source, the government institutions in charge of software policy argued that migration should not be compulsory.
Another example of weakness point lies in (b) the resistance of implementing the law in practice. This was the case in some states where employees were not convinced by the efficiency of open source software. In addition, researchers also highlighted problems with the (c) influence of proprietary software industry in Brazil which is a barrier to the adoption of open source policy; (d) lack for government funding for migration to FOSS and (e) poor provision for language translation of FOSS which has caused delays in someprojects.
An example is the Ministry of Education which purchased 12,000 computers for schools, using Linux and Open Office. The project was delayed because of lack of Brazilian Portuguese versions of the software.
(F) Some critiques pointed out the poor quality of FOSS where it has been implemented including non-compliance to the traditional open license policies because it does not include the source code.
Entities roles
Furthermore, the role of the government and state is very active in the Brazilian experience where it provided the legal framework support, funds, initiated projects and coordinated efforts among various research and NGO institutions.
The role of ICT centers, NGOs and special committees such as the committee for Democracy in Information Technology (CDI) was very vital in the Brazilian experience as well. There have been a number of projects initiated in Brazil in the last decade that aims at decreasing the digital divide and facilitating poor household access to ICT, most of the project gives special attention to youth.
Essence of the experience
The essence of the experience lies in the comprehensiveness of implementation of the policy (laws, funds, support, projects, R&D and access to the poor). The most important factors in this experience are in the leading role of the government along with the coordination with R&D centers in different universities. Brazil also paid attention to hosting international forums for the use of FOSS and for sharing experience with other countries. For instance, the state of Rio Grande do Sul hosts the International Free Software Forum. Many projects were implemented to facilitate the migration to FOSS in different states and municipalities and NGOs were active in implementing projects that facilitate access of ICT to the poor. One of the main challenges in the Brazilian experience was user resistance, but the government has implemented some initiatives to face the challenges such as providing tax incentives for companies that use ICT OSS systems.