Brazil Leans Away From Microsoft: an example for the rest of Latin America

The brazilian president , Lula da Silava, appointed a clear man to Brazil's National Information Techonology Institute. Silva's top technology officer, Sergio Amadeu, wants to transform the land of samba and Carnival into a tech-savvy nation where everyone from schoolchildren to government bureaucrats uses open-source software instead of costly Windows products.

Paying software licensing fees to companies like Microsoft is simply "unsustainable economically" when applications that run on the open-source Linux (news - web sites) operating system are much cheaper, Amadeu said. Under his guidance, Silva's administration is encouraging all sectors of government to move toward open-source programs, whose basic code is public and freely available.

"We have some islands in the federal government using open-source, but we want to create a continent," said Amadeu, a former economics professor who gained fame before joining Silva's team by launching a network of free computer centers in Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo.

Amadeu, who uses a Linux laptop in his office in an annex of Silva's presidential palace, authored the book "Digital Exclusion: Misery in the Information Era," which argues that the gap between the needy and the wealthy will only deepen unless the poor have easy access to the technology that the rich have at their fingertips, especially in developing countries like Brazil.

As predicted, Microsoft's Moncau (Microsoft Brazil's Marketing Manager) plays down predictions by Brazilian open-source supporters that government efforts to increase Linux use could create jobs and turn the country into a technology exporter. Open-source software could actually be more expensive than Windows programs when service costs are factored in, he said.

But try telling that to the tens of thousands of Brazilians who regularly visit the 86 free "Telecentro" free computer centers in Sao Paulo, a sprawling city of 18 million. All the centers' computers use open-source software, and the Telecentros cater to working class Brazilians without the means to buy computers. They learn how to send e-mail, write resumes and cruise the Web.

Waiting his turn for a terminal while bouncing his toddler on his lap, Francisco de Assis said his monthly salary of $200 makes owning a computer impossible. The 31-year-old security guard considers the government's plight to be similar.

"If this was a rich country, it wouldn't matter and we could buy Microsoft products, but we're a developing country and Linux is just a lot more accessible, so we're heading toward a Linux generation." Brazil Leans Away From Microsoft