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Cuba and Venezuela - Unlikely Good Examples of Open Source Preference
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By: Lawrence Dietz, Research Director, Sageza Group, Inc. Published: 21st February 2007 Copyright Sageza Group, Inc. © 2007 |
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StumbleUponA recent headline in my local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, attracted my attention: “Cuba moving to ditch Microsoft, its products” (see link). 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.
Reader Comments
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22nd February 2007: 'J.L.P. López de Victoria' said:
I agree with all but your last paragraph.
If profit should be a motive, it stands close to last. At least for those of us who equate dictatorship with monopoly, the first with regard to politics, the second in the matter of economic abuse.
It ultimately pertains to countries, given the essential right to freedom of their citizens.
I suggest that you should look ahead and not behind.
In doing so, you should also read the GPL (Google will find it for you in a flash).
22nd February 2007: 'Rufus Polson' said:
Big winners, I don't know about Brazil. They're a big strategic country in their region and all that, but their adoption seems to be half-hearted in practice whatever the theory, and where everyone else in the region speaks Spanish, they speak Portuguese. My bets in the region would more likely be on Venezuela.
22nd February 2007: 'Wesley Parish' said:
It actually makes a lot of sense. I made a comment in an Open Letter to the NZ Prime Minister on the Microsoft Government Shared Source program, that actually got printed by Computerworld NZ in 2003, that relying on a distant provider to keep up to date with bug fixes was a bit like Pappy Boynton having to send his Corsair back to the continental US every time he needed to change a spark plug.
For a state that is under seige from a close neighbour it makes even more sense.
From the viewpoint of human rights, it does two important things - firstly, RMS' political viewpoint is sufficiently left-of-centre that the Cuban authorities don't feel any alarm, and it is that political viewpoint that underlies his insistence on the overriding importance of the freedom of the programmer and the end-user; secondly, it attaches the concept of freedom to that of social utility and value, whereas the form of socialism that has been in power in Cuba has de-emphasised the freedom of the individual. Cuba is going to change, but at its own pace, and definitely not at the behest of the US government, and thankfully not at the point of the knife of the Batista brigade.
What more could you want?
22nd February 2007: 'Stuart' said:
Forget winners and losers, I want to know two things
1. Who authorized MS to DO BUISINESS IN CUBA in the first place!??!?! I thought we had an embargo with that country. Or is that only for less profitable corporations? Send BG to jail for collaborating with the enemy.
2. Where is the introspection? Why are Cuba and Venezuela singled out as examples of Open sourse in Govt? Are my tax dollars to be forever sqandered on Winblows licences? If the knock against Linux is its lack of multi-media support on the desktop, I have news for you, I don't want my taxes wasted on software that CAN display "YouTube" video's or play MP3's for some DHS secretary! Lets get all govt. computers with very capable Linux installs, with every piece of software you can think of free, including very capable office suites. If something the users need is not available, the money saved in licences would MORE than cover a few programmers to add the feature, and submit it back to the community. The US gov. already writes so much software, that contribution alone could spell the doom of MS, which is WHY it does not happen today, but not why it SHOULD NOT happen today. Not to mention, why is all this software the GOVT writes not released under the GPL (except of course NSA/spook related software, which of course does not exist!), we PAID for it damnit!
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