Brazil Moves Away From Microsoft 630
An anonymous reader writes "Citing economic as well as social reasons, Brazil's government is opting to move away from Windows, opting instead for Open Source (read: Linux) solutions. Interestingly, Microsoft's representative in Brazil decries this as a movement away from freedom and choice..."
Thanks Lula! (Score:2, Interesting)
When should a stock holder start to worry (Score:5, Interesting)
As well as.... (Score:4, Interesting)
We should probably add security reasons, employment reasons, resource reasons, government infrastructure reasons, political reasons, etc....etc...etc...
Although, that said. There is a place for proprietary software and many Microsoft products would meet this need. The problem is that Microsoft spent years being just good enough and out-competing the better alternative in many cases (MacOS) and now it is turning around to bite them in the butt, because Linux based solutions are now in many cases.....good enough.
Of course OS X is still the best solution for most users that I have yet seen, but in the short term, Brazil could likely use their existing CPU hardware infrastructure for Linux as opposed to purchasing new hardware from Apple. Long term costs could most likely be lower with a gradual phasing in of OS X in combination with OSS solutions running on Linux and the use of existing infrastructure on Windows however as a healthy computing ecosystem is diverse.
is this a threat to linux security? (Score:5, Interesting)
If Brazil remains a locus of "grayhat" activity, could this mean more resources will be put toward finding Linux exploits? Certainly on the whole Linux is more secure than Microsoft's offerings, but I imagine most would agree that its small userbase has played a part in limiting the number of exploits uncovered.
Wonderful News (Score:3, Interesting)
Individial centric social structures (such as capitalism) work well in many ways, but they are very vulnerable through brainwashing of individuals (advertising) and the abuse of the commons(spam). Governments are the forces of socialism which keep things in check. I'm giddy at seeing this actually happening.(Even though I am deeply sad that my own dear Home of the Brave dropped the ball on this in a fearfully troubling manner.) I pray to any higher power that will answer me that this sort of thing will continue until it is safe and productive to have a good idea again.
Attitude indeed (Score:0, Interesting)
The bus is the transportation of choice for poor people. Ramen is the food of choice for poor people. Taco Bell is the restaurant of choice for poor people. Welfare is the lifestyle of choice for poor people.
Where does that put linux?
Re:When should a stock holder start to worry (Score:5, Interesting)
The main reason why Linux was being adopted outside of the United States was because of its cost, even with $2.50 per copy for Windows XP in 3rd world nations, linux decreases in cost per unit the more machines you install it upon.
The other reason was SuSE and Mandrake, both European and not from the United States. Which plays well in the EU. There is a mentality amoung many leaders in France and Germany that want to see the "United States of Europe" superpower and waining themselves from Microsoft could give Europe a leg up in technology as Linux catches on in SE Asia and the 3rd world.
Now with SuSE in the hands of a NA company, I wonder how that will impeed linux adoption. Oh course, IBM would love to see this happen as the premiums would return to hardware, not software.
I think Linux will be catching on internationally in the next couple years on desktops big time. It probably will be longer in the United States.
Well, of course governments are doing this (Score:5, Interesting)
And then there's an item in the Wall Street Journal about someone from Microsoft striking a deal with the country's government. They get big discounts, free software, maybe some gifts for the schools, maybe even some investments or jobs.
So if you were running a poor country, why WOULDN'T you threaten to give Microsoft products the boot? It's a negotiation!
Re:Freedom and choice (Score:5, Interesting)
I am sure that if you went to one of the local 'Thermas' you would find both...
I went to Brazillia and watched the open source debate. I think folk in the US are completely missing the plot. First off the Brazillian govt is dependent on Microsoft in the way the US govt is dependent on Cobol, Windows is their legacy infrastructure.
Secondly the big issue for the country at the moment is the balance of payments. The government is calculating that they can get better prices out of Redmond if they apply pressure.
Finally there is a protectionist angle, keeping out big US software companies helps local companies - perhaps.
Re:When should a stock holder start to worry (Score:5, Interesting)
A friend of mine called last week asked me for my opinion on choosing J2EE and
I found it amusing: a company who work with Microsoft very closely all these years is being forced to switch, even when they must start from the beginning.
The software industry has become so melodramatic.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it goes more to show how Microsoft feels entitled to each and every market they enter, and that they're not trained to respond to the market around them as they're so used to controlling it. If they lose business in some market, it's not because their prices are high and their products are inferior, it's because some other market force "has it in for them."
Re:Good and bad... (Score:3, Interesting)
So you're saying that money from Brazil that would go to Microsoft would eventually trickle down to everyone in the U.S.??? Maybe if you're a lawyer who is suing or defending MS, but otherwise, no-- Microsoft is sitting on over 50 billion dollars right now as a hedge fund against lawsuits-- their shareholders are actually complaining about the cash hoard. [nwsource.com]
~Philly
Re:When should a stock holder start to worry (Score:3, Interesting)
While Brazil has a huge potential, it also has a huge black market. You can buy your copy of XP on the street for next to nothing.
Most official organizations have to have licenses, so there's some money made, which MS now might stand to lose, but it's more about market share.
MS would rather have you use MS warez than OSS. Because when you buy your new computer, you'll have bought a new OS. And one day you won't be able to run copys anymore...
And they of course are afraid of free initiative. Those countries might have huge social and economical problems, their programmers are just as smart.
Look at what Asia is doing now and extrapolate.
Latin America is a huge *potential* market, and moves like this might make MS lose them before the potential comes to fruition.
Re:context people (Score:3, Interesting)
Restricting a society to Open Source Only will stunt the economy of that society, limiting them to word processors, spreadsheets, web browsers and an array of similar 'prole' applications.
Why this is a move away from freedom and choice (Score:1, Interesting)
Now the move is toward "use what is best, and open"
Like it or not, this DOES put a restriction which was not there before. I'm not saying that Microsoft has a point, I'm just saying I'd like everyone to stop pretending they dont understand it.
Sandbox (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft has proven that it can not play nice with the other children, and as such has been given a few years timeout
The Best SW for the job is a fallacy.
I recently saw a movie where the head surgeon made all the operation on little children with brain tumors. He was almost let go as this clearly disallowed anyone else to aquire the needed skill set.
Nobody disputed that fact that he was the best.
Re:When should a stock holder start to worry (Score:3, Interesting)
Investors with poorly diversified portfolios, or idiot fund managers with a very large percentage invested in MSFT have a lot more to worry about in my opinion.
In the long run does MS really have a chance when competing against free, well written, well understood software?
Depends on if Microsoft stays in the proprietary, locked down software industry. They're not idiots - if there's writing on the wall, they'll deploy their forces somewhere else and take over industries with hard assets, much like AOL converted it's dot-com purchasing power into a media empire with physical plant and assets (Time Warner.) For all I know Microsoft could be funneling some of that spare cash into a research project that produces a viable fusion reactor.
Never underestimate a company with somewhere around 40 billion dollars IN CASH.
Re:Theres a typo (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the word they were searching for was "Ironically".
I think "predictably".
Re:My Experience with Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
perspective: Free Trade Area of Americas (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:When should a stock holder start to worry (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think the premiums are ever going to return to hardware. Not PC hardware at least. With open source they might shift more towards service/support rather than just the initial sale of the software, which they probably like.
Next move: value freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
Free Software is often better than proprietary software. The OpenSource movement bases it's whole argument on this point. The terms "Free Software" and "OpenSource" usually refer to the same thing [compsoc.com], but if people don't value freedom, they won't see a reason not to switch back when a better (low-cost initially) proprietary alternative comes along.
I wonder if this has anything to do with Stallmans recent video talk at a brazillian Free Software conference [gnu.org].
No. (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft won the browser war not for being the best browser, but because it came free with the OS.
If Linux does what most people want and does it well, then I really don't see how Microsoft has a chance. The only thing they can do at this point to compete would be to release the Win2k/XP/Longhorn kernel for free, not neccessarily open-source.
People currently pay for Microsoft software even with the bugs and reboots. If you give them something for free that does pretty much the same thing with the bugs and reboots included then free is really a no brainer.
What can Microsoft do to counter Linux?
1. Lower the cost of the Windows OS. The've got plenty of ability to move here since it is priced so high to begin with (compared to free).
2. Get rid of the client access licenses.
3. Offer a slicked down base OS for free, then make sure they stay in the applications development arena. Remmember, it's really the apps that do all the work.
4. Complain about Linux until it runs right over them, they lose there shareholders, and Bill ends up tossing a snow globe while uttering rosebud.
+1
Ominous (Score:2, Interesting)
"There is the risk of creating a technology island in Brazil supported by law."
Hmmm... Sounds like a reference to the "remote attestation" procedure [eff.org] in Trusted Computing. Basically, if a Windows server doesn't "trust" the operating system, it won't interact with it. Brazil could really find itself out of the loop if that were the case.
Re:Well written? Well understood? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Great stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
It's just one data point of the much larger "deal" with Brazil and sex.
Natives with strong fertility cults merged forcefully with European Catholicism, and that creates a certain mix of sexual obligation and sexual repression. The result is extremely weird, and it has plenty of fringes. You only seem to have noticed one of them...
OSS in perspective (Score:2, Interesting)
Another point is that a law stating that all government departments use OSS and Linux does nothing to prevent freedom of choice. The government doesn't think that MS Windows suits their needs and wants to change to Linux. This law will only enforce all of the government to stick with a standard that they already chose. How good would it be if every single department used something different? Complete chaos....
In Brazil there are many schools, universities and hospitals that are public. This means that they belong to the goverment. It's not like in the US where thos things belongs to a group of people or investors. Imagine having to buy windows liscenses by the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) for $150 each?
The entire population can still use Windows if they want. Another aspect is that Brazil has a lot of developers and IT professionals. Using OSS will create more job opportunities for those people and will help pick up the economy. You guys have no idea how bad is the unemployment rate there...
And yes, I am brazilian.
Re:When should a stock holder start to worry (Score:4, Interesting)
I've read the Cringely article, and it's certainly true that MS can do this for a while, but they have to keep some of those going in order to have a long-term business plan.
At some point over the next ten years or so Office and Windows will stop making significant profits (or at least, they'll only make normal ~10% margin). When that happens the share price has to drop, as it's predicated on high margin and high growth.
Of course Balmer and Gates realize this. That's why they've started to prepare shareholders for a different kind of Microsoft. They've started issuing dividends - a sure sign of a stock that's going from high-growth to steady but boring profit. That's part 1 of the plan, and very sensible on their part. Part 2 is harder: make sure the steady but boring profit comes through.
I don't think it's ever happened before that a company with more money than God sees it's main revenue source evaporate. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Can they build up the non-Office, non-Windows part of their business fast enough to avoid imploding?
Re:When should a stock holder start to worry (Score:3, Interesting)
I've heard about that too. Microsoft is giving up
It might be too late for you, but in fact a lot of opensource effort has been made for commercial J2EE alternaitves. Take a look at Apache Struts, Hibernate, Velocity, Eclipse and Easy Struts, etc. As a matter of fact the most expensive (and almost non-repaceable part) is the EJB containers which is included in the most expensive J2EE component - Application Server. With all the opensource alternatives out there I think the cost J2EE deployment will be drastically lower in the very near future.
You can take a look of the example 'PetShop' reimplemented with MVC-based Struts here [ibatis.com].
Only you've to get familar with the tools so as to recommend it to your boss with confident. That's what I've suggested to the friend I mentioned in the parent post.
Open source is a free market for Microsoft too (Score:1, Interesting)
If their reply is "But we sell only proprietary software" then they are willfully excluding themselves from the market, and it would be quite ridiculous for them to apportion the blame elsewhere.
After all, this is no different in principle to a government deciding to limit their vehicle purchases to only those employing catalytic converters. A response of "But we sell only cars without catalytic converters" merely highlights the fact that the supplier has chosen not to operate in the relevant market.
Re:The Demand is Already There and Growing Fast (Score:3, Interesting)
The mythical man month presumes a top-down, managed approach. It has not only not been shown to be applicable to free software and open source development, the history of numerous free software projects demonstrate its inapplicability. Proprietary, top-down management isn't terribly scalable, any more than top-down, managed economies are. OTOH the decentralized, self-organizing approach to software development employed in the free software world is quite scalable, as demonstrated by the success of GNU and in particular Linux, which was able in a few short years to achieve greater quality and portability in the creation of a free UNIX-like operating system than its commercial competitors (including the original SCO) were able to do in two decades.
The difference is very analogouos to that of centrally planned economies vs. those which are self-organizing (be thay capitalist, socialist, or in one case
Developing a complete UNIX-like operating system was certainly more complex than developing a CAD system
The reality is that (a) Brazil isn't the trendsetter (other countries have already made the move) and (b) the savings and strength afforded to the local IT economy by adopting a policy of software freedom vastly outweigh the conversion costs, which are a one-time-only expense.
Not only is it NOT a catch-22, converting to free and open software is something Brazil, and other countries, have learned they CANNOT afford NOT to do.
Unlike many such countries, Brazil is fortunate enough to have leadership enlightened enough to recognize this and courageous enough to stand up to Microsoft and their Washington, D.C. subsidiary (the US Government) and actually impliment it.