Brazil has been actively pursuing implementation of open source IT
solutions. Recently I stumbled across the following article two years
ago, which perked my interest:
http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/06/20/1420245
Microsoft sues Brazilian magazine, IT official for defamation Sunday
June 20, 2004 (02:00 PM GMT) By: Fergus Cassidy
In a 7 June filing to the Criminal Court of Sao Paulo, Microsoft said
that "Sergio Amadeu, President of the National Institute of
Information Technology (ITI), aiming at disseminating free software
among Ministries, State owned companies and governmental bodies, made
aggressive declarations lacking any kind of technical foundation
about the use of the software developed by Microsoft."
The filing continues: "In defending free software, Mr. Amadeu does
not abstain from criticizing Microsoft, accusing the company of a
'drug-dealer practice' for offering the operational system Windows to
some governments and city administration for digital inclusion
programs.
"To Amadeu, this will be a decisive year to win the 'strategy of
fear, uncertainty and doubt,' as he classifies the business model of
Microsoft.
"These declarations made by Mr. President of the ITI, beyond being
absurd and criminal, extrapolate prohibitions and violate duties
inherent to the public office the Defendant exercises."
Asserting that Amadeu's remarks are infringing speech under Article
25 of the Press Law, Microsoft has demanded that Amadeu answer a list
of questions, mostly centred on the use of the phrase "drug dealer
practice."
Per article:
http://www.petitiononline.com/amadeuus/
To: All those who *truly* believe in serious projects of social
inclusion, to governments, especially in Brazil, that should not
tolerate a North American company that is trying to deter righteous
projects of social and technological uplifting of a developing
nation.
Disagreeing with the policies of the Brazilian government in defense
of free software — which is bringing to an end the *market reserve*
of Microsoft for the purchase of software and government computers —
the company is launching an offensive to try to intimidate the
Brazilian government.
It also states,
The Practice of Intimidation
All of us already know that Microsoft doesn't let itself lose and
that it's opposed to open competition, but the giant crossed the line
this week. In a clear act of intimidation loosed by the giant
against the government of Brazil, the monopoly began criminal
proceedings against the Brazilian government official responsible for
the deployment of free software, Sergio Amadeu, president of the
ITI. The Brazilian official received judicial notice of criminal
charges brought against him by the company against his supposed
declarations, in the weekly "Carta Capital", saying that the donation
of software to governments is a practice similar to that of drug
dealers. This declaration, attributed to Sergio Amadeu in the
magazine, isn't original. The president of Sun and various activists
of the free software movement use this analogy: "the first dose of
proprietary software distributed for free is like a drug, after
creating a dependency in the users the company starts to charge."
But why were the charges only brought against the Brazilian official?
The company also wants Sergio Amadeu to explain why, according to
the magazine, he attributes Microsoft's business strategy to the
practice of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) where the free software
market is concerned. This is also nothing new. A week prior, a
declaration entitled "Declaration of Barcelona for the advance of
Free Software", signed by various international experts, among them
Manuel Castells and Vinton Cerf, one of the creators of the Internet,
had already noted: "Free software must work hard to combat the
techniques of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) which are used
against it."
http://www.for-the-people.org/blog/entries/entry.2004-06-18.1210
Microsoft and the Brazilian IT chief Lawrence Lessig reports on
Microsoft's tactics.
Link: http://www.lessig.org/
From the Lessig blog:
Apparently Microsoft has taken the first steps to filing a criminal
defamation action against a Brazilian government official who was
quoted criticizing Microsoft in a magazine article. Sergio Amadeu,
head of the agency responsible for spreading free software within the
Brazilian government, is reported to have accused "the company of a
'drug-dealer practice' for offering the operational system Windows to
some governments and cities for digital inclusion programs. 'This is
a trojan horse, a form of securing critical mass to continue
constraining the country'."
As indicated by my comment on the Lessig blog, Microsoft claims (in
Portuguese) that their petition for an explanation from Sergio Amadeu
has been misinterpreted as the initiation of court proceedings.
Sergio Amadeu has also made an official statement (in Portuguese) on
the matter. He points out that putting pressure on an official in
this way to give an explanation is unprecedented, and, after
consulting his own and the government's lawyers, he will not respond
to it. He also reaffirms that the decision to use F/OSS in the
Brazilian government was based on a desire to support democratic
principles.
It would seem that bullying officials in developing countries is the
new marketing innovation at Microsoft, and that in picking on Sergio
Amadeu they may have chosen the wrong man.
Another blog points out that Bill Gates himself has, in the past,
described his company's strategy as being, more or less, along the
drug pusher model.
Created by Alastair Burt on 2004-06-18.
This is the blog being referred to:
http://hackers.propus.com.br/~pablo/blog/?id=32
Microsoft vs. Sérgio Amadeu - update
As I've told in my last blog entry, there're (now available)
translations for the petitions both into english and into spanish.
I was reading a little more about the drug dealer argument, and I
found something at least interesting:
"Although about three million computers get sold every year in China,
people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as
long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours.
They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how
to collect sometime in the next decade."
It was said by Bill Gates, in a 1998 talk to university students (and
printed in Fortune Magazine) according to P2PNet. It surely turned
on a big neon sign that says "Drug-Dealer Argument" in my head in the
exact moment I read it...
It looks like nothing ever became of it, from what I gather in the
reading, that Microsoft decided after all, not to pursue legal action
against Mr. Amadeu.
http://informatica.terra.com.br/interna/0,,OI327393-EI553,00.html
(Google translation from Portuguese)
Fifth, 17 of June of 2004, 20h22 MS clarifies asked for of
explanation the director of the ITI
The Microsoft emitted a note today where he clarifies the episode of
the explanation order that the company made Sergio Amadeu of the
Silveira, president of the National Institute of Technology of
Information (ITI. In interview to the CartaCapital magazine in the
March month, Amadeu said that the company used “tactics of the
gratuitous dealers” when supplying softwares programs of digital
inclusion, what it would be a way to accustom the users.
The explanation order generated rumors of that the MS would be
processing managing of the ITI. It reads to follow the complete one
of the note of the Microsoft, signed for Rinaldo Zangirolami, General
Director of Legal and Corporative Subjects of the Microsoft Brazil:
Note of clarification
We are not processing nobody, and the order of explanations is not
related to a personal question.
The Microsoft continues engaged with a respectful and opened dialogue
with the government, customers and the industry to address the
necessities of the Brazilian economy and the community.
The Microsoft is present in the country has 14 years more than. Our
commitment with the country is of long stated period. By means of
ours 10,000 partners, 45,000 jobs are generated in Brazil and more
than R$ 1 billion is collected in taxes annually.
Rinaldo Zangirolami General director of Legal and Corporative
Subjects Microsoft Brazil
However IMHO, it appears the news helped to galvanize the Linux movement
in Brazil. In addition, Brazil has gone for a one million OLPC order
for children:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5745842945.html
Brazil nears million Linux laptop order Aug. 28, 2006
The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project reported Aug. 27 that Brazil
is finalizing plans for "all aspects" of its $100 laptop roll-out.
Along with Argentina, Nigeria, and Thailand, Brazil had previously
indicated interest in purchasing 1 million of the machines for needy
children.
Spread the word: digg this story Walter Bender, the OLPC's president
for software and content, said in his weekly news update that, up to
now, the Brazilian project has been coordinated solely by that
country's presidency with the assistance of the Ministry of
Education. "They will now begin to work more deeply with other
ministries," Bender said via email.
The OLPC project aims to distribute -- free of charge -- millions of
Linux-based laptop computers, complete with their own power sources,
to needy children in developing countries around the world.
Several days ago, the OLPC posted a brief news item that discussed a
possible new design, along with a name change from "The $100 Laptop"
to "The Children's Machine."
Blog of the Sergio Amadeu
http://samadeu.blogspot.com/
Following is a Google translation from Portuguese to English, with
clean-up of a few words it could not translate, so there may be errors.
Translation reads a little awkward but most should be able to grasp Mr.
Amadeu's points. He is for freedom that Open Source and Linux
expresses, even extending it to machines that children can enhance their
learning with computers down to their level of understanding.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007 BIENNIAL OF IT JOINS: RIVER, 30 of
January of 2007
Amadeu approached as the cultural goods and the symbolic goods inside
acquire a value of informacionais nets e, through this, have a
intangible, different capacity of the classic industrial production.
“To reproduce a chair, we can use the same materials and use refined
methods so that in a production line they are practically identical -
but each one will have its materiality and its particularitity”, it
said.
“In the digital ways, the reproduction them cultural goods (musics,
codes, texts, photos) is identical”, it does not add cost and it does
not exclude who already possesss it, that is, it is not possible to
imagine to apply the same rules of the scarcity for the cultural
goods that circulate in the digital ways.”
Analyst has much time of the question of the copyright and of the
patents in the context of the Internet, Amadeu questions the current
contradiction in the production and reproduction of the information.
“We live in a time of dispute of two standards of development - the
colaborativo and the restrictive one”. In this direction, the great
corporations, producers of software, recorders, woman editors,
reproduce legal mechanisms that criminalizam the cooperation and the
dissemination of the knowledge.
Ways opened for the knowledge However, the ways that they make
possible that the colaborativo and shared knowledge generates each
time more knowledge already pave an avenue. In less than 15 years,
the GNU/Linux - a free operational system - reached a development
level that surpasses its similar proprietor in innumerable areas.
Segundo Amadeu, the ten had access sites more in the Internet
(between them Yahoo, Google and Youtube) they use free software to
control its servers.
“Open Codes generate more security, therefore they can differently be
auditados, of what proprietor occurs with software”. Closed models
can contain “robots” that infringe the freedom of the users. “And
funniest”, Amadeu says “is that juridicamente any invasion of privacy
is questioned fierce. A telephonic listening cannot be effected
without judicial errand - but because these actions are not
questioned”.
If the informacional net, the Internet, is the way that it makes
possible to exponenciar the knowledge to the infinite, of the form of
intangible production of good, its reach becomes element of
inclusion or exclusion. In accordance with Sergio Amadeu, “what he is
observed inside of the Internet structure is that he also has the
reproduction of a model centraliser of information and access, today
needs a supplier so that let us have access to an information of a
computer that is to our side, therefore the hierarchy of the net thus
was configured.”
Nothing of technician he is involved in this process - are questions
of standards, defined for convenience or imposition. “Why not to use
colaborativas forms in the form of connection with the nets”. In this
direction, Amadeu presented the OpenSpectrum movement and the concept
of Mesh Net (net threshes), where the computers if would become
machines to “telecomunicate”.
Each computer could be a station to transmit and to relay
information, excusing access suppliers and extending the access
covering the Internet. For this, the Wi-Fi technology could be used,
with nets in wire, that would also excuse the structure of handles.
Of the machine to communicate for the one to telecomunicate This
concept, also introduced in the models of laptops of project OLPC
(One Laptop Per Child), idealized for Nicolas Negroponte, he will be
being tested for some Brazilian schools this year. In fact, it would
be the true democratization of the knowledge, the communication and
the ways to produce information. Any laptop could be the protagonist
of a video transmission, of audio, without having that to pass to
any filter, or marketing restriction.
It looks like certain members of the open source community see Mr.
Amadeu as a hero, with a sense of homor by these wanted posters:
(Loosely translated, may have errors)
http://fotos.michelazzo.com.br/comunidade_sl/amadeu
> 1. Democratic leader, knowledgeable of the technology
> 2. Liberator of Brazil
> 3. Certifier of 2,000 public officials
> 4. Author of diverse books
> 5. Poet for ending homelands married to sale by highest bidders
>
> BEWARE! This man is dangerous! Any information on the whereabouts of
> this individual should immediately contact Microsoft's Legal
> Department!
> Your identity will be kept confidential!
> Microsoft (R) always taking care of wealthy in Brazil!
http://fotos.michelazzo.com.br/comunidade_sl/amadeu_2
> WANTED
> Sergio Amadeu
> Suspected of using GNU/Linux
> Suspected of spreading the knowledge
> Suspected of trying to hinder the monopoly
> Suspected of trying to free Brazil technologically.
>
> Reward US $1,000,000.00 (In M$ Windows 95 licenses)
--
Cheers, Rafael
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/
http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile/anti_troll_faq.htm
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