[PLUG] Venezuela adopts GPL [selections]

Tyler F. Creelan creelan at engr.orst.edu
Fri Aug 30 23:36:43 UTC 2002


...
 Venezuela's Government Shifts to Open Source Software

According to government sources in Venezuela, the South American nation
has announced an official policy that exclusively calls for the use of
open source software in that government.

The announcement, made on Wednesday, stated that from now on, all software
developed for the government must be licenced under the GPL. The entire
policy was summed up in this statement by Dr. Felipe Prez-Mart, Planning
and Development Minister: "Open source whenever possible, propietary
software only when necesary."

[snippage]

Rey also outlined additional details of the plan. Besides the government's
GPL requirement, the policy requires that the official accounting
application for Venezeula must be a GPL'ed application. The policy also
states that the government will openly combat software piracy by purging
all unlicensed copies of software from its offices.

Additionally, the policy also outlines a new Internet access program where
all machines would be Linux-based and held under community franchise.

[snippage]

In an interview (in Spanish) with LaRed.com, Prez-Mart outlined one of the
big reasons why this policy was announced. According to Prez-Mart, the
government and the people of Venezeula were increasingly concerned that
over 75 percent of the funds for software licenses went to foreign
nations, 20 percent to foreign support agencies, and only 5 percent to
Venezuelan programmers.

[snippage]

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-08-30-011-26-NW-LL-PB





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