Tuesday, May 7, 2002 |
20:46 - Can we elect Peruvian politicians to our own Senate?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/25157.html
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Microsoft has just had its anti-open-source FUD boilerplate fed to it with a jagged spoon by Dr. Edgar Nuņez of the Peruvian Congress.
Peru had made a resolution to adopt only open-source ("free") software in its government data-management systems. Microsoft, as could be expected, presumed that this decision was made based on a lot of idealistic hoo-hah and uninformed, unrealistic assumptions by local lobbyists or something-- that some Peruvian politician had heard that "Open Source is Free!" and decided on that basis to outfit all the government offices with Linux.
So Microsoft fed them a standard line about how Open Source is evil and how Peru was making a big mistake-- that free software is insecure, expensive to maintain, depresses the local economy, and all kinds of further allegations.
And they got a response. Boy, did they ever. Dr. Nuņez takes the Microsoft statement and drags it through a hedge trimmer backwards, and the result is an impression of a government that's a whole lot more enlightened about technology and the realities of programming and innovation than anybody in this country's Congress seems to be.
I wonder what Dr. Nuņez' position is on MP3 players?
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