14 DAY TRIAL // During a speech at the II open-source conference in SpainUnited Nations inspector Dominique Ouredrago said that the UN has recommended its members to use open-source software, particularly in areas related to health, education and international commerce.
He added that the United Nations considers open-source as the most appropriate vehicle for the development of its members. It probably doesn't hurt the OSS case that Microsoft (obvious avatar of proprietary software demons) attracts criticism at every turn and faces unending anti-monopoly actions.
Countries such as Brazil and Venezuela are in the process of migrating all their applications in public entities from proprietary software to open source; Peru has the local government discussing a law to promote OSS use in the public sector; nearly half of Argentina's private sector companies use some form of open source application; (South) Korea is leaving its Windows past behind, and China and India have the fastest developing markets for Linux.
Are we there yet? Well... no. Not quite. Although the success of open-source has become apparent to everyone, there is a long way to go, and the revolution may still fail mid-way. What's now called open-source software owes its origin to free software, which in turn owes its existence to a philosophy of freedom, sharing and all that hippie propaganda. It's a shame that in order to be successful, the OSS movement had to resort to marketing tactics. It's a shame that it had to compete in a market of any type! With Novell pushing to sell their products in schools, do you think the linux market follows the free software philosophy? (Admittedly, Microsoft and others have been doing far worse stuff for years, but we expected that from them!)