14 DAY TRIAL // For a poor country, spending has to be done carefully no matter what you need to buy, and when it comes to paying for something that you could receive for free and even get better result, who wouldn't jump at such an occasion? Paying software licensing fees to companies like Microsoft is simply "unsustainable economically" when applications that run on the open-source Linux operating system are much cheaper.
Brazil is encouraging and promoting the use of open-source software, which will be run on about one million computers the government intends to sell to middle-class families at special rates. The Brazilian Government already has planned to open 1,000 centers with free Internet access, running free software, in poor neighborhoods.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, continues his predecessor's (Fernando Henrique Cardoso) projects and tries to give a better look and experience for his developing country, where a mere 10 percent of the 170 million people have computers at home.
Microsoft had a lot to lose when the Brazilian Government decided to move away from Microsoft products in favor of open source alternatives; the company got between 6 percent and 10 percent of its $318 million in Brazilian revenues from the government for the fiscal year that ended in last June.
Brazil was the first nation requiring all software programs developed by taxpayer funds to be licensed as open-source. This means any individual or company can use any program, as long as they make modified versions available to everyone else.