[p2p-research] Free Software and Digital Inclusion in Brazil

[Kevin Flanagan]

Hello,

This is a really passionate speech for Free Software by Brazilian
president Lula da Silva.

A 20 minute video - Lula da Silva, Brazilian President, talks about
the importance of Free Software and the Internet at the 10th Free
Softaware Internacional Forum, in Porto Alegre, Brazil - June 26th,
2009
http://dotsub.com/view/40fd8f9c-fcb0-462f-b44c-ca6c38acdd9c

The scale at which the government is implementing these changes is
really inspiring,

from -

Brazilian government to deploy 53k open source labs serving 52 million
students (April 24, 2008)

"One of the great announcements made at FISL this year was that the
Brazilian Ministry of Education is currently in the process of
deploying 53,000 computer labs with all open source software and 52
million students will have access to these labs. The computers in the
labs will be running a Linux distribution called Linux Educacional
which is based on Debian and KDE as a desktop. By the end of this
year, there will already by 29,000 of these labs open and available!
Each lab contains a server and 15 terminals to use. Many of the slides
from the presentation are online and translated to English. Doing some
rough estimates, even if Microsoft gave a 50% educational discount,
the cost of this project with Windows would be $79.5 million USD
(around 100 million Reais, the Brazilian currency) before even one
computer was made available because that would just be the licensing
fees. A project like this enables one to see the scope of the benefits
that open source provides — given the state of public schools in the
United States, it is nearly a crime that almost every school district
continues to pay our tax dollars to Microsoft."

http://news.northxsouth.com/2008/04/24/brazilian-government-to-deploy-53k-open-source-labs-serving-52-million-students/

Also see -
http://culturadigital.br/
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fculturadigital.br%2F

Is this the largest state supported adoption and implementation of
free software on earth?
Im interested to find out more about how this is working out.

Kevin F