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

[Samuel Rose]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 7:59 PM, Kevin Flanagan <kev.flanagan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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."
>

I wonder if Brazil would be interested in taking even 1/16th of what
this would have cost from Micosoft and investing in development of
F/LOSS for flex fab, food production, agro-eco-systems management, and
ecologies of collaboration, and open education?


> 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.
>

It could be that China has a similar deployment, but possibly not as large.


> Kevin F
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>



-- 
-- 
Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
skype: samuelrose
email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
http://socialsynergyweb.com
http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
http://socialmediaclassroom.com
http://localfoodsystems.org
http://notanemployee.net
http://communitywiki.org

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan