7 ms·

Brazilian government signs up to develop OpenOffice and LibreOffice

84 points by Tsiolkovsky 15y ago

praptak 15y ago
Good, although with caution. Governments are not exactly known for being great with software development.
- enry_straker 15y ago
  Not Always. The thing we use to communicate rests on an infrastructure called the internet - A US Government funded Project (DARPA):-)
- pvarangot 15y ago
  In this particular case, neither is Microsoft. I'm from a Spanish-speaking country and multi-language support for Office behaves weirder with every release since I can remember using it. It likes defaulting to English or Spanish in a paragraph basis even when you already told it to use another default language for all documents, and it likes to do it in the middle of your writing. I believe that support for Portuguese is equally lacking. It is my hope that Brazil's investment results in better multi-language support in Open and Libre.
- joe_the_user 15y ago
  Yes, Even more, I've come to I feel like "the success of the Linux desktop" among government agencies or large corporations may not be even the success that free software can really benefit from. If desktop Linux becomes a bare-bone usable thing along the joyless lines of well-written bureaucratic forms, it won't be a tool for empowering users. It seems like free software advocates should be aiming instead to create software so people are excite to use it, in the spirit of Apple (despite Apple's hostility to free software). On the user-end of things, only programs of this quality I know are Firefox and Inkscape though I'm sure there are others. In any case, I think this is the only direction that will make free software really succeed on the level of promoting freedom.
va_coder 15y ago
Why on earth does any large government on earth not do this?
- arthur_debert 15y ago
  Because it is not its core business? Look, anywhere you look, the government could, in theory step into production of X and save money. The government's version would always cost less, since you can subtract profits and the costs of features / expenditure to support other customers. Why doesn't the US gov just create a telco? Or any large supplier, really? This sounds good in theory, but in practice it tends to put the state machinery in charge of managing things it's largely incapable of. I'd much rather the government would show support either by donations (and let Apache Foundation / whomever manage their own thing), or just creating stimulus plans with the money saved (say, for example to make sure computers did not costs 3x as much in Brazil as they do in the US). The public sector has many restrictions (elections every few years changing management, very much subject to political pressures, larger bureaucracy etc) that make it a bad competitor in a number of business.
  - jules 15y ago
    Why are computers so expensive in Brazil? A Big Mac is also relatively expensive. Is it just an expensive country in general?
    - Cofor 15y ago
      Largely because of taxes. Brazilian taxes are extremely high. http://www.quantocustaobrasil.com.br/site/downloads/impostos_quantocustaobrasil.pdf http://www.quantocustaobrasil.com.br/site/downloads/impostos... This table is in Portuguese but it's easy to understand. The second column means the tax percentage of certain product / service. It's published by the union of Ministry of Finance's workers.
      - arthur_debert 15y ago
        Those are not for imports. In the case of computers, since we do not produce them, the taxes are much higher. Pretty much all eletronics cost between 2 to 3x as much as they would in the US.
juliano_q 15y ago
Brazilian government is using open source software for several years, and almost every software made by the government uses Java. The open-source initiative is nice, but the software produced use to be mediocre at best.
elviejo 15y ago
Brazil has had a big-success with their free-software initiatives. Government departments are required to try to buy free-software solutions and try to find local companies that can provide support for those solutions. Besides any contract-development goverment signs must be realeased as free-software. They call it "software publico" (public software) since they consider a duty of the government to provide their solutions in a free-software form. I think they are an example for any developing country economy.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > I think they are an example for any developing country economy. I think developed countries also have a lot to gain from following these ideas
- rlander 15y ago
  Too bad it only applies to desktop software. They are still one of the top purchasers of proprietary network/server software in Brazil.
  - reinhardt 15y ago
    Really? That's odd given that open source has been traditionally more successful in the server market than in the desktop one.
  - elviejo 15y ago
    [citation needed] On this past month I went to a couple of conferences where they showed how they build their infraestructure and their software as a service. And seems that their commitment to software public is very real from the highest level of goverment. President Lula DaSilva was mentioned several times.
    - rlander 15y ago
      For 6 yers I worked as a network engineer for Cisco, primarily with the government and Serpro (Federal Data Processing Service), the biggest IT service provider in Brazil. I can tell you from first-hand experience that there's no server/networking open source focus there.
dots 15y ago
This is a real win-win deal!
sheffield 15y ago
Good news, but I don't understand why both? Why don't they choose one (preferably LibreOffice)?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
ccanassa 15y ago
They are just trying to find more ways to waste my taxes

84 points by Tsiolkovsky 15y ago

praptak 15y ago

Good, although with caution. Governments are not exactly known for being great with software development.

enry_straker 15y ago
Not Always. The thing we use to communicate rests on an infrastructure called the internet - A US Government funded Project (DARPA):-)
pvarangot 15y ago
In this particular case, neither is Microsoft. I'm from a Spanish-speaking country and multi-language support for Office behaves weirder with every release since I can remember using it. It likes defaulting to English or Spanish in a paragraph basis even when you already told it to use another default language for all documents, and it likes to do it in the middle of your writing. I believe that support for Portuguese is equally lacking. It is my hope that Brazil's investment results in better multi-language support in Open and Libre.
joe_the_user 15y ago
Yes, Even more, I've come to I feel like "the success of the Linux desktop" among government agencies or large corporations may not be even the success that free software can really benefit from. If desktop Linux becomes a bare-bone usable thing along the joyless lines of well-written bureaucratic forms, it won't be a tool for empowering users. It seems like free software advocates should be aiming instead to create software so people are excite to use it, in the spirit of Apple (despite Apple's hostility to free software). On the user-end of things, only programs of this quality I know are Firefox and Inkscape though I'm sure there are others. In any case, I think this is the only direction that will make free software really succeed on the level of promoting freedom.

va_coder 15y ago

Why on earth does any large government on earth not do this?

arthur_debert 15y ago
Because it is not its core business? Look, anywhere you look, the government could, in theory step into production of X and save money. The government's version would always cost less, since you can subtract profits and the costs of features / expenditure to support other customers. Why doesn't the US gov just create a telco? Or any large supplier, really? This sounds good in theory, but in practice it tends to put the state machinery in charge of managing things it's largely incapable of. I'd much rather the government would show support either by donations (and let Apache Foundation / whomever manage their own thing), or just creating stimulus plans with the money saved (say, for example to make sure computers did not costs 3x as much in Brazil as they do in the US). The public sector has many restrictions (elections every few years changing management, very much subject to political pressures, larger bureaucracy etc) that make it a bad competitor in a number of business.
- jules 15y ago
  Why are computers so expensive in Brazil? A Big Mac is also relatively expensive. Is it just an expensive country in general?
  - Cofor 15y ago
    Largely because of taxes. Brazilian taxes are extremely high. http://www.quantocustaobrasil.com.br/site/downloads/impostos_quantocustaobrasil.pdf http://www.quantocustaobrasil.com.br/site/downloads/impostos... This table is in Portuguese but it's easy to understand. The second column means the tax percentage of certain product / service. It's published by the union of Ministry of Finance's workers.
    - arthur_debert 15y ago
      Those are not for imports. In the case of computers, since we do not produce them, the taxes are much higher. Pretty much all eletronics cost between 2 to 3x as much as they would in the US.

juliano_q 15y ago

Brazilian government is using open source software for several years, and almost every software made by the government uses Java. The open-source initiative is nice, but the software produced use to be mediocre at best.

elviejo 15y ago

Brazil has had a big-success with their free-software initiatives. Government departments are required to try to buy free-software solutions and try to find local companies that can provide support for those solutions. Besides any contract-development goverment signs must be realeased as free-software. They call it "software publico" (public software) since they consider a duty of the government to provide their solutions in a free-software form. I think they are an example for any developing country economy.

rbanffy 15y ago
> I think they are an example for any developing country economy. I think developed countries also have a lot to gain from following these ideas
rlander 15y ago
Too bad it only applies to desktop software. They are still one of the top purchasers of proprietary network/server software in Brazil.
- reinhardt 15y ago
  Really? That's odd given that open source has been traditionally more successful in the server market than in the desktop one.
- elviejo 15y ago
  [citation needed] On this past month I went to a couple of conferences where they showed how they build their infraestructure and their software as a service. And seems that their commitment to software public is very real from the highest level of goverment. President Lula DaSilva was mentioned several times.
  - rlander 15y ago
    For 6 yers I worked as a network engineer for Cisco, primarily with the government and Serpro (Federal Data Processing Service), the biggest IT service provider in Brazil. I can tell you from first-hand experience that there's no server/networking open source focus there.

dots 15y ago

This is a real win-win deal!

sheffield 15y ago

Good news, but I don't understand why both? Why don't they choose one (preferably LibreOffice)?

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

ccanassa 15y ago

They are just trying to find more ways to waste my taxes