The free software challenge in Latin America.

• Author: Sugar, David
• Position: Shaking Off El Norte

While serving as ambassador to Peru, John Hamilton used his role as representative of the United States to serve notice in a letter to the president of the Peruvian congress that the Microsoft Corporation disapproved of Peru debating a new law, Special Bill 1609, that favored the use of free software in government procurement, and that its passage would materially affect Peruvian relations.

As nations around the world increasingly turn to free and open-source software to cut costs and promote local development, powerful North American commercial interests have responded by bullying national governments not only by proxy (using public servants like John Hamilton or using civil law to try and intimidate outspoken critics such as Brazil's ITI president Sergio Amadeu, who compared Microsoft's business practices to those of drug dealers) but also directly. One recent example was Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's speech threatening to sue Asian governments who may choose to procure and use free software.

Part of what distinguishes free software (sometimes also called open-source or libre software) commercially from proprietary software is a matter of licensing. While all software is protected under copyright, commercial proprietary software is often licensed under terms that create additional restrictions, such as limiting where one can use such software and who may be allowed to use it. Often proprietary commercial software includes licenses which explicitly deny users the right or ability to modify software to fit their needs or access their own data, the right to speak about the functionality of the software they purchased, or to resell it to others when they no longer wish to use it. In contrast, free software expressly asserts and grants these fundamental rights through licensing, and does so in a way that enables others to fully reclaim these rights such as by providing source code.

While both free and proprietary commercial software have co-existed uneasily for a long time in many parts of the world, I believe what has made certain private North American commercial interests respond directly in Latin America is that many nations there have chosen to promote the use of free software specifically in public administration.

There already is a long history for the support and use of such software in Brazil by the Workers Party, starting from the days when they controlled the state government of Rio Grande Do Sul and instituted private/public sector...