[ox-en] free software, free technology, and government..
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 18:08:15 -0400 (EDT)
Unbelievable report from Venezuela (well, it's true so not unbelievable,
but you know what I mean... :-)
From http://www.lared.com.ve/archivo/porta69.html
Reporter: 'Minister, on what do you base your plans for an economy
of solidarity and free software which you are driving forward in the
Ministry of Planning and Development?'
Minister: 'Free software is an extremely interesting phenomenon, which
we plan to make use of in the reform of the state; in fact, we are making
it an essential part of our development model. I think that technology
is a public good, just as knowledge is a public good. In simpler terms,
a bread roll[??? 'cambur'] is a private good, because you eat it and then
no-one else can use it. But if you use a computer program, it does not
disappear, but can be used by 'Pepe', by 'Ricardo', by anyone else, and
this gives it a very special quality in economic terms. The industrial
era had to make technology private to develop it. Now there is a new way
of producing public goods - the way of 'solidarity'. And the state too can
produce these public goods, or motivate them to be produced in such a
way that their production is not wasted, as also is the case with
knowledge. It is not by chance that the state promotes education, because
knowledge is a public good. And this modality of solidarity has had
tremendous success at producing software, producing quality software
with great efficiency. In this model a large number of people participate,
proposing solutions. One kind of support might be reporting bugs,
many people can try to correct the bug, and the result is a product of
great quality. It's an extremely robust development method from the
technical point of view, extremely interesting, and is spreading to
other areas, because it isn't just software that is a public good,
so that it is promoting the production of free technology. In Africa,
for example, the people can't afford private AIDS medicine, so it
is searching for a solidary way to produce medicine. I am convinced
that this method will produce technologically more robust products,
than those that are produced on the licence model by firms which
spend a lot to produce software and then need to charge high for their
products.We know that isn't the most efficient way of producing from
the economic point of view. But the method of solidarity produces a
huge window for us to use. And this will be one of the secrets of our
long-term development, which will let us catch up with the developed
countries. We have no inferiority complex. We know how to do it as
well as they do.'
And so on, for 8 pages of A4... the head of the Latin American
federation of LUGs has been made technological advisor to the ministry,
the plans on what they're going to do are quite concrete.
How long till the CIA runs a successful coup against them now -
they're upsetting Bill as well as the oil companies now ;-(
Graham
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