John Perry Barlow, EFF co-founder and cybercurmudgeon from the 1990s, made the following claim at the World Social Forum last month:

"Already, Brazil spends more in licensing fees on proprietary software than it spends on hunger," said Barlow

Anybody up for fact-checking this statement? If true, it's a simple-but-powerful meme...

(Via Gil Friend)

I don't know if this statement is true and i'm also not able to find it out. However, i really wonder, why Open-Source software is not used. It is in most cases as good as the proprietary software but more flexible and more worthfull for a developing country. The people who want to use it often are learning to use it. Good examples are Linux distributions. They offer different advantages: 1) they are internationalised (almost every language is available), 2) they are "open" = "free" and 3) they are more save from viruses and other trouble. The only problem at this moment of history is: they are less known. Thoughts?

Posted by: Damir Perisa on February 10, 2005 3:46 PM

Damir, Brazil has a very active Free/Open Source Software community, which receives substantial support (moral if not financial) from the government. We've done a few posts on it here; follow this link for some of them.

Posted by: Jamais Cascio on February 10, 2005 5:11 PM