Brazil throws Microsoft out of the windows
Brazil has pledged to invest heavily in its own software industry in a bid to keep pace with the technological advance of the developed nations. And to Microsoft’s chagrin, there won’t be a Start button in sight. The Government has thrown its weight behind the open-source software movement and plans to rid all its federal departments of the Microsoft Windows operating system. A driving force behind this initiative is the president of the Government’s National Institute for Information Technology (ITI), Sérgio Amadeu de Silveira. In his book Digital Exclusion: Misery in the Information Era, he argues that access to computing is essential to stop the growing gap between rich and poor. In a country where 46 million live below the poverty line, Amadeu is against proprietary software such as Windows chiefly because of the exorbitant licensing costs. Free software, he believes, will ‘democratize access to knowledge’. He has already built a network of 86 free computing centres in São Paulo. Now he plans to expand this base by setting up the Federal Government as an example for states and business to follow. ‘We have some islands in the Federal Government using open-source, but we want to create a continent,’ said Amadeu in a recent interview.
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Voices from the margins:
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- Poetry Slam in Zimbabwe
- The House of Hunger poetry slam held in Zimbabwe in 2006, and organised by the Pamberi Trust, showcased young artists performing inspirational work on issues from corporate power to child soldiers. The video features four of the poets.
Published by Pambazuka News.
- Iranian women speak out
- 3 March 2007, London. Women's rights activists marched through the English capital last week to celebrate International Women's Day with a protest against the misogyny of the Islamic regime in Iran and the threat of invasion by the US. Hear the voices of Iranian feminists Azar and Leila Parnian and the sounds of the demonstration as it passed through the heart of the city. Click here to learn more about the campaign.
Produced by Heidi Bachram.
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