Re: *ASTOUNDING* Statement by Peruvian Congressman on Free Software in the Government

[Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>]

Here's the original Microsoft letter to Nuñez:

http://www.pimientolinux.com/peru2ms/ms_to_villanueva.html



San Isidro, March 21st 2002

Mr:
Edgar Villanueva Nuñez 
Congressman of the Republic of Peru

Present.-

Dear sir:

First of all, we want to thank you for the chance you gave
us to inform you about our work in the country in benefit of
the public sector, always looking for the best alternatives
to achieve the implementation of programs that will let us
consolidate the iniciatives of modernization and
transparency in the State.

In fact, thanks to out meeting today you are aware of our
global achievements at the international level in the design
of new services for the citizen, among the framework of a
model State that respect and protects intellectual property.

This actions, as we talked about, are part of global
iniciative and today exist several experiences than have let
us collaborate with programs supporting the State and
community in the adoption of technology as an strategic
element to impact the life quality of the citizens.

Besides, as we arrenged in this meeting, we assisted to the
forum organized in the Congress the day March 6th regarding
the law project that you are leading, where we got the
chance to listen to several presentations that takes us now
to expose our position so you have a wider lanscape of the
real situation.

The project establishes as mandatory for every public
organism the deployment of free software exclusively, that's
open-sourced software, something that transgress the
principles of equality in front of law, of no discrimination
and the right of free private iniciative, freedom of
industry and contracting protected by the constitution.

The project, by making mandatory the use of open-sourced
software, establishes a discriminatory and non-competitive
treatment at times of contracting and adquisitions by the
public organisms violating the base principles of the "Law
of State Contracting and Adquisitions" (Number 26850)

In this way, by forcing the State to favor a business model
supporting exclusively open source software, this project is
only discouraging local and internationl software
manufactures who are the ones that make the important
investments for real, the ones that create a significant
number of direct and indirect jobs, besides contributing to
the National Net Income vs. a model of opensource software
that tends to have every time a lower economic impact due to
creating principaly jobs in the services area.

The Law project imposes the usage of open source software
without considering the dangers that this carries from the
points of vie of security,warranty and posible violation of
intellectual property of third parties.

The project erroneously handles the concepts of open source
software that not necesary implies that the software is free
software or has no cost, arriving to wrong conclusions about
money savings by the State without the suport of any
cost-benefit analysis to back this position.

It is wrong to think that Open source software is free.
Research by Gartner Grouo (and important market researcher
in the technology world well-known worldwide) has poited
that the cost of software adquisition (operating system and
applications) is only 8% of the total cost of ownership that
enterprises and organizations must face as consequence of
rational and productive use of technology. The other 92% is
made of implantation costs, capacitation, support,
management and inoperativity.

One of the arguments that support the Law project is the
supossed gratuity of opensource software when compared to
commercial software costs, without considering that exists
volume licensing models that can really benefit the State,
in the way that has already been achieved in other
countries.

Additionally, the alternative adopted by the project (i) is
clearly more expensive because of the high costs of
migration and (ii) puts at risk compatibility and the chance
for interoperability among informatic platforms inside the
State and between the State and the public sector due to the
hundred distributions of open source software in the market.

Opensource software in the most of the cases doesn't offer
adequate levels of service nor the warranty of well-known
manufacturers to achieve a bigger productivity by its users,
something that has caused many public entities to go back in
their decisions of using opensource software the ones the
are using commercial software right now in its place.

This project discourages creativity in the peruvian software
industry that sells US$ 40 millions every year, exports US$
4 millions (10th place in the ranking of peruvian
exportations, more than handcrafted goods) and is a source
of highly qualified jobs. With a law pushing for the use of
opensource software, software programmers loose their rights
of intellectual property and their most important source of
retribution.

Opensource software, by having the chance of being freely
distributed also fails to make any money for their
developers by means of exportation. In this way, the
multiplier effect of software sales to other countries
weakens affecting the grown of this local industry that the
State should be stimulating.

In the forum the importance of the use of opensource
software in education was discused without commenting on the
mayor failure of this initiative in a country like Mexico,
where precisely the State officers that supported this
project now say that opensource software didn't allowed to
provide a learning experience to childs at schools, the
adequate levels of capacitation nationwide were missing so
no adequate support for the platform was provided and the
software didn't showed not shows nowadays the needed levels
of integration with the existing platforms at schools.

If opensource software fullfils all the requirements of the
entities of the State Why a law is needed to adopt it?
Shouldn't the market freely choose which products provide
more benefits and value?

I really want to thank you for your attention to this letter
and we want to reiterate our interest in meeting you to
expose to you in more details our points of view about the
project you have presented and be at your complete
disposition to share experiences and information that we are
sure can help in a better analysis en implementations of an
iniciative that looks for modernization and transparency for
the State in the benefit of the citizen.

Sincerely,

Juan Alberto González

General Manager
Microsoft Perú