[BadVista Advocate] Windows Vista in Portugal

[Nuno J. Silva]

Just FYI:

Two weeks ago, the portuguese government announced a new initiative
which would give our students and teachers the opportunity to buy
computers and have internet access for cheaper prices.

A week ago, another announcement was made, about the "software partner"
for the initiative. Guess who is going to "provide" software for the
computers? And guess what software are we talking about... "Just" a
"little" corporation from Redmond...

Having national FLOSS projects, as CaixaMágica[1] and Alinex
[2], there is no doubt that if there was given an opportunity to show
proposals, these two projects would be able to offer something
different, cheaper and plenty of freedom. But our government must
have a different idea of what's in our Law...

ANSOL[3], our national association for free software, has also
published a press release[4] (in portuguese), and this subject is being
discussed in (at least) two portuguese free software lists, the ANSOL
one [5], and another, about free software in public administration [6].

I've also slashdotted about this in english [7], explaining briefly what
is the initiative and what am I afraid of.

[1] <http://www.caixamagica.pt/>
[2] <http://www.alinex.org/>
[3] <http://ansol.org/>
[4] <http://blog.softwarelivre.sapo.pt/2007/06/05/que-casamento-e-este/>
[5] <http://listas.ansol.org/mailman/listinfo/ansol-geral>
[6]
<http://www.softwarelivre.citiap.gov.pt:8080/mailman/listinfo/sw_livre>
[7] <http://slashdot.org/~nunojsilva/journal/173803/>
-- 
Nuno J. Silva
Lisbon, Portugal
Homepage: <http://njsg.no.sapo.pt/> & <http://palpatine.hopto.org/>
Registered Linux User #402207 - http://counter.li.org

Using Claws Mail 2.9.0

Gentoo Base System release 1.12.9
Linux 2.6.17-gentoo-r7 i686 Pentium II (Deschutes)

-=-=-
HAL 9000: Dave. Put down those Windows disks, Dave. DAVE!
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