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Peru opens arms to open source

Michael Kanellos CNET News.com

Published: 24 Oct 2005 09:45 BST

Alejandro Toledo, president of Peru, signed legislation this week that allows public institutions to consider adopting open source software, another step forward for the open-software movement. The legislation, which Peru's Congress approved in September, allows government agencies and schools to choose between proprietary software as well as open source alternatives.

Government agencies have been some of the largest and most influential purchasers of open source software, which can cost less to buy and manage, according to advocates. Brazil, South Korea and other national governments believe the open source movement could help their domestic software industries.

Still, it's an uphill climb. The city of Munich has voted to convert 14,000 desktops from Microsoft Windows to Linux, but the project has been delayed until 2006. Other government agencies have also moved slower than originally planned.

While the move will increases to competition, Peru and other parts of South America have also been hotbeds of piracy. More than half the software in some countries is improperly licensed, if at all, according to statistics from the Business Software Alliance.

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Its the applications and device drivers that run on windows that cement its dominance. How many people would fork out hundreds of pounds for Vista if Linux ran all the software and kit they wanted to use.