Reader's Report and Leak: “Microsoft is Pulling an EDGI on Brazil.”

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2010-07-07 06:13:04 UTC
Modified: 2010-07-07 16:14:57 UTC

Summary: An anonymous Techrights member from Brazil says that EDGI-like programmes are being used to suppress Brazil's adoption of GNU/Linux; evidence is leaked

"They are trying to pull off an EDGI here in Brazil," explained a concerned member earlier this week. For those who don't know what EDGI is, start here. "I contacted Marcelo Branco," he added, "let's see if he will be interested on this.

"In any case, I think I'll post the documents I have access in Wikileaks. Basically, Mr Ballmer visited all states where the governor is from PSDB, an opposition party to Lula's PT (worker's party) and made deals to make EDGI's on these states.

"Basically, this is the story. While the federal government supports Linux, Ballmer made alliances in states controlled by the rival... party to derail Linux in the schools, since the schools got computers donated by the federal government with Linux."

To give more details, here is how it's summarised concisely in the words of the source (required careful research and verification):

It took some time to gather some important information regarding Mr. Ballmer's interests in Brazil. Actually, they (Microsoft) have been worried about IT here in Brazil since the election of our current president, Mr. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In 2002, I picked this post, where they expressed concerning about the election of Lula and the directions of the policies regarding proprietary software in the government.

Early, in 2001/2002, he met with many politicians, even the governor of the federal district, Mr. Cristovam Buarque. In that time, there were donations of computers to public schools, from the federal government, but, with windows XP. When the government changed, and PT party took over, the story began to be different.

Then, Mr. Ballmer, since 2008, started to counter attack the adoption of Linux in Brazil, in the educational section, making deals with governors from rival parties of the worker's party (PT), the party of our president Lula, with the intention to wipe out Linux from the sight of the children.

In São Paulo, he met with José Serra, and made a deal regarding the Telecentros, which should never run on windows platform, because of the rampant virus/malware dissemination on this platform.

And, a press release from Microsoft itself, praising the deal with the state of São Paulo.

“The counter attack on Linux is being done in the states, not at federal level, where the government is pushing Linux very strongly.”Then, after his meetings from 2008, surprisingly, every state which the government is from the rival party of the president Lula is making educational deals with Microsoft.

São Paulo, in 2008, then Amazonas, Piaui, Pará, Goiás , Paraíba e now, Rio Grande do Sul.

The counter attack on Linux is being done in the states, not at federal level, where the government is pushing Linux very strongly. And so, they try to undo the actions of the federal government, they try to water down the interest in Linux, with bribery and job promises for the pauper, when we know where this indoctrination ends. Only Microsoft wins, the rest are just pawns in their game of interests.

...I'm sending this document [DOC]... regarding the situation in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. In this document, which is an internal memo, the folks of the education from Rio Grande do Sul state give the directions on how to pick up students for the Microsoft's Jovem Digital "indoctrination" educational program.

I hope you can do good use of these informations and expose these back stabbing actions disguised as philanthropy.

A lot of the links are in Portuguese, but they provide the necessary trail of evidence to support this. Two years ago Brazil said that 52 million young people would move to KDE (on Debian); it was obvious that Microsoft would not let it be. We wrote about it before and provided more evidence. ⬆

“Under NO circumstances lose against Linux before ensuring we have used this program [EDGI] actively and in a smart way.”

--Orlando Ayala, Microsoft

Comments

henriquemarks

2010-07-07 17:50:34

Not so true at all.

Yes, Microsoft tactics is this, but they are a company, trying to sell a product. What can Linux, as companies, do about ? Try to sell a better product for a smaller price.

In Rio Grande do Sul this had just happened, and now the program for teachers are offering computers with Windows and Linux. It is just about giving the user a choice, and it is happening here. Int his page you see the configuration and prices, with options for Windows and Linux, with Linux prices more or less 15% lower.

http://www.professor.rs.gov.br/index.php?acao=programa#modelos

So, here in Rio Grande, the fight of Free-Software Association had a result, and a good one: to give users a choice.

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2010-07-07 18:01:05

Not quite. "Choice" is an old lie or spin that Microsoft uses in other parts of south America and even used to subvert OLPC, ODF, and other freedom enablers. Brazil promotes freedom though Linux; Microsoft violates this freedom.

henriquemarks

2010-07-07 18:10:42

I am giving you more information about the subject, showing you that, instead of complaining about the situation, people are offering solution based on FOSS to the teachers, so that they can choose.

We have two models in the technology market, the closed source and FOSS. You cannot impose one of them in the name of freedom. Freedom is to give a choice, and in this case it is happening.

If the teachers, using openoffice, starts to ask for homeworks with odf as an extension, students with old computers, that cannot produce this format (because of old openoffice versions) will have any choice (or freedom as you say). I know the opposite is going to happen (.docx, .doc) and i dont like it either.

I agree with all your points about lock-in,proprietary software, ugly tactics, etc. But i am giving valuable information for your news. If you want to neglect, thats your problem

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2010-07-07 19:07:41

Do you happen to know where those suggestions of "choice" in Rio Grande do Sul originally came from? I'm not doubting you, I just want to see if they 'pull a Magalhães' in Brazil (tactic of phasing in Windows by pretending to harbour "choice"). Tomorrow I will post another new example of Microsoft using the word "choice" to gradually exclude Free software.
Agent_Smith

2010-07-08 15:56:15

The fault of this argument is: If the document text file is in an open standard, any text processor can implement saving and loading the resulting file, in any platform. ODF is not an exclusive feature of Open Office, Abiword has it, MS Office has it too(via a plugin), and it's cross platform, no matter if you are running Mac/OSX, windows 98 or Puppy Linux. In the other hand, if a teacher requires the homeworks in DOCX format, only one program can do it and only in one platform it will be feasible. Simple as that.

Reader's Report and Leak: “Microsoft is Pulling an EDGI on Brazil.”

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