Windows in Brazil Costs 20% of Per Capita Business Income 236
mjasay writes "Ever wonder why open source is so popular in Brazil and other BRIC nations? As one study suggests, one big reason may well be Microsoft's punitive pricing, which exceeds 20 percent of Gross National Income for businesses in Brazil (and 7.8 percent of consumer GNI). This leads to a second, related reason: At those prices, there's little hope that Brazil can build a home-grown software economy on the foundation of proprietary software. This factor is exacerbated by Brazil's widespread disdain for the United States, which also tends to favor software that is not perceived as American. Of late the free and open-source Brazilian dream may be fading a little but its importance to the long-term growth prospects of the Brazilian economy shouldn't be understated."
20%? What are the customs duties? (Score:5, Informative)
Duties on imports may have something to do with the 20%. Right as Intel started putting manuals online, I was working on that project, and Brazil was high on the list of downloaders. We tracked them to a technical university, did some emailing, and found that the duty on a printed manual nearly tripled the cost of the manual (in USD).
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That's OK. (Score:2)
Free software is a better deal regardless of Microsoft's perception and that perception is slipping everywhere. Microsoft's loss of face in the US is well documented and has more to do with Vista annoyances and "Works for Sure" DRM betrayal than it does with price. Free software, of course, comes with no such annoyances and consistently outperforms Windows on most hardware. People might be fooled into thinking Microsoft is less evil but will still know that free software is nothing but good.
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Granted, computers are far more pervasive now than they were then. But so are IT professionals.
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This is not true. The business I work for wouldn't dream of using proprietary software for anything business critical, as it leaves us too vulnerable. Yes, that means that we sometimes need to pick something that doesnt work "just as well", but we know that if we suddenly run into problems with the software, we can fix or work around them.
This security is worth quite a huge gap in quality for us - to the point that we
I have yet to see that problem. (Score:2)
What is really missing? My experience is that commercial software lags the free softare world with the most restrictive being at the bottom of the pack. There are very few applications where a free alternative is not available and none of them are general purpose desktop things most businesses and home users are intersted in.
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arbitrarily chosen piece of software. What any piece of
software should do is meet your own requirements.
This is another variation of the Apple ~ BMW argument
where you can gut at least half of ther relevant BMW
and not even notice.
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Re:20%? What are the customs duties? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:20%? What are the customs duties? (Score:4, Informative)
The manuals are printed in Brazil. So are the CDs/DVDs.
Having access to the price list of a Microsoft distributor (not resaler), I can see some very big price differences, as I'm pretty sure happen everywhere else. The OEM license (which include media and manual, btw) costs about half the shelf price. And I'm not talking bulk here. I'm talking a guy with a computer store buying a single OEM license for a computer he is selling. Educational licenses are even lower (and no, there are no tax differences there).
Taxes on software in Brazil are far from high, if you compare it to other taxes. Actually, they are lower than taxes on books.
Even if the government completely removed the taxes from software, Microsoft prices would still be too high for a developing country like Brazil.
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"one big reason may well be Microsoft's punitive pricing, which exceeds 20 percent of Gross National Income for businesses in Brazil "
That's not Microsoft's pricing. Microsoft's is about a third of that. It's a troll article.
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I don know what Intel is doing wrong, but it must be something big. If Amazon books come through a loophole, it's a very big one.
Re:20%? What are the customs duties? (Score:5, Informative)
The tax for imports over the mail are very clear: 60% over the value of the goods and shipping. The 20% ICMS charge only counts if you're importing with a courier such as FedEx or UPS. Regular mail does not get charged the 20%.
If the package does not accompany an invoice, or if the invoice's value is obviously fraudulent, then the customs official has can attribute a value which he believes is fitting. If you disagree with this value, you can challenge his value, but this will entail a lot of effort and you will most likely lose. You may also not import used goods, or prohibited items (such as firearms, explosives, live animals and organs).
Customs officials are corrupt bastards if you have to deal them in person (for instance, if not importing through the mail), but I've never had them charge me anything other than 60% over mail order items. In particular, I've imported at least US$ 5000 in books over the last 10 years, and I've never been charged an import tax.
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I pay the 60% tax on other things all the time.
There are "Studies" and there are Studies (Score:4, Interesting)
Duarte's blog post is interesting and cites some statistics, but calling it a "study" is a bit rich.
Re:There are "Studies" and there are Studies (Score:5, Insightful)
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As the author of the blog post, I totally agree :)
My intention was not to deride your blog post, of course. I thought it was well-presented and intriguing.
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And let me guess - you'd like to subscribe to his newsletter?
Did anyone RTFA before approving? (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, the OP claims that the linked article is a study; it is NOT a study, it is a blog post. It has not been fact-checked or reviewed by editors or peers, and could be a complete load of BS.
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The original article does NOT claim that Brazil pays 20.1% of its income to Microsoft, it only states that the âoeCost of Business Licenses as % of GNI per capitaâoe is 20.1%. Only a complete moron would read that as 20.1% of Brazilâ(TM)s income going to Microsoft.
Furthermore, the OP claims that the linked article is a study; it is NOT a study, it is a blog post. It has not been fact-checked or reviewed by editors or peers, and could be a complete load of BS.
First off, north of the border (Canada) we experience the same thing and I can assure you with NAFTA it isn't taxes. Check say amazon.ca and then amazon.com and check the prices. We see it on cars also. Be it Honda, GM, Toyota, Ford or others, the dual pricing happens all the time. Usually one price for the USA and a higher price elsewhere.
The term is called price fixing to local markets. Or, what is the term where I will sell to US customers at one price, and sell outside the US for more (or less)?
Grossly Misleading (Fraudelent?) Headline (Score:4, Insightful)
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In Rich Countries Too!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Valid point if title corrected (Score:4, Insightful)
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With software, the bulk of the expense is a one-time development cost, with some ongoing support costs. These costs do not change no matter now many units of software are installed, since they can be duplicated infinitely
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I'd say MS may want to check how many they've driven away in Brazil.
It's not M$, it's Bra$il (Score:5, Interesting)
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The goverment just raised minimum wage 30%. And they think this won't race inflation.
This problem is almost everywhere in latin america.
Regarding Open source and proprietary pricing (Score:4, Interesting)
Not quite the price (Score:5, Informative)
As for the pricing scheme, it is really outrageous for the average income here, but I don't think that it has much to do with the linux adoption here. It's very rare to see someone that does care about copyright here. Even if Microsoft sold at reasonable prices (yes, it is the government's fault), just the fact we need to register, call for license keys and all that bullshit makes us just pirate the damn thing. And if it's hard to pirate (wga and all), we go away. And there's linux. It's free and it doesn't hassle us. Oh, it's open source and all? Cute. But that's not the main point.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people that care a lot about FOSS philosophy (myself included) but for the masses, the "software that don't get in my way" is more important.
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If Microsoft wanted to keep prices low, they could.
It's pure greed. And, since they can blame the government, they get away with it.
An intersting issue with the GPL (Score:2)
That is an interesting issue - we assume the GPL is enforceable but much of that seems to be based on US copyright laws and variou
Try the EUPL (Score:2)
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Not any country that is signatory to the Berne Convention. The GPL doesn't create any restriction on distribution or modification, copyright does. The GPL grants certain rights if conditions are met.
However, nothing other than this License grants you permiss
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> proprietary even if it uses GPL code in a product.
And another country could file a WTO complaint against them (assuming both are WTO members).
So many myths! (Score:2)
Ever wonder why open source is so popular in Brazil and other BRIC nations?
This is simply not true. It is just a myth spread by open source advocates. Go check out who actually Linux, OpenOffice and Firefox in those countries by yourself.
In the eyes of non-geeks, the real benefits of open source is just the price and nothing else. When one can get a DVD with Windows and MS Office for $0 (download) to $1 (buy one at the street corner,) nobody will have the incentive to use Linux and Firefox. Period.
No myth (Score:2)
Does anyone do sanity checks on stories? (Score:2)
Hyperbole, thy name is Slashdot!
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What the Brazilian gov't should do (Score:2)
Everyone who works at the gov't knows that there's absolutely no incentive to use FOSS (except by its own benefits). -- Really, zero. All until now has been rethoric.
Things the gov't could do:
- Tag (let's say) 80% of money the IT expenses (hw & sw) for exclusive use by FOSS-based solutions.
- The money spent in propriet
FUD doesn't work. (Score:2)
More: How to lie with statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
For a concrete example of abuse by statistics, consider that in the US, MS-Windows licence costs exceed the total annual income of at least 50% of all computer users [kids!]
Please do not mistake me for an MS-toad. Personally, any MS licence cost above large negative numbers is overcharging. I have to be _paid_ to use MS products.
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It might well be that MS pricing is too high. It's rather high in the US, where MS-Windows may cost 33% of the machine purchase price (for low-end machines). Whence people calling it the MS tax.
Furthermore, US law seems to accept grey market good and rules anti-grey measures as anti-competitive (illegal) behaviour. So MS cannot segment markets as much as they might like.
But I simply remember Napoleon: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is in the middle of making a mistake.
Brazil free software dream is anything but fading. (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, the Brazil free software movement is an incredible phenomenon.
Consider:
1) Brazil's recent announcement at FISL of 52,000 computers labs (each with 15 terminals) serving over 50 million students -- with 29k of them coming online within the year -- all running Linux Educacional and KDE. Meanwhile, in -my- Ohio hometown, the public school system is fiscally doomed while still paying out enormous sums to Microsoft, IBM, Apple.
2) My wife, who is Brazilian, worked in the Brazilian equivalent of the US's White House, the Palacio do Planalto, migrating even the President's -Secretary- to an open source desktop running OpenOffice, not to mention the rest of the federal agencies in Brasilia. How is the open source migration of federal agencies going in Washington DC? Oh, right...
3) Brazil should be a model for much richer countries in this hemisphere, like the US and Canada, with their enormous and expansive Digital Inclusion program, which is entirely based on open source & free software. This program provides free training and computer lab access to bridge the digital divide in Brazil, with labs in urban favelas (ghettos that encircle the major metropolitan cities) and even remote indigenous communities living in the Amazon -- some of the Digital Inclusion projects are only accessible by BOAT. And in those areas, open source computer labs are, in many cases, the only computer access, the VOIP they provide are the only telephone, and so on.
4) A recent study confirmed that over 70% of Brazilian companies with more than 1,000 employees are using open source software.
5) Brazil has migrated the largest state-owned IT firm in Latin America (SERPRO) to open source software (including many more companies that are migrating).
6) FISL, hosted in Porto Alegre, has got to be one of the largest free software conferences in the world, if not the Americas. This year, Lula made news by saying that he would do everything he could to attend FISL. When was the last time George Bush or Bill Clinton said anything about free software, let alone went out of their way to support it in person?
It's really amazing to me how many open source advocates in the United States are indifferent to the open source phenomenon happening not only in Brazil, but throughout all of Latin America. One Linux.com article dismisses it as "hype" and that's enough for the most popular English-language open source news site? Meanwhile, an enormous free software movement goes literally un-noticed (when, in fact, there is plenty of room for voluntarism by wealthy North American developers in the region).
Personally, I make my living as owner of a business which works with open source/free software in Latin America and the United States. My wife was employed for several years by the Brazilian government working exclusively on the widespread deployment of open source technology in Brazil. And, I operate a news website which provides English-language updates about the free software movement in Latin America - http://news.northxsouth.com/ [northxsouth.com]
I urge everybody to take a look at our site and re-evaluate if Brazil or any Latin American country is a fading open source dream, or if, in fact, they are doing the hard work of converting their government to free software and, moreover, converting their society to open source software. We should take a look at what they're doing and ask ourselves: "why are -we- failing so miserably to influence -our- government?" instead of trying to find any gap in their impressive demonstration of the power of open source to transform massive social institutions.
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Meanwhile, in -my- Ohio hometown, the public school system is fiscally doomed while still paying out enormous sums to Microsoft, IBM, Apple.
I'm sincerely not trying to imply you're being politically apathetic, but have you actually tried to influence the town's school practices? You seem to be pretty good with words; citing examples of other countries that are adopting open source, the advantages of open source, and the like actually is the sort of thing that is liable to gather interest at a school board meeting. If you volunteered or offered a civilly discounted rate for helping to implement that sort of a system you'd be surprised at h
Re:Brazil free software dream is anything but fadi (Score:2)
> controversy
I don't. I prefer that the government take no interest in the GPL at all.
Since the 1980s (Score:2)
It seems that free trade was not accepted enough.
lies, damn lies, and statistics (Score:2)
wrong (Score:2)
I have spent some time living in Brazil.
1) there is no disdain for American things there (unfortunately). American franchises and products are widespread there, if not quite with the same stranglehold one sees in Mexico City, Australia, etc. American "culture" - TV and Hollywood - is swallowed up there quite readily, to great destructive effect as always.
2) Windows is absolutely endemic in Brazil (and Russia and India, btw). The appalling statistics in the headline tell the story, I am not sure why the
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Re:Time for us westerners to wring our hands... (Score:5, Informative)
And the impoverished are not just "poor", as in "lacking money for basic elements of life". They're also extremely indolent and dishonest. They lack basic culture and effort to achieve any kind of progress.
They have access to an infrastructure that would be considered an impossible dream decades ago. The things is: a lot of jewish and italian people arrived at this very same land of crap, decades ago, without any money at all and none of the thousands of schools and no universal and free healthcare at all. Yet they managed to educate themselves and provide good education for their children (who are now 40-50 years old), without a single cent in their pocket. Their sons and daughters (who were impoverished children) are now members of the upper-middle class. You forgot to mention "random drug-motivated murders". And also forgot to mention that all those "happy people" are actually impoverished idiots who would rather spend their entire day partying around the city than working hard to improve their lives. Remember the Ant and the Grasshopper [about.com]? If not, it's a classic that explains a lot about those bozos you call "happy people".
And if booze is something that motivates you to some kind of decision about where to live, you need treatment, not a better city.
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And the impoverished are not just "poor", as in "lacking money for basic elements of life". They're also extremely indolent and dishonest. They lack basic culture and effort to achieve any kind of progress.
Oh, do they? And you pretend to prove your point by tagging everyone as ind
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No, I won't have a pretty good description of the US, because most things I described in my post can't be said about the US. That doesn't mean it's a perfect country.
You're confusing a few, remarkable examples, with the whole thing. Your theory
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You're the typical pice-of-shit latino fake-nationalist idiot. See, your thing is not about loving and helping your country, but about hating the United States and capitalism in general. Why? Because it's part of the left-wing latino stereotype you belong to. The mechanisms that rule your formatted (you're just reviving the decades-old version
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Because the country just plain sucks for 90% of the population. While they have shitty jobs at the UK, can they live at secure and civilized places, with good infrastructure. Those immigrants from Brazil were born at places where people kill each other for nothing at all. Where they used to live (their neighborhood at Brazil), the chance of getting murdered by random drug-related crimes is huge. Thi
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And why is GP saying it's a backwards place to live? I quite like it here.
Backwards? (Score:2)
Care to elaborate?
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Windows, however, has the benefit of being able to pay lots of money and not have to worry about donations or grants to fund its progress.
The only question is whether or not you think we're moving to stable free software as a workable model for most platforms.
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I
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Spanish-speakers, on the other hand, tend to be a bit touchy about that denonym, according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
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Anyway, the real problem is Europeans who reckon Australia is in Oceania. France has a better claim to being in Oceania than we do. Australia's a continent and in the larger grouping of the Asia-Pacific. And anyone who thinks the ocean directly south of Australia is the Indian Ocean.
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In the same way we can't change the way language has evolved, we can make an analysis of what sort of society has given birth to such a "misnomer".
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Those things are not mutually exclusive.
Certainly nobody in Brazil would find the statement that MS is an American company to be ambiguous, or find anything wrong with the statement that MS is perceived (by some) as less attractive than a domestic solution in part because it is American.
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so brasils is in "south vespucia", and the US should be called "united states of vespucia".
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Was anyone in Mexico remotely confused when you referred to America or yoursel
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When they corrected you, what did they suggest in place of "American"? Of course you can refer to the US different ways (I'll say "the States" in the UK or "the US" probably do more than half the time anyways), but there isn't any other generally accepted term for resident of the US (other
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You mention Mexico being mistaken as part of Central America. Since I've been back I've had a couple people ask me how I enjoyed my time in South America. I wish I was kidding.
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The situation is different in different languages --- but "America" and "American" are best treated as "false friends" in those languages.
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Must... resist... snarky... pedantic... comment... Screw it, no use.
<pedant>Hehe, I wonder how they "new" you were from America :P</pedant>
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Maybe the USA should change their name to avoid confusion.
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Get off the PC
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In what way? It is a web site, accessible from all over the world. It serves technology news, US-originated or not. Its servers may reside in the USA, but that's pretty irrelevant, IMO.
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For a computer, factor in that the electronics will usually come in from Taiwan or China and that much of the coding is done in India and other places.
So really, if pushed, I couldn't make any sort of analysis except to say it is complicated.
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The experiences you have as an American tourist mean very little in terms of deciphering the true feelings of the civilian population. Especially if you're there for business.
True, but as someone who has traveled abroad on business and pleasure; and have many friends and relatives abroad, disdain for American government policies does not translate to disdain or dislike of Americas, or even "America."
Most people outside of the US can keep those things separate; something many Americans seem to have difficulty with, as demonstrated by the accusations of "unpatriotic" if you say negative things about GHB.
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yep, that is true, people from the world dislike the US government but not the people, we are smarter than most (notice i said most and not all) Americans in separating the two.
Isn't the point of a democracy (even a representative one) to produce a government that does what the people want? Those American people you hold in so high esteem voted in the government you hold in such low esteem. Somewhere down the line you do have to blame the people for their government (if it is a democracy, at least).
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I realize it's hip to hate the US right now but like most hip things it can change.
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One Pew Global Attitudes survey, indicating that 51% of Brazilians surveyed have an unfavorable view of the US, hardly points to "widespread disdain" for the United States in Brazil. In fact, most Brazilians find many aspects of the US very favorable, and worthy of admiration. Unfortunately, all of that tends to be lost next to the overwhelming disapproval of American foreign policy (an attitude shared by even greater percentages of Americans). Certainly, though, there is no widespread disdain for the US IT industry, which is admired and viewed correctly as world-class.
Adding to what you said, I'd like to point out that the web page that's linked as evidence of this 'widespread disdain' doesn't even contain the word 'Brazil', not even once, let alone any direct reference to this this so called animosity Brazilian people have towards US Americans.