Venezuela has announced that it will use open source software whenever possible in government, according to a report at LinuxToday. Proprietary software would be used only when necessary.
The policy requires that the official accounting application for the country be an application developed under the General Public License (GPL). The government plans to combat piracy by purging all unlicensed copies of software from its offices.
Under a new Internet access programme, all machines would be Linux-based and held under a community franchise.
LinuxToday quoted Venezuela's Planning and Development Minister Dr Felipe Pérez-Martí as saying the policy had been developed because of growing concern that over three-quarters of the funds for software licences went to foreign countries, 20 percent to foreign support agencies, and only five percent to Venezuelan programmers.
