Rio de Janeiro must use Open Source software

Last Friday Rio de Janeiro’s city council decided to go against the mayor, and voted to a Law that forces the public administration to prefer the usage of Open Source software in the city IT projects.
The main focus, according to city councilman Aspásia Camargo, is to reduce the amount of money expend with software licenses and to stimulate the development of new opportunities in the region. The Mayor, Cesar Maia, was publicly against the approval of this law, citing that it was a decision that could delay the delivery of several projects on the IT department of the City Hall.
As we all know, the usage of open source software has tons of positive points, this kind of law is an important step to create new opportunities to increase the number of significant projects using Linux, PHP, MySql, Apache, Jboss, etc. But it’s very naive to believe that just with this law everything will just crop up from the ground. It’s necessary to create more incentive to develop a solid IT business environment, like easy access to small and mid-sized companies for credit with low interests, create the infrastructure to make these companies grow like what is happening in the City of Recife in the northeast of the country. In the city there is a IT centre of excellence, called “Porto Digital” (or Digital Harbor) deeply attached to the Federal University of Pernambuco. This centre has all the basic infrastructure (technical, legal counseling, credit, etc ) to make it easier to new entrepreneurs to create new companies and opportunities for the region, one of the poorest of the whole country. The most recent successful of this initiatives is the MeanTime Inc., a mobile software development company that has its products selling in Asia, North America, Latin America , Europe and Australia.

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