Free Wisdom Online: SOFTEX Study on Open Source in Brazil

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Last week I got referred to an interesting study of open source in
Brazil released by SOFTEX ("Association for Promotion of Excellence in
Brazilian Software" - a program run by Brazilian Ministry of Science
and Technology), entitled "The Impact of Free Software and Open Source
on the Software Industry in Brazil" ("Impacto do Software Livre e de
Codigo Aberto na Industria de Software do Brasil").  You can get the
[PDF](http://www.softex.br/media/pesquisa-swl.pdf) from SOFTEX
website.  It's 80 pages long and is in Portuguese, so it took me about
a week to read it...  Here is a brief summary for those interested in
open source abroad.

There are two sides to the study.  One one hand, it presents the
results of several surveys of developers and users of OSS in Brazil.
The interesting thing there is the scale - they had over 3 thousand
responders, which makes it the largest study of OSS use so far.
(FLOSS-Europe had slightly less than 3000 responders, FLOSS-US had
1588, FLOSS-JA - 547.)  The results are largely not surprising, but
are interesting none the less.

In addition to that, there is general discussion of OSS and what it
means for Brazilian software industry.  The report takes a mildly
pro-FOSS stance.  It's not quite like hearing RMS speaking, but many
benefits of OSS are discussed, and the report even goes to the pains
of explaining the difference between "software livre" and "codigo
aberto."  The bottom line of the report is that OSS is here to stay
and that software companies need to reconsider their business plans.
In particular, vendors of generic applications and packages should be
worried.  However, the report stresses, there aren't too many of those
in Brazil: the bulk of Brazilian software industry is already earning
money through services or highly customized products and thus stand to
benefit from OSS.  If you put it that way, perhaps it is less
surprising that Brazilian government is so pro-OSS, while US is so
anti.

Some results from the report:

* Most "OSS developers" who responded to the survey were sysadmins,
    which contrasts with similar studies for Europe and Japan.  Further,
    many Brazilian OSS developers are self-educated, again unlike
    Europe, US and Japan.  Like in other countries, they are mostly male
    and young.

* In terms of motivation, developers stress technical benefits and
    development of skills.  They mention ideological reasons, but
    rarely stress them.  OSS users stress cost savings, skill
    development and ideology.  The report hypothesizes that developers
    are more cautious about ideology since they many derive their
    income from the software industry.

* Linux is used on 18% of the servers (slightly higher than in US and
  Europe) and 3% of desktops (not sure how this compares to US).

* Most heavy use of OSS is by IT companies, commerce (including
    point-of-sale software in stores), education and government.  (Use
    by government might be in contrast with US.)  Somewhat less in
    other services, health care, finance, culture and entertainment.

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