SOFTEX Study on Open Source in Brazil Don't put anything here Page Content Page Name (for URL) Page Title Breadcrumb Text 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. Don't put anything here Advanced Fields Category 2002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014E. AsiaE. EuropeL's FamilyL's FriendsN. AmericaN. EuropeS. AmericaS. AsiaW. EuropeY & LY's FamilyY's Friends Prototype Redirect Permissions0 Actions Config Markup Module HTML/Meta/Keywords HTML/Meta/Description Save Hook HTML Fields Main Head Body Header Menu Logo Page Content Template Sidebar Footer Tags Allowed for XSSFilter Don't put anything here HTTP Fields Cache-Control Expires Guru Fields Templates Translations Fields Edit UI Admin Edit UI A summary of your changes Edit Summary Don't put anything here Don't put anything here Don't put anything here save preview cancel
