Why does free software make sense as a policy option for Latin America?

Free software makes sense as a policy option for Latin America for a number of reasons:

1. Cost. In 2000, the government of Brazil spent $200 million on software. In countries that are economically catching up from decades of being on the receiving end of imperialist policies and saddled with enormous debt, spending any amount of money on licensing paperwork seems absurd. People can’t eat software licenses. Open source software is not only normally free but there are lower barriers of access for workers to familiarize themselves with it (for instance, a lot of Oracle training requires you to pay money, it isn’t as freely available on the internet).
2. Skill-building. Latin American countries need to improve the technical training of their workforces. Using open source software brings a participatory, skill-sharing aspect to communities that proprietary software just doesn’t offer. Throughout the region, Linux users groups and skill-share events are springing up everywhere as the free software values spread.
3. Security. A Cuban government official associated with the free software project has raised concerns about using software that they cannot audit, produced by a US-based corporation that has already had “miscommunications” about their relationship to the NSA. Generally, the open source security model is considered to be an improvement over closed security. In addition, while security holes may exist, they can be identified and immediately rectified by anyone. With proprietary software, the user waits until one, monolithic organization issues a patch — once they admit that the problem exists, that is.
4. Digital divide. The digital divide — that is, people who have access to technology and people who don’t — is particularly acute in Latin America. Class divisions in countries like Brazil are dramatic, even with aggressive new measures taken to address the problem. Free software offers to make a contribution to this overall social effort on the technology front. Free software costs nothing and can run on older computers while each new version of Windows requires a new, expensive desktop. To show what is possible, a project at MIT using Linux is developing the “$100 laptop,” designed to proliferate personal computer technology in developing countries.