There is an excellent article at Costa Rica Pages which talks about the challenges this small, Latin American country faces. Costa Rica only has a population of 4 million people and software piracy is a rampant problem there. Their vice-president, Laura Chinchilla, has said that “if the government legalized all its software licenses, we would have no funds left to build public housing or finance public education.” It is estimated that software companies lose $27 million from piracy in Costa Rica. The suggested response in this article is that Costa Rica should join other Latin American countries in a complete migration to free software. Towards that end, a free software installation festival is being held this weekend at the Universidad de Costa Rica. While the government may be slow to make this change, the population is starting to embrace free software as a legal alternative to proprietary software. Our hats off to the free software pioneers showing their country the way this weekend! :)