The Open Source Index is a collection of rankings based on research at Georgia Tech. Recently, Red Hat made the findings available via this cool online web application. It might be arguable that Spain and France rank higher than Brazil (rank: 3) in government adoption of free software but the rankings show that large governments who could be doing amazing programs like the United States (rank: 28) are being beaten out by developing nations like Venezuela, Peru, South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam — even Costa Rica (population: 4 million).

A lot of people have blogged about this web app from Red Hat. But, perhaps the OSI data could be used as a Technology Policy Corruption Index when combined with lobbying data for companies like Microsoft. After all, when was the last time an impoverished kid who would benefit from a free software telecentro wined and dined a U.S. Senator?

The real world impact of technology policy failures in the US, using an example from the public education system:
To illustrate what it means to be “left in Brazil’s dust” on technology education policy, you can go to Adams Memorial Middle School’s “Computer Lab” homepage — graciously hosted by Tripod — and you’ll get a pop-ad ad when you click to enter the site (we got a scantily-clad woman selling a weight-loss scam … what will you get?).

Venturing further inside, there were 3 amusing Google AdWords ads: “Online High School”, “Homeschooling” and “Stratford Private School” … ahem … meanwhile, their “Technology Strategy” includes “Upgrade word processing programs to Microsoft Word” some time in FY 2008 and “Standardizing on district wide word processing to two tiers of Office 2007″.

When one takes a look at their Technology Plan Financial Worksheet, one can see that an astounding $50,000 dollars is allocated to this “Standardizing on district wide word processing to two tiers of Office 2007″ task. How can upgrading a word processing program take so much away from this school’s technology budget?

Meanwhile, the Brazilian government supports the Brazilian version of OpenOffice and has already installed 40,000 copies at 2,000 schools in the state of Paraná for $0 in software fees. Nationally, Brazil is building 53,000 computer labs that will serve 52 million students, using entirely free software. According to the World Bank, the US is the 4th richest country in the world, compared to Brazil’s ranking of 66.

We don’t mean to pick on the Adams-Chesire Regional School District in Massachusetts … they honestly were just the first public school to come up in a Google Search and we don’t really know anything outside of what we’ve learned via online searches. They seem to be relatively better-off than many parts of the country. But, that’s kind of the point. One can take any public school in the US and see what the policy of “proprietary knowledge” and “closed technology” has wrought.

That said, there is a glimmer of hope in that one of the line items on their Technology Strategy document is: “Investigate new software that would actually be used to enrich / extend / supplement curriculum” … we would urge this school district and all the public school systems who are fighting the well-known battle to provide quality education to U.S. students to “investigate new software” that could provide a more coherent, cutting-edge technology education at lower costs, with the help of the free software movement. For more information on the impact of technology policy on U.S. education policy, see a previous item from this website: Public tech education in United States lags behind poorer countries.

The man who brought free software to Ecuador, Rafael Correa, appears to be leading a landslide victory in that country’s presidential elections. President Correa’s Vice President has declared that the second term will help shape a “citizen’s revolution,” pulling Ecuador closer to the leftist tide in the region:

“Where there was ignorance and illiteracy, educational facilities with state-of-the-art technology have been built, and where citizens were the poorest and least protected, where there were dead people in hospital corridors, now there is health.”

Initial exit polls also indicate that Correa’s Country Alliance party might even be heading towards a congressional majority. The elections have come shortly after FLISOL 2009 free software install fests were held throughout Ecuador, where the showing of free software’s philosophy of freedom, community and co-operation may have greatly swayed election results :)

ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) is an organization designed to foster co-operation amongst Latin American countries and currently includes Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras and Dominica as member states.

In response to the controversial Organization of American States, which is viewed by many in Latin America as a way for the United States to apply economic and political pressure against countries in the region, ALBA has a released a statement which strongly condemns the recent OAS summit and pronounces their world view.

In their statement, which covers a broad range of issues, ALBA calls for universal access to telecommunications (phone, internet, etc) as a human right in a world which increasingly relies on networked communications:

Basic education, health, water, energy and telecommunications services should be declared human rights and cannot be subject to private deal or marketed by the World Trade Organization. These services are and should be essentially public utilities of universal access.

This ideal has driven many of the policies of Latin American countries inside and outside of ALBA, including Brazil.

FLISOL - The Latin American Festivals of Installation of Free Software are install fests organized by the regional free software communities since 2005. The event is the largest distributed free software event in the world — last year, there were install fests in more than 200 cities in 18 countries in Latin America.

The goal of the event is to promote the use of free software, so the general public can know its philosophy, install GNU/Linux on their computers, learn about the applications and understand how they are developed by volunteer communities. Every install fest is free of charge in every location and they also include lectures, presentations and workshops.

Check out the list of countries hosting the event:

Open Veins of Latin America, a book originally written in 1971 by Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano (with a revised edition released in 1997), was given to President Obama by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during the Summit of the Americas this past weekend and, as a result, has shot to the top of Amazon’s Bestseller List. Yesterday, it incredibly went all the way up to the #2 spot on Amazon’s list. At the time of this writing, the book is now #7 on the Bestseller List. Before President Chavez gave the book to Obama, it was the 54,295th most popular book on Amazon. While this news is a little off-topic for this website, we thought it was interesting enough to share.