The migration program to open source software never was a response to the 2002-2003 PDVSA collapse that chavez himself instigated. It's a way to legalize the infiltration of cuban IT staff in all areas of electronic government.

The venezuela's electronic government platform includes cross-table databases which includes data from electoral register, social security, banking, healthcare (via "Barrio Adentro" cuban-build sociological database) and identity. This last database is extensively corrupted, because ONIDEX (national bureau for identity and foreigners) has been destroyed to the ground, and suplanted via militar-based squads of "identity journals", that makes ID cards via improvised laptops, web-cameras, ink-jet printers, and open database web-enabled connections to internet via cellular pcmcia cards.

The high degree of corruption take all these in the worst case scenario ever dreamed of: you can buy for less than US$5 on every mayor street a pirate copy of the electoral register, or the reclaimer's firm for Chavez 2004 referendum, or the "SantaInés" I or II database: a X-reference for every venezuelan ID number ("cédula") with political behavior, certain vote in the last electoral episode, home address, work adress, some medical data, and home phone.

The reality is out there. You can see it, or simply deny to see it. But it's still there.

If I thought Hugo Chavez ever did anything for a good, logical reason I would applaud his every move. He represents the tragedy of Latin America, not the recovery.

I applauded him when he dismantled the corrupt political elite that had ruled Venezuela since its independence from Spain.

I loved seeing a president who was so obviously not white, so obviously not educated at Harvard.

But he is destroying the country and using a generation's worth of oil revenue to help him keep the poor quiet while he does it.

He is NOT building a software industry, Venezuela doesn't have even the beginnings of an education system capable of producing any significant quantity of software engineers. And who is going to outsource to Venezuela where they don't speak English and the president takes every chance he gets to attack the very country that pours billions of dollars into his pockets and enables him to pay for his unsustainable social programs.

Hasta la victoria siempre

Zucker's comments are astute. Chavez embraces open source for the political statement. High-priced washington consultants like SAIC usually push Micro$oft. So open-source is the political alternative. Practically speaking, either platform could be secured to lock out users. And whoever holds the passwords -- and the project's source code (not the application/OS source code) -- holds the keys to the kingdom.

And what a great ad for microsoft:

"America runs Windows. Latin American socialist pseudo-dictators choose... Linux!"

Lone Rider wrote:

As one who is sometimes called a liberal, I do not see policies promoting privatization and globalization as ones which "liberals" (whether new or old) advocate, let alone support and implement.

The term "liberal" in "neoliberalism" refers to economic liberalization, not political liberalism. It refers to liberalization of trade, the lifting of trade regulations, sometimes called "laissez faire economics" not to liberalization of political or social policies. Political liberals generally oppose neoliberalism. I used the term to refer to globalization (in the WTO sense) and privatization because I was talking about the policies of the Chavez government and it is the term he uses, for example when he said "Intellectual Property is the last trap of neoliberalism".

Andrew Leonard quotes Jeff Zucker as saying: ".... But the reasons behind the open-source law are also related to the wider social and economic policies of the Chavez government -- developing a national software industry as a counter to neoliberal policies of privatization and globalization; ... "

Why does Mr. Zucker impute policies of privatization and globalization to "neoliberal" politicians / ideologues / whatever?? In this case, Mr. Zucker could just as well omit "neoliberal" entirely without any need to introduce a replacement (e.g., "neoconservative" -- which usually translates in fact to "reactionary"). Which is to say that political labels in these contexts contribute more heat than light, and are not informative.

As one who is sometimes called a liberal, I do not see policies promoting privatization and globalization as ones which "liberals" (whether new or old) advocate, let alone support and implement. To the contrary, these policies and the particulars of their implementation are advocated and supported primarily by multinational profit-seeking corporations, and their political and governmental allies, particularly those firms who are most aggressive in obtaining control of markets, whether they are outright monopolies (as Microsoft certainly has).

Re Sean: The way I understand the article, the point is not that free software could have helped in this particular episode. Rather, it prompted the government to take a long, hard look at Venezuela's IT infrastructure, and with that the realization came that it might be vulnerable to being held hostage by proprietary software vendors. From there, switching to free alternatives seems like a logical step.

While I'm all in favor of moving from closed, proprietary systems to open, free ones, I'm not really sure how Free Software would have solved Venezuela's problem here. Both Windows and Linux/Unix use passwords - if the contractor involved was withholding passwords, presumably they could have done so equally well if Linux was in use.

Its not only Venezuela that is going Open Source, The IT czar of Mass.gov has ordered open source documentation system.

Obaid