 This brief talk is about what have been done in Venezuela regarding free software and specifically devion Yesterday I was talking to a friend from Belgium, and I was telling him that Just as Germans do with Susie they feel That's that a development that it's German and it's made by themselves and everything We feel like devion is a thing of ours because there is a universal project that belongs to everybody that Contributes either by developing or using it. So in Venezuela it's We have a strong feeling for them and this is a brief Resume of what has been done in Venezuela regarding specifically devion We have some legal precedents and For example in 1999 we approved a national constitution by referendum In the constitution it said that science and technology are a matter of public interest I haven't really read all the constitutions of the world But it has been said that the constitution of Venezuela is one of the only in the world that has Such an a statement that science and technology is of public interest This means that we can justify more budget for science and technology than other countries where it's not in the constitution And they have stated that that this is public interest In 2000 there was a presidential decree in Venezuela Sometimes making the legal decisions is very complicated. We have a trip a trip our division Actually six powers, but For the foreigners it's easier to explain that we have three powers and the Congress or the legislative power It's usually a stock of In discussions of things that are not really interesting for the country so the president some but sometimes needs to say that I think should we don't like for example the degree 825 says that the nation where free internet access is a state prioritized policy and from that decree now in Venezuela we have like ten or twenty thousand internet access points where people can Sort from the internet for like a hundred bolivars, which is a national currency and it's like 20 cents a dollar per hour That's why you see Venezuelan Syrian Europe Screaming to the heavens when we see an internet cafe and I would like for a euro by euro It's really expensive for us and in 2004 and this was the The most important of our legal present. There was a presidential decree The three thousand two hundred ninety that said that free software is to be used preferably in the national public administration and in states such as Venezuela national public administration means almost anything because Schools are under the national public administration. Some universities are also under the national public administration public health care and enterprises That belongs to the state for example the oil company So this was a very worldwide news when Venezuela decided to use free software preferably it was not a new unique a new initiative because Brazil and some other countries in 2003 and 2002 were already signed to use free software, but There's actually a motivation that makes Venezuela a key player in this free software thing that I will explain later For now, I can say that Due to this legal presence typical state-run fossil price may get up to 250,000 dollars per year, which is lots of money and This is not including any other support you might get because in a state like Venezuela you can get for example food for developers and accommodation for developers and You get the money apart from that so 41% of the budget of Venezuela is for social so-called social expenditures, which is public health care, education, etc and one of these parts is science and technology and Since we sell oil to other countries usually during the year we get additional funds for example that's your 500 billion bodywares, which is lots of dollars and were injected to a project to Venezuela to have a satellite in a joint venture with China So this happens all the time you get more money because of all the sales and So for examples in 1998 you couldn't get money from the old sales All the money from oil sales were to the central bank and you can then use it and we didn't use it to pay the debt for example the external debt that ate the Economist of most Latin American countries during the 20th century, Venezuela has paid it all Thanks for all the creditors and there's still something that for free software So we have excellent e-government infrastructure because before of the of 2004 the presidential decree We already have a constitution stating that science and technology is prior to Terry We already have a decree saying that internet access was very Terry so even with windows on and proprietary software we started to have a good e-government infrastructure for example If you have a little stable a little city that doesn't have money to get a server and a web page and all of That's all the national e-government can provide it and actually provide it provides it using them We have we have good hardware infrastructure Then in general the country has money to buy new hardware hardware is mostly a HP basis because HP has good links and providers in Venezuela and And it's a good thing that HP has decided to provide support for daily and basic solutions because we now have more support for for daily and IT solutions in our country and we have good internet connectivity Compared with the rest of the countries in Latin America and in general Latin America connectivity is very bad It's mostly satellite connections It's really a slow, but it's good for example when we compare to Colombia and Ecuador Bolivia and other countries of the of the region so The motivations regarding this decision were political economic on social I don't tend to speak of free software as a politics issue, but It has a part of that and that's why the Government decided to use free software because of sovereignty and national security 2002 we had a national strike promoted by people who opposed with the government and It doesn't care if they were right or they were not right, but that affected oil sales We stopped selling oil for like two or three months and the oil business that means that means you will not get money in one or two years so And this was done through locking proprietary systems the oil company used it to have Windows and proprietary software and they just lock up everything. So they call Linux hackers in order to Startle the enterprise again, and it's now selling like three million barrels per day And it's the only country left in the region with a strong and active nation-wide migration plan Brazil has already profit because there was a witch hunting in the government and the ministry In charge for that was dump it and Ecuador Bolivia and other countries are Starting to get a project with free software, but they have no money No, no, not as much money as Venezuela in order to improve it. So In the economical part we have had huge savings with With free software a small office say 150 people could save up to one hundred thousand dollars per year, which is Lots of money for a small office Just when moving away minds on us contracts that means for a couple if you get rid of oracle and good like Postgres or my SQL or any other database even text-based a database for a small office if you go save up to one hundred dollars a year and If you continue not paying Windows licenses and office licenses You can say a lot more and even if you take into account the initial cost of furnishing so free software, which means training people and Paying somebody to migrate your systems. It's even cheaper than the proprietary software Because when a country has money like Venezuela both proprietary software and free software basic companies are trying to steal money from the government. So Having an in-house migration plan means a lot of things In the social area the false has proved to be a fast way to improve IT literacy. There's a there's a mission a program in Venezuela in order to teach people how to read and write and Like one million one on a half million or two million people have already learned to read and write so we are now a total We are totally We have literacy And then we gave the people the opportunity to go to school and to go to university But there was not an IT education So there's a nation wide plan nationalization technological literacy IT plan Which has trained until now it started In the last quarter of 2006 I've trained 200 people in the use of data And it's willing to benefit one million people by 2008. So How does it work you sign up at an office where you have internet access we saw before that we have tens of thousands of internet access points in the whole country so you sign up there and You have a course with a live CD, which is deviant basically it's made with their own life actually And genome and you'll learn how to use open office and you learn how to use ice whistle and ice-dove and everything Actually people in Minnesota does not know what the Firefox means. They know what is ice whistle and ice-dove so The government also says and this is a very political issue that some social policies that are inherent to false developments are also The ones that they are defending for example The community the solidarity with our people's cooperation and everything So they are happy with it and it's a good thing because even if developers don't want to get involved in Political stuff you get the government support, which is always a good thing when it has money and it has power to Distribute your ideas to the whole country so the actors or the parts and participating in this and this project is the government which is Actually true has three roles as a rector because by decrease the one that has to decide what to use and where to use And how to use it is also a client because he buys services from other people and he has and it's also a provider because he trains people when possible in the IT literacy plan that we saw earlier. You may have heard of the IT literacy plan because Enrico Cini wrote to the DEBCOMF discuss Mailed in this After Mexico when he came to Venezuela and started this project and actually Aniva also replied to him and that was a real threat regarding that There are also big enterprises willing to take money from the government in this in this emergency of free software migration But they have their time in 2005 and they're actually out of business now because they have a Shortage of personal they lack good Creative people so yes, we have novel in Venezuela. We have red hat in Venezuela, but for example when you already had support line The telephone is picked up by an Argentinean So the government doesn't like that and they're also molding problems of corruption In 2005 a government officer stated that all government offices should use red hat enterprise linux He was fired right away and actually When you call to the office in charge of migration and you ask them what to use they say they will see that later There are so many human small enterprises, which has Probably lots of good people working with them But there are so disregarded by the government the government prefers to contract Both cooperatives or communities People from the community individual consultants and everything so With cooperatives is there's a great thing in Venezuela because they are supported by the government So you can get a trade in a bank You can get lots of resources that a minimum or small enterprise or a big enterprise couldn't get Such easily and the community is also a special case because it's completely Disinforized be organized be organized it they usually don't get Together to decide something or to promote something, but the government is always consulting them You can see when a law is about to be Our IT related law is about to be passed to the Congress There's always imitations to the mailing list of the linux user groups and deviant developers groups and everything so actually we have been in the national assembly in the With all the representatives speaking with them and telling what free software is and what devion is actually we had Opportunity to make a devion talk in the Congress in front of all the representatives So it's a good thing that the community is Taking into account in this process because we have saved the government from taking bad decision for example promoting the use of red enterprise Linux which and Venezuela has a lack of support because you the telephone support is in other country. There's not people There's like four people working for right, but in Venezuela and they have not translated a lot of documentation Which is necessary for the government. So If I would think that the community takes a word in the in the migration so the processes usually follow these and A scheme of selecting development of the point that's a title of this of the talk Small companies private consultants and co-ops are usually preferred Some people differ when they want to to make business with the government they get together and form a cooperative Some people don't like that idea. So they are private consultants Most enterprises value the community participation actually where I work if somebody's about to be hired for Debian-related work the people are human resources Google for them in mailing list and devian list and the wiki and everything to see if the guy is really involved And usual measures such as a nation what police the announcement Process is usually not done because it's time-consuming and it's also prone for corruption usually when an idea Is about to be hired the government has to publish in all the newspapers are called for Lacitation and everything. So that's not done And in free software related products either usually have been really fast They are documentation is totally used especially when we of course we are talking about they're basically solutions especially the security handbook. That's why Some Venezuelans are working with the Spanish guys and have your furnace in opinion in order to translate the security handbook Data version of the security handbook to Spanish And the documentation is always looking for in Spanish. That's where the lack of good documentation in Spanish. They can is seen We're trying to we have like 15 collaborators from their maintainers and translators in Venezuela We're trying to translate most of the of the documentation, which is available in the sites And also all the community resources like their administration the web page that's maintained by the steep camp I think and forms and meetings are usually check out when a project is done But there in Venezuela, which is a group of developers in the country is usually a first place for questions You can find in the main list archives You can find people from the government or from the state enterprises asking technical questions there When you're developing a database IP solution in Venezuela most projects observe And their base and the file system here is standard the last version which HR compatible with their own policy and specific policies Pro-oriented programming and I have programming is usually used in languages such as php and per Yeah, but heavily disregarded as a violin solution. We have a strong discussion of country in Sync but I think With the summer persistent people in Venezuela because they were saying that I was free software And there was this discussion and finally the government said that it could be used it, but it's not a free software We need another discussion now after song has taken the decision of releasing parts of the whole Java framework in under the UKL, but And you cannot find it's not easy to find a database in Venezuela now Which is regarded as a free software product You can find lots of php solutions or per solutions and if you want a graphic and Graphical user interface you can see blade being used with pearl and that kind of stuff or Python Permit-based software is only used when it compromises the viability of a mainly post-based product for example when you have 5000 users office which Have a flash-based web application You need to have the flash plug-in in the nice whistle. So you are compromising a little bit the Freedance of the whole development board. You are both people will be still be using them And it means authorization. There's a national office, which is authorization for the usage of Property software in the public administration Boxing improvements must be reported to devian in a usable way That means you cannot write to the book tracking system saying this doesn't work There are actually guidelines in Spanish for reporting box in a use in a good way This has been done however in a small scale The you can in the book tracking system You will not see lots of Venezuelans reporting problems And mainly this is done through devian Venezuela. The people usually contacts developers in Venezuela And they state the problem and we are the one who open the book and follow the book in the book tracking system About product management We have year-oriented budgets in most projects. This is required by law. We cannot have a project that Has a duration of three months There is a project assigned for the whole year, but money will only be available for these for those three months There are no strict guidelines. So this makes a Somehow good environment for developers, which as stated earlier have good resources to develop Have the support of the government have guidelines for developing so That's why we have lots of developers in Venezuela, which are happy with the with their work The usually an untechnical person is assigned to them as a manager of the pro of the of the project This is not a good thing But it's necessary by law also that a people not related to the project is also managing the product But usually people just ignore the manager and developers can freely do what they want And actually there's a third point that it's not showing up there that the government has It's on devian-based eforge software, which is to be used by all national developments. So you can find it Oh, well, I give you the the other statement is finde.gov.v You may have seen that in Venezuela. We don't have we have gov Be from Venezuela, but we also have gov from belgium because Gov and the lower v is a government in english and gov with belgium is gobiano in spanish, which is government also And when you're deploying almost any project will will require that the developers train other people in what It has been done. That's why we have lots of people that understand what the project is and that way You can also evaluate what the people has been done There's a nationwide medium level training program in free software, which is the software free software academy academy and software It receives recommendation from developers and teachers in venezuela. It actually has Evolved his penson And From decisions taken by by groups of teachers in the country and this is medium level. This is not a high level Training program. This is not a training program for developers. It's a training program for people who want to use Free software in a higher level than the literacy program that we saw earlier The results of any project can be reported to this office the it office Using these reports the it office may establish guidance and denies or approves any request proprietary software research for example The the national library of venezuela was deciding to use a proprietary software. They say that there was no Free software available for library management. So a friend of mine, which is a librarian and I presented a report About core, which is mga ray also participates in the development of core Which is a library management system and This way the this it office, which decides where to use proprietary software and where not Decided to deny the usage of of proprietary software at the national library As of today, there's only one notarization that I already told you that those parts of some cava that still remain proprietary Those are ultra acid for its use Some state enterprises have said that they want to use the out for the Data acquisition systems and most low level systems. So it's ultra rising David Venezuela is officially recommended by the office in charge of the migration, which is the one I said earlier Since 2006 if you call them and you say hey, I have 150 new computers I want to install free software then what should I do this will send you a deviant hc There's a national distribution. However, it's a project. It's not what you use it and Christian which is sitting there actually participating in the development of that project It uses the deviant package base the deviant installer and it's based on deviant's best practices It has a live cd, which is entirely made by deviant life and it has installer cds which are made through proceeding and All the best practices we are not breaking deviant package base And it allows us to provide user with a national distribution, which is customized to Venezuela, but You can install any of the thousands of package available in deviant Networking and e-government platform uses deviant since 2006 As I already said if you are a small city and you need a server in order to store your Information the government will give you one, but it will be deviant based And there's no way that you can get a windows server or a su server based server or even a ubuntu server By the way ubuntu is Lately has been highly disregarded Because of marketable words statements about Venezuela and his political position I'm not really I don't really support discrimination by political position, but The government does it and ubuntu is His his words have damaged a little bit ubuntu's image in Venezuela Yet there is a strong community of ubuntu Venezuela, which is ubuntu Venezuela And you can find me at ubuntu.org The national electoral authority, which I contacted for the special purpose of this talk Uses exclusively deviant for the network back end. So all elections are wrong by deviant in the back end. We use Voting machines Which is not a good thing. Some people say that manual voting is better I sometimes agree But the system is Open you can see the code It's not deviant based, but we have already started deviant on the voting machine. So it would not be Too far away when we actually vote on deviant machines But the whole network back end is deviant based They invite people of the community if you ever go to Venezuela you can contact A friend of mine the national electoral authority, which will invite you to see the whole Server room and you can take a look at the code of the electoral system State enterprises Most state enterprise have decided to use free software even when they are not mandated by law And if a state enterprise it's depends on the government then it's mandated by law But there are some that There are not mandated, but they still decide to use free software For example, Pedevesa, which is the state-owned company has decided to migrate their servers and desktops to deviant specifically They haven't released information on that yet. I couldn't contact anybody there that Stated to me any numbers or details about that There's one or two or three guys of Pedevesa here in the in that camp and you can ask them later but cbd.edeka, which is a company which produces energy based on Hydro hydro high production Exclusively will use thermal production Actually produces the equivalent in clean, so company energy of almost 450,000 bars per day, which is like One sixth of the production of oil in Venezuela has already migrated their servers to deviant server specialized applications have actually been Taken to deviant and 500 by the by today 500 people of their end users in business critical areas use deviant also We have a custom distribution there And we have poppet, which is Somehow substituted for cf engine and it's very good to distribute orders to the whole network So we have 500 people migrated. We are migrating like 15 people per day And we expect to have a december 2007 300 23,000 deviant desktops migrated to deviant in edeka, which is a state enterprise Private enterprise are progressively started to use free software, especially because they feel that they will not be compatible with the government Some other enterprise have just installed open office and they will share documents in the open document format with the government And also since several small services company Private consultants are working with deviant. There are several cases of deviant-based private enterprises in who's using deviant in the web page You can see one, which is Segurafano Mundo insurance company, which is very big It's a current insurance company And they have most of their networking in deviant actually In the universities in the in the academic area Most universities are now featuring a course or two regarding free software And even when their main pension is based on proprietary software and they use free software for network development of new applications Some universities are using deviant specifically in their network backends. For example the UNESR Has the first official deviant mirror, which is official since deviant edge And in some cases their teachers endorse the use of deviant when I say endorse is that they Trayton their their students if you don't use deviant I would you will not pass this But it's okay because The students usually tend to go to in Venezuela. I usually tend to go to Fedora I don't know by why why they're doing that But we have the case of one teacher, which is also a maintainer But it's not here that says today to do their students. I would they would not pass his course if they don't change today than they usually Well in conclusion good things of this Of the migration until now is that the community user base has grown a lot since 2005 we have User groups even in cities with less than 2000 inhabitants There's a big number of activists Working on free software So when we have to do a demonstration in the national assembly because of the decision they're taking there's a good number of people And David is highly regarded as the national standard Is since 2005 is being is being used in critical institutions Before that we have deviant in the government, but it was not mandated by law and it was not nationwide They use the using of deviant by the government has made private enterprises and then users to interest in free software Which is a good thing also because we want deviant to be used by everybody in the country not just the government Since there's more budget not boarded for science and technology The savings that are being done by using free software are being reinvested in training or developing new products deviant is being recommended and most deviant policies are observed in all developments And decision regarding free software are constructed with the communities, which has prevented some catastrophes for example, the red hot enterprise deluxe case, which was We have an insider which Took us the letter and we scan it and publish it on the newspapers and everything and that's what We saved the country from using red hot and now we're using deviant Bad things is that free software seems to be taken into account as a political issue in some cases This state of mind needs to be reversed as soon as possible We need to tell people that free software is a matter of the whole country not just the government or not just by a political position Developments are not yet integrated to the national policies either because they're not willing to do it or because they don't know about them We need to Inside venezuela a work communicating these policies that have already told you the selecting developing or deploying a scheme And the state is very bureaucratic Like most latin america or big states that with lots of money And it's hard to set up a project in a standard way And that's why people from outside that comes to venezuela Usually just take their hairs off when they see how projects are done in venezuela and that's why for example our proposal for that campaign had a lack of Ordering because the government says yes, I will give you money. I will give you a million dollars, but you need to To tell them that the deviant team has already decided to do it in venezuela and you need to tell where and everything So it's a very weird way to do things But when it happens, there are a lot of resources available the government usually provides money and food and transportation and When the when the litter of gas costs like two cents of a dollar It's easy to transport people And we don't even have like five percent of the Of the contribution to global warming of the whole region. That's weird but It's a good thing in general to have the government supporting deviant It's a good thing if we can provide the deviant upstream with the experiences that we have had in venezuela especially book reports and patches and improvements the national distribution team Sends to the deviant live people a patch regarding NG support in the live series. So that's a good thing. It needs to happen faster. It needs to happen in a more Distributed way, but in general these are the advance on free software in venezuela. I would like to show you Funny video Because it has president there This day he said to the people this was a national broadcast in the radio and television This was two years after he decreed to the use of free software and he's saying that He has noted resistance to the migration to free software And he's stating in his very own way, which is If you have heard him in In the news or anything, you know, he has a very explosive way of telling things He's saying that he will point his shotgun to anyone who is uh opposing to free software and Of course when people in charge of it in the government here here that they Move very fast in their process of migration. So he's also saying that there need to Migrate to free software and because we don't want to depend on external decisions And this is the part where he knows He says that people says that it doesn't work He asked a report a national report and he's saying that he will point He's saying that he's shotgun breaks all the resistance to to the migration. So this was the opening of a Of a center of investigation in Medida, which is a city with lots of academic stuff and there's actually The federal state or company has a center for investigation there and there's also a government-based Investigation center and there's the university and everything in Medida is Free software-based and even based in particular. So Thank you very much for coming Comments are very welcome especially if you have comments regarding the politics behind all this stuff I wouldn't like to discuss them here because Politics is a very Difficult issue to take specifically in a big event like that comfort. There are lots of opinions These are my addresses and also There you are in a square that web page and mailing lists if you ever want to Read the archives. It's of course a spanish basis, but it will be good for your Spanish to read this If you have any questions or comments now What has been done, they will be welcome And thank you very much All the slides to be pentabar and the video. So if you want to And I have a translation, but I didn't have time to I don't know how to use case and title I couldn't done The question about the deployment of desktops You said that uh, you are using puppet for the configuration But as far as I know puppets can only be used if there's also a system running So how do you install and deploy the machines if there's nothing on it? Okay And for example, uh, this of the public stuff is in a state based in a state enterprise Uh, what we have done is to add the packages to the to a devian city and proceed the installer in order to install them and Puppet by default looks for a machine named puppet in the network every 30 minutes. So we have a machine named puppet in the network and He uh The first thing that we did it was send a package a dummy package Which is named actual is our actualizer which depends on any fact that we want to install on them. So In desktops, that's what that's what we did. We proceeded the installer So it means if you are left to install for example 3000 desktops You will have one cd and go from desktops If we have to install lots of machines, we have a system in major server and we do that by that way or Uh, we we also use the um a modified version of the of the wind 32 installer of devian Uh, which has the source code available and you can change the paths for the for the kernel and the Init run disk. So We have also a kernel in initial run disk in our servers. We have a local mirror, of course um We have a devian mirror and symbolic links to all missing packages We have we only maintain like 800 packages of of the whole mirror and we have some symbolic links to the other ones So if people want to start say case of tiles, they will find it and It's mostly automated that that's why we do like 15 or 20 installations a day. It's Distributed we don't have only one place in the country where this company has like six seven locations in the whole country and Sloppy connections between them. So we we also have Redundancy in those other places. So so this works fine for you or are you thinking about the More central management thing to deploy the machines This works fine for us, but um, if the network is okay, the central matchmen will be Will be just fine Government in general the national distribution does not provide any any of of that because It's to be used in places that have no connection actually in in our company we have held up Authentication through PAM. So we have to use a secrets PAM in order to catch it to make a cashier of the credentials because when the network goes down then so For companies, it's a it's a good way and it's also published The puppet thing I did it myself. So I posted it in Spanish in my web blog in order to order people to be able to reply the experience in their own in their own company we have like 400 and 4500 nodes in the whole network From those three 3000 will be migrated this year or maybe the first quarter of 2008 And we are looking forward to keep using puppet as the as the central management system We in Windows we use a software named SMS, but I don't know about that And puppet allows you to easily install packages and add local users change for example We're planning to change the root password on the whole machines daily so because people usually get the root password to Stop and we're looking to change it with puppet You type hey, what is FAA? Yes, we have tried it, but We like more system in major and this method of doing stuff also We have lots of people that needs to do something during the day So then so it's a bad thing to automate everything. Yes, because they do not have They will just be staring at the screen. Oh, yeah new machine Oh And they also We cannot just migrate for example, we evaluated the possibility of making a In the phtp server of the whole network sending a good image, but There are specialized applications in windows that Only work in windows So we need to move them to terminal server or anything until we develop new applications So that needs a guy going there and taking the installer and going so always the the user support is Supporting the user is a good thing because they will eat you feel They have telephone so they will start calling you Which is a bad thing But I think If you could automate the deployment thing You will save some money or work time which you then can spend into education of the users. Yes What do you recommend specifically for? Since i'm the author of five I would recommend you to use five I think that the problem with system images that it does not scale very well if you have very different environments And and I don't think that your desktops are all really completely equal And so if you have for example a certain setup for department r and department b As far as I know with system imager You have to create some some golden image or master images And normally these images are always made by hand and that's not good in my opinion Yes, they are made but actually you have to remove you that rules in order to Them to reply Yes, we will take a look at system image of both actually and by now we are just Making one image for everyone And of course it has proof applications People didn't like e-beans the pdf reader of you know, so we have kdf and that kind of stuff Yeah, but of course it's need to be done by hand Yeah, you mentioned the game of your talk about These deployment of I understand they are community centers are sponsored by government where you have computers and all that How many are these and how are you dealing with Configuration of these machines and maintenance I told you this because I come from mexico where the government Started the programs six years ago to deploy computers in schools and I think the number Right now is like 20,000 schools On an average 25 machines, but a recent report By the newspaper says that 60 to 70 percent of those machines have been disabled because of different problems to the operating system windows, of course so Basically this program has been helped in and there's At least going a big audit going on because of all this failure So how are you dealing with all these problems and and and in Mexico what happened was that Once he computer acquired a virus for example, there was no one around to Just go and do a reinstall. There was any Skills because of the isolation of many of these schools. So how are you dealing with these problems there? Okay, usually this Internet access centers, which are called info centers on info centers Actually, the names reside within El Salvador and other central medical countries and Usually they are associated with other services for the government. For example, since health care in the Last two three years of the 20th century in Venezuela was really going down Since 2000 we have called Cuban doctors to come help and bring medical attention to poor communities in Venezuela So we usually have these Little hospitals of the town associated with the internet access center associated with a for example A house of the community where they can gather and make meetings about their problems and they can Send information to the government about new products that they're required and they are usually associated also with the educational centers for example alias Bolivarian Towns which are which are education centers for people with low resources And they're usually all in the same place So there's always people around and particularly in the internet access center Who is usually the people of the community is being trained about how to maintain it and the maintenance of the Of the machines is done by local services In the community for example a small company or even Pay access the internet access centers just decide to Move their business away and provide support to the government access center, which is cheaper and Because it cheaper lots of more people go there so Actually, I don't know exactly the number, but it's measured on tens of thousands of access centers in the country And lately it has been going down the number of new access points Open in the countries like for example in this year, I think a thousand more will open But they are now being trained in caracas, which is the capital of Venezuela. They are being trained on free software and linux and davian particularly In order to migrate those machines, which some of them are in windows And but some of them are also in there again since Several years ago and since they only provide internet access It's okay to use davian because we have great internet capabilities For browsing and everything and actually we can use being promoting the idea of using Open kiosk I don't know how do you spell it, but these they don't like basic Live cd that has only the browser and everything that I think guy Henry is working on that and so That's it. That's the idea with the internet access centers and they are actually those that has and davian now are doing the IT literacy center plan Which has for a week like 20 or 30 people having this course on davian and they made people that has No proper university preparation just a secondary school preparation Well, they want to use a computer or they want to begin to know what what free software is all about so They can have access in a in a in this pool access points and Aside from that, there's a project of setting up laboratories with computers in schools Most of them are are going out with wound or an avian basic distribution I don't know the number because I don't work with them and they didn't provide I asked them I actually asked all the offices of the government in the country for numbers and information about that, but Some told me that I have to go out there and ask for information or go to the party relationships office or Other other provide me numbers, but I didn't cite him here because of lack of space I thought that the election Office was a good example because of well, it's relevant in the country and schools is also another Good example, but they didn't gave me any information. I know because I have been there that some of their of their access point inside the schools have David and also the national government provides support for them if school in say the middle of the country in well very Not good Euro like city The government can go there and provide and support and it's usually happened fast like a week or something So they don't have that downtime and Another thing that I want to tell you is that venture is not officially in the one laptop per child project And the web page I think that we use it to appear in yellow meaning that they have showed some interest on the project, but They we haven't signed any agreements with and the people at MIT in order to get this project we have a computer and assembly industry in the country Which is a joint venture with china again, and we make computers laptops and desktop computers and workstations But this was this was a good thing to to to say that we don't have any problem with the one laptop per child I don't know why We asked the minister I asked it for two much two prototype boards of the of the one laptop per child project, but we didn't get any The argentinian people which have said that they want to The the machine they have made Local distribution name is utoto, which is what Richard Stammer used I don't know since when because he used to use them But he now sees it using utoto because then it's not free software He says so That's this the situation on internet access centers Usually are community centers with lots of services lots of people around and Maintained by the community Both the attendant is probably a guy from the community and the service guy that goes and change the printer toner And change parts of the equipment is also from the community And these are the people that have been trained as this These people have probably been trained not only in the IT literacy problem But also in the free software academy, which is a higher level problem. So they know a little bit more about you know, they know Shell comments and they know how to do advanced stuff for which I eat and then and end users shouldn't have to be doing And if they don't want to so but the IT literacy planning is you can see a A guy from a farm doing that first because it's just Hey, hey, this is a computer. It might be the first time they are seeing a computer and it's a good thing that they see it with devion because Then when when he goes to a machine with windows, he will say, ah, what's that? I cannot use my usual stuff that the the the type of things people say when going to devion from windows so it's generally a good thing and It's safe also that children In five years or so we will not know what windows is because they will be using free software or they are just From the environment, they are taking just free software. So they will They will think that that's only what's about I can give you the energy from Mexico, right? I can give you numbers and information And also the mock that we more know that has been to Venezuela and I saw this this stock. So you can also tell How it's like and it's different Yeah, we proposed a government of some scheme based on live CDs And they would pay those court-based They definitely They didn't take it They prefer to pay They are going to start paying Microsoft three hundred million dollars a year from 2009 Nothing happens Yes, we In the national assembly the the data people of devion went there was because the The windows guys and the micros guys Not only Microsoft but also students that were in the Microsoft student network and I and that kind of the strange sex, you know the the groups of Evil stuff that they do there. They look at coding in a gif, you know in a gif image with all these these Things that so they cannot OCR it And so they were the national assembly saying that they will be left without job if free software was to be used by the government So they were proposing the this concept of Neutrality, you know, you don't you don't decide but neutrality is just A state in that you are going to state what what you have and we have windows we have windows And if we're going to be neutral, we are going to continue to have windows forever And that's actually the Microsoft position. You have to be neutral. You can choose linux. Yes, but if you have windows You won't be choosing linux most likely so We fight against that idea And uh, Venezuela Venezuela is not a neutral country That's a political position us. We're not neutral. We have a strong position against this kind of stuff and the kind of social Things that the government think Come from Microsoft is is not compatible with their political position. So Microsoft is just Here they are trying to to keep private companies with them and so the who sat for example They're trying to keep private companies with them because they know the government will be lost in like two or three years completely For example office will be out of out of business and windows in a bit more two or three years will be out too SAP will stay a little bit more because they have a client in linux so You can use it from there But in general, it's The whole situation with the big companies is They are going out of business because either they only work with proprietary software Or they don't have enough people to provide support for free software solutions Look, it's a sign that in Mexico last year the government of we said the post Prepared a law for beating the use of open software free and open software And the rationale was that it couldn't fringe it could potentially fringe the intellectual property of companies so well actually The of patents office which managed both patents and into the property uses devian since 2004 I used to work there the whole patent system is devian based it We have hp software and storage area networks running with devian Since sarge actually we had a an alpha server running 2.0 I don't know which version and There are no software patents in Venezuela for reading you cannot patent software there. So That's why people in Venezuela use mp3 and all those patented Licenses because we just we just don't Care about that. There are no patent software as well as there are no live beings Patents you cannot patent live you cannot patent DNA you cannot patent a new species of Flowers or animals or anything? So that's why we don't care about the intellectual property infringements of free software, which there are not but The software isn't it's not very willing to listen to those arguments about not using Well, how nice lunch Just a final word. Some people are interested to these Stories about people who switch their country switching to free software. I may invite you to come on friday I think in the morning Pema Gele should be talking about the journey of buta to free software So you're welcome and I hope that Pema Gele will be here because he's not here yet But anyway, even if it doesn't come, I think that fun spot and I will come up something to explain this quite nice story and the other Venezuelan girl who was going to speak After lunch here in the lower bathroom is has an arrival. So I think the What will you free so we should speak with the buta and speed to with the buta and talk to But on friday, yes