[Ecommerce] MS lobbying Brazil because of its free sw choice

[Pedro de Paranaguá Moniz]

Article that may be of interest.

Pedro de Paranagua Moniz
Masters in Law (LL.M.) candidate, class of 2004/2005
Queen Mary, University of London

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Microsoft's Gates Wants Meeting with Brazil's Lula
Mon Jan 17, 2005
By Terry Wade

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. is lobbying Brazil's
government to agree to a meeting between the company's chairman, Bill
Gates, and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the World Economic
Forum next week, a Brazilian official said.

The country has taken prominent role in the so-called free software
movement, an effort that champions free computer operating systems like
Linux as an alternative to Microsoft's Windows program.

"Brazil wouldn't gain anything from this, but Microsoft would gain a
lot," Sergio Amadeu, head of the president's national technology
institute, told Reuters. "They want to try to lobby Lula in the other
direction."

Tired of paying costly licensing fees to companies like Microsoft,
Brazil, the world's eighth-most wired nation, has told agencies in its
sprawling federal bureaucracy to move to Linux and free software
programs that run on it.

This year, the government will try to get private citizens to make the
switch. It will partially subsidize the purchase for lower middle-class
people of 1 million computers running Linux along with 25 other open
source programs.

An effort by Microsoft to arrange a meeting between Gates and Lula could
mark a shift in strategy for dealing with Latin America's largest country.

Last year, it sued Amadeu for saying the company was like a drug pusher
who gives free samples to get consumers hooked and then starts charging
for the product. Microsoft dropped the suit after Amadeu said he was
just repeating what he learned in economics textbooks.

Microsoft's new tactic of conciliation instead of confrontation reflects
the country's growing status among the digital elite. It is also a
recognition that pushing for open source software is part of a larger
set of policies first implemented by Lula's predecessor, Fernando
Henrique Cardoso.

Worried about growing HIV infection rates in the late 1990s and the cost
of treating them, Cardoso's administration threatened to break patents
on anti-AIDS drugs unless multinational drug companies cut prices. The
strategy worked.

Wired magazine, the bible for technology fans, published a lengthy
article in November championing Brazil's growing role in the free
software movement.

Although quantifying how much the government could save under the open
source guidelines is hard to estimate, Amadeu said it would save the
country millions of dollars in coming years.

Lula's press office said a meeting between Lula and Microsoft officials
has not been put on the president's appointment book for his visit to
the meetings with business and economic leaders in Davos, Switzerland,
January 26-30.

Microsoft officials in Brazil declined to comment.

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.