The text of this law is published in its entirety at the bottom of this post. It is of course in Spanish, the legal language of Costa Rica. The law was introduced in January in the Costa Rican legislature by Laura Chinchilla Miranda (PLN), who is obviously very aware of the issues.

The first part of the law presents an overview of OSS and its continued adoption by governments in other countries. The greatest portion of the explanation is devoted to issues of security; the issues of technological independence, local development, and cost of ownership are also covered. Note also that exceptions are made where proprietary solutions are acceptable: in the case where no OSS solution is available, or where there would be incompatibility of data between open and proprietary pakages.

Microsoft has become aware of the security issues, and as has been recently reported in Wired, is Opening Windows 'Just a Little'. However, most of the English language press still focuses mainly on the cost savings and ignores the importance attributed by concerned governments to security issues.

As you probably already know, many of the copies of programs and operating systems are illegal in Costa Rica and other countries. We don't know if anyone has made a study here, but we have heard that the percentage of non-compliance can be rather high, even in large government agencies. Microsoft and US government officials are increasing compliance audits, so people are being forced to make a choice.

Pilot programs are underway to experiment with conversions of these systems to Linux, even though the law has not yet been passed. We hope to present an article on one of these conversions in the near future as there are some interesting developments in this regard. One of the findings, for example, is that hardware which would need to be replaced under Windows XP because of performance issues can still be used by employing client-server architecture under Linux. In this case, one high-performance machine with lots of memory can be purchased which can serve a dozen or more exisiting Pentium sub-200 MHz machines running as terminals. Thus in addition to the cost savings associated with software licenses, existing hardware can be used resulting in further and substantial cost reduction.

Switching to Free/Open Source Software is becoming increasingly popular in Latin America. These countries keep a careful eye on each other, and tend to move more or less in unison; so it is a fair assumption that most of these countries will eventually convert their systems to Linux and other OSS solutions. It's interesting that the governments are taking the lead. This will also undoubtedly result in the spread of Linux to individuals and the private sector, as they become aware of the issues and options. We will continue to keep you informed about these developments.

Willy Smith, reporting from Costa Rica

Costa Rica's proposed law about Software Libre:

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