LocalFOSS

The South American nation of Venezuela, better known these days for its colourful leftist president Hugo Chavez and its large reserves of oil (Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world), has been under going a quiet revolution.

In August 2002, President Chavez a massive shift in the way the federal government sourced and developed the software it used in its day to day operations. Decree 3390 directed that all software developed by the Venezuelan government or on behalf of the government by contractors must be licensed under the GPL, and that when sourcing new software purchases "Open source whenever possible, propietary software only when necesary."

Fast forward four years and change can already be seen in the use of Free and Open Source Software.

Despite a severe lack of corporate Linux support providers (most Linux support is done via a network of independent consultants), inroads have been made into several areas of the governments operations.

One of the shining examples has been the Venezuelan Patent Office, or Servicio Autonomo de Propiedad Intelectual(SAPI). In a country that does not recognise software patents, nor biological patents, the Debian Linux distribution has been used as the foundation stone for the system that will store information about both Venezuelan and Cuban patents and can store up to 9.5TB of data.