Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez issued a decree as 2004 came to a close that the country’s public administration departments will move to open source software over the next two years, following the preparation of a migration plan over the next three months by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
The plan is expected to save millions of dollars of license fees. Online news site Venezualanalysis.com stated that the country paid $7.5 million in software license fees in 2004. The decree follows a 2002 official policy that all new software developed for the government should be open source whenever possible.
