Ecuador leader: just say 'no' to Microsoft

A political leader in the Western hemisphere is making an aggressive push for his country to become a global leader in technololgical self-sufficiency, but it’s not George W. Bush or Hugo Chavez. It’s Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s controversial president, best-known to many Americans for his intention to set a socialist political course for his country, and for his at-times harsh criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

Now Correa is pushing his fellow citizens to embrace the use of free software “on a public and private level” as a way to “guarantee the sovereignty of our states.”

“We will depend on our own efforts, and not on the external forces of the region,” Correa announced over his presidential video channel. “We will be producers of technology, and not simple consumers. We will be the owners of the source codes, and we can develop many products that can, with cooperation of this effort, be very useful to public and private companies in the region.”

There’s some interesting, well-informed buzz on the blogosphere at Harvard’s Global Voices Online. While one blogger points out the apparent irony of Correa “paint[ing] a layer of nationalist rhetoric onto the benefits of open-source software,” another commentator responds that adopting free software is a smart way for developing nations to generate domestic job growth and create software tailored to local needs, while avoiding being stigmatized as software pirates.

Posted by Reed Johnson in Mexico City