Check out this free-software enthusiast who goes
to hang out with the Chavezian stalwarts of the
Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1647
He's so pleased with the prospect he can hardly sit still
'Maracaibo is also the heartland of the oil industry, and the state run oil company, PDVSA. Oil companies are also traditionally conservative in nature. However, PDVSA also is a contrast, as both the primary wealth producing intuition in the country, and the strongest source of support for President Hugo Chavez's revolutionary changes.
I had met a number of PDVSA oil workers, who seemed well represented among the ranks of PDVSA management. I also had the chance to talk with one of their directors, Socorro Hernendez, over lunch, as well as Jose Luis Rey, who's renoun is both as a skilled hacker and financial genius who was involved in helping rebuild the financial trading systems when those were sabotaged in 2003. (...)
Today, the state-run oil company is a major backer of the free software movement (software libre) in Venezuela and is a major sponsor of the 3rd International Forum on Free Knowledge, which is what brought me to Maracaibo. Every question related to the use of free software in Venezuela, and to how the Bolivarian revolution started, seems to come back to PDVSA and the worker lockout in 2002.
(...)
'Much of the infrastructure of PDVSA was under Microsoft Windows-based servers, and used proprietary database software such as Microsoft SQL. The IT managers did not expect a bunch of oil workers to be able to thwart their plans. Those same oil workers, working together with local computer hackers, were able to secure control of vital computer servers, and in doing so save the oil infrastructure.
'The Venezuelan revolution is perhaps the first revolution in history saved by computer hackers and is one of the reasons the government is so very strong on promoting the use of free software, particularly in public administration. The Venezuelan government wishes never again to have vital infrastructure held hostage or sabotaged by agents of foreign nations. This cannot be accomplished by source secret proprietary software, such as Microsoft Windows, with it's infamous backdoor NSA key. Even proprietary software from a trustworthy source has to be suspect for possible tampering, and so must be rejected, not just by Venezuela, but by any nation that wishes to protect and maintain it's sovereignty against sabotage.'
(((Man, that's all we need – leftist, free-software, South American
oil-peaking. Mix thoroughly and put on high heat.)))
