[NCLUG] Brazil Tech, was Green Power

Mon Sep 15 14:40:15 MDT 2008

Well, I've been away from Brazil for 5 years - except for a 3-week 
vacation last March - so in a way my views are probably dated and 
biased. However I did spend my first 38 years of life in Brazil and I 
was very involved in the Linux movement there from 1995 to 2002.

There are hugely differing attitudes towards Linux in Brazil. Up until 
when I left it was the OS of choice for every single ISP in the country. 
It's extensively used in small- to medium-sized companies but is mostly 
ignored by Brazilian branches of multinational companies. It has been 
seeing adoption by large Brazilian corporations, though.

By law, every branch of the Brazilian Federal Government *must* consider 
FOSS first but can opt for proprietary solutions if they can show there 
is no FOSS alternative. In practice however all this does is provide 
legal basis for FOSS-friendly people in government to deploy Linux. 
There is a huge resistance movement from the Windows-huggers, who seem 
to have learned to design their proposals and plans so that only Windows 
will be a viable option.

There's a very active community and many companies providing Linux-based 
products and support. Probably the most widely know example is Conectiva 
which ended up acquired by Mandrake and ultimately became Mandriva. I 
was the founder of one such company, Completo Tecnologia, which is still 
around and growing -- not my doing since I sold my share in '03.

I could probably write volumes about the subject but I won't subject you 
to it. Of course I'm available to answer specific questions.

The ethanol programs have been a huge success. They are one of the main 
reasons why Brazil is currently energy-independent besides being the 
10th largest energy consumer in the world. Other big parts are heavy use 
of hydroelectric power and very large oil reserves. Natural gas and to a 
smaller degree, nuclear are other contributors.

I remember when the ethanol program was started in 1974 - although at 
age 9 I was hardly aware of the implications. It started with government 
subsidies to sugar cane farmers (BTW sugar cane is one reason why 
ethanol might make more sense to Brazil than to the US. It's a LOT more 
efficient than corn or anything else for ethanol production, but can 
only be grown in the scale necessary in tropical weather.) It was 
followed by government incentives and tax breaks for investors building 
distilleries to produce ethanol; the Federal government also initially 
funded the distribution network and allowed official fleet cars to be 
used by automakers to develop what would ultimately become flex-fuel cars.

All my cars in Brazil with the exception of the first one - a '78 VW bug 
  - and the last one, a '97 GM-branded Opel, were ethanol-powered. In 
the eighties almost all new cars were ethanol-powered. Today about 75% 
of new cars sold in Brazil are flex-fuel (can run on either gasoline or 
ethanol - or a mixture of both in any proportion).

 From a car owner's point of view, the big advantage is the ability to 
chose your fuel according to what the prices are doing. Gas too 
expensive? Fill up with ethanol. And of course, vice-versa. A Brazilian 
person can also choose to buy ethanol for political reasons even when 
it's more expensive than gasoline - since it's easier to export oil than 
ethanol and that helps the country as a whole; or since ethanol is 
renewable; or many other reasons. It's a good application of "voting 
with your dollars (well actually Reals)."

The main disadvantage is that ethanol-fueled cars typically need to burn 
hotter and therefore use up more ethanol than they would gasoline for 
the same work, even if they're cheaper to run. This can be felt in 
range, for instance. There used to be a big disadvantage: in colder 
weather the ethanol engine would be hard to start. They had a small 
(half-liter) gas tank that would be used to pump gasoline directly into 
the carburetor to help them get going in the morning. Of course that was 
in the days of carburetors and modern fuel injection and 
computer-controlled engines have fixed the problem for good.

 From an ecological perspective, there is some concern about the impact 
such hugely enormous sugar cane farms may have. I'm no expert on the 
subject but I can say there are studies suggesting doom and others 
suggesting solutions. In other words, the jury is still out. The way 
most Brazilians see this however is something like "yeah, there may be 
these ecological problems -- but oil not only has huge ecological 
problems of its own; but it also causes wars and will eventually run out 
anyway."

I hope this answers your questions -- and thanks for asking, it's 
refreshing to find someone who doesn't immediately think of soccer, 
carnival and scantily-clad women when they see the word "Brazil." (and 
of course, this is no comment on anything particular to America - that 
attitude is pretty much the norm world wide, and it's probably our own 
fault in the first place :)

Yuri

Michael Riversong wrote:
> It's way too easy for Americans to forget that Brazil is technologically advanced.  Since you're here, do you have any information on how Linux is being used there?
> 
> Also any comments you have on how their ethanol programs are doing would be of help.  We get some contradictory information on that here.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Yuri Csapo <ycsapo at mines.edu>
>> Sent: Sep 15, 2008 12:47 PM
>> To: Northern Colorado Linux Users Group <nclug at nclug.org>
>> Subject: Re: [NCLUG] Re: "Green" power
>>
>> To contribute with a piece of trivia: there's a plant in my home town 
>> (São Paulo - Brazil) that does exactly that some of the time. It's used 
>> for several things including flood control and to keep water levels 
>> constant for hydroelectric generators downstream, but a large part of 
>> its night cycle is spent pumping water upstream so it can get to a 
>> steeper slope on the other side, increasing that particular river's 
>> generating potential. It is also sometimes used to generate electricity 
>> (because the pumps can act either as pumps or generators).
>>
>> Yuri
>>
>>
> 
> Michael Riversong
> 
> Cheyenne, Wyoming
> 
> Beautiful Music for the whole universe!
> 
> http://home.earthlink.net/~mriversong
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-- 
Yuri Csapo
Academic Computing & Networking
Colorado School of Mines
CT-256
Phone:  (303) 273-3503
Fax:      (303) 273-3475
Email:   ycsapo at mines.edu

Please use the following link to open a service request:
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