As a sidenote, i would like to remember that Lula’s government in Brasil endorsed FOSS since the beginning of it’s first term, and in the last four or five years been struggling with the difficulties of it’s implementation. That’s pretty normal, i think. Migration from Licenced Software to FOSS in a large and complex organization like a country government is not an easy task.

I would like to congratulate Mr. Correa for that move, if not for anything else (for i DON’T KNOW much more about him and his government), and would like to wish good luck for our president Lula in Brasil, and for Mr. Correa in Ecuador too. And what about the other countries in Latin America? Isn’t it about time for them to join us?

Hugs from the Green Fairy.

@David:
I think on some level the nationalistic impulse is justified in that using proprietary products is the complete opposite of software independence. Adopting FOSS on a national level in ANY country other than the US means that the work on that software will be done by local workers, installing and maintaining complicated GNU/Linux systems instead of paying license fees to Redmond/Cupertino (or not paying them and being shunned internationally as pirates). The fact that it’s cheaper to pay [insert nation here] wages for a sysadmin than to pay license fees means that you create new jobs while also creating better localized products. It’s more than just “this will be free, lets stop wasing money and grab what the world has created”, but also “We need to keep the work here, where it benefits us as a nation”. I agree though that it’s unfair to act as if Ecuador will be building software from the ground up, and recognizing that FOSS is an international (increasingly almost UN-ish) effort is important, especially in convincing all the other developping nations to sign on as well.