Bolivarian Computers are made by the joint venture VIT (Venezuela de Industria Tecnológica), which is owned by the Chinese company Lang Chao and the Venezuelan Ministry of Light Industry and Commerce.

It is part of the continuing move towards FOSS that was begun when Chavez put in place a law that made it compulsory for all government agencies to migrate their IT infrastructure to free or open source software.The directive came some years after Chavez was involved in a power struggle with the state oil company, PDVSA; Venezuela has plenty of black gold and Chavez has been using the money to spread literacy throughout the country. Of course, this is frowned upon by the US which has for long dictated policy to South American countries.

Chavez is his own man.He is nothing if not anti-American - referring to George Bush as the devil at the UN was probably the most extreme example of this - and the software directive is a further indication of his politics. The IT operations of the oil company, PDVSA, were outsourced to a joint venture named INTESA.

However there was an American finger in this pie - INTESA was run by Science Applications International Corp, a US outfit which has on its board and in its upper management plenty of the flotsam and jetsam who regularly float out of the US Defence Department and intelligence agencies - people like William Perry, Robert Gates, Melvyn Laird and John Deutch.

The anti-Chavez forces at PDVSA attempted to prevent power slipping away by trying to shut down the company through labour action; part of their moves included preventing people from using the automated systems by blocking passwords. Hence, when pro-Chavez people started running the operations they had to do everything manually - and remember, oil is the main source of government revenue, it brings in nearly three-quarters of the country's income.

While it appears that moving to free or open source software is part of a general trend in Venezuela, the incident at the state oil company brought things to a head. PDVSA was using Windows, one of the most potent symbols of American capitalism.

When you have problems running things at the company which yields so much of government revenue, due to the fact that the software is getting in the way, then thoughts naturally turn to an open alternative.

It's a bit ironic that a licence developed by an American is now a very strong symbol of what the US fears - other countries taking control of their own destinies. But while US companies focus on their own little patch of turf, a lot is happening outside.{moscomment}

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