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September 10, 2008

SERPRO (The Servico Federal de Processamento de Dados), a US $ 1 billion annual revenue Brazilian government owned IT enterprise says that it has selected Debian GNU/Linux as the preferred distribution for its hundreds of GNU/Linux development and production servers.

Future SERPRO tenders and public hearings will include clauses requiring Debian GNU/Linux compatibility.

Recent SERPRO tenders have already encouraged participation by small FLOSS regional companies, as well as Debian support services.

During a discussion panel with the LUG Debian RS, SERPRO heard suggestions on how to encourage the participation of key employees, avoid internal forks of FLOSS projects, and modify its internal culture to relax tight project controls.

These will increase collaboration with, and gain the respect of, the community for mutual benefit, improving communications, and so lead to better operational performance.

The SERPRO board decided that Debian GNU/Linux is more suitable for its new corporate goals. SERPRO has decided to increase supplier independence, flexibility, agility and participation in technical solutions by direct interaction with the Debian Project community.

This is the first time that a federal government institution of this size has reached out to the Debian Project community for a closer relationship. The Debian Project will keep its institutional partners collaboration channel available for other government agencies who want to consider a similar relationship.

SERPRO has created a FLOSS Strategic Coordinator in part to assist co-operation between FLOSS communities and other federal government agencies, using the Brazilian federal government committee for FLOSS implantation (CISL) website and meetings.

SERPRO and other government agencies in Brazil have already started to release some code as free software.

SERPRO is rapidly evolving its internal culture to the values of FLOSS through the creation of a corporate internal Wiki, introducing regional FLOSS committees, increasing management awareness at all levels, opening code and then supporting most FLOSS events.

Debian Day Brasil 2008 was supported by SERPRO and a number of other companies as well.

Source: SERPRO.

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