FSFLA liberates tax declaration in Brazil

As featured in my March entry “When governments mandate proprietary software,” Brazil had mandated that all citizens file their tax declaration with a proprietary program distributed by the government.

Alexandre Oliva of FSFLA, FSFE‘s sister organisation in Latin America, reverse engineered that software and created a Free Software implementation, which he successfully used to file his taxes.

You can read more at FSFLA’s web site and the software is already available online.

Apparently this is sending shock-waves through the federal tax authority already. Hopefully they will have the sense to offer this program to all citizens of Brazil very soon.

About Georg Greve

Georg Greve is a technologist and entrepreneur. Background as a software developer and physicist. Head of product development and Chairman at Vereign AG. Founding president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). Previously president and CEO at Kolab Systems AG, a Swiss Open Source ISV. In 2009 Georg was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon by the Federal Republic of Germany for his contributions to Open Source and Open Standards.
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