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A bill has been introduced in Peru which would require the government to use free software.
Microsoft is of course outraged, and has complained. Here is the utterly amazing reply from Dr. Edgar David Villanueva Nunez, Congressman of the Republica of Peru. He says, in part:
To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indespensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.Amen. The whole letter is worth a read. (from MeFi)
To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.