Free Software Linux

A more detailed update from the second day of CONSEGI will be forthcoming but this picture is from a panel called “Modelos de Licenciamento para Software Livre” (Free Software Licensing Models), which included Alexandre Oliva from the Latin American Free Software Foundation, Pedro de Rezende (University of Brasilia), Claudio Ruiz Gallardo (Direitos Digitales, a digital rights group from Chile) and moderated by Bruno Souza (Open Source Initiative). Other discussion topics from CONSEGI 2008 Day Two included production of publicly-owned knowledge, models of governing information technology/communications, and mechanisms of support and innovation in software engineering.

Over 800 people were in attendance in Brasilia for the opening ceremony of CONSEGI as more people continued to stream in throughout the day. According to Sandra Sipp (Coordinator of Social Communication for SERPRO) over 2000 people registered to attend the conference, including high-ranking Brazilian officials such as Minister of Science and Technology Sérgio Rezende, Minister of the General Secretary of the Presidency Luiz Dulci and many other government officials from all over Latin America. The event is free and open for everyone and on the first floor is an all-Linux computer lab.

Several of us from the North by South core management team in San Francisco are heading to Brasília, the capital of Brazil, to participate in CONSEGI 2008, the International Congress of Electronic Society and Government, happening August 27 - 29, and we’ll be making daily blog updates about our experiences there. CONSEGI is exclusively about free software implementation by Latin American governments and there will be representatives from countries all over the region.

Continuing our series of bringing information about the free software movement in Latin America to English readers, North by South interviewed Cláudio Filho (original in Portuguese), one of the people responsible for starting the OpenOffice.org project in Brazil (pt-BR), known in the country as BrOffice.org.

The UTUTO Project is a non-profit volunteer organization that incubates other free software/knowledge projects from Argentina. They maintain a GNU/Linux distribution all translated to Spanish, they keep their own packages repository and you can search for packages on their site. The UTUTO community also maintains various documentation projects as well as a multimedia server.

Debian Day, also known as D Day is here (August 16) and many cities around the world are organizing events to celebrate it. The annual Debian Conference, or debconf, is happening right now in Mar del Plata, Argentina. You can follow the conference by video stream.

A proposed new law that restricts the freedom internet use in Brazil has already passed the Senate and is dangerously close to going on the books. The law, created by Senator Azeredo PSDB, restricts things like open wifi networks, forces ISP’s to keep user information for 3 years and gives ISP’s the ‘green light’ to open and look at packages coming from P2P user’s connection to check for copyright violations, and the list goes on and on.

Globant is, strictly speaking, a competitor of North by South, but we believe there is enough space in this market that we view them as a potential partner. The reason to bring them up at all is that Globant’s CEO, Martin Migoya, recently wrote an article for IndustryWeek about the advantages of near-shoring technology development to Latin America and we agree with a lot of what he writes about.

The BBC has become a forum for Richard Stallman, head of the Free Software Foundation, to criticize Bill Gates and the legacy he will leave on the world. Mr Stallman argues that Bill Gates’ philanthropy to developing nations can’t make up for all the damage caused to them by Microsoft:

Much of the news on this website talks about the creative ways that developing countries are using open source technology to build educational initiatives that are impressive when compared to education policies in the United States, which is much richer and could easily afford to replicate these outstanding programs in countries like Brazil.

Using free software as a base, Las Tunas in Cuba is going to be the first city in Cuba to try out an experiment of bringing the entire community online. Plans include online education, electronic trade, debate forums and some municipal city functions. The project will also include training and education to build out this online city. Meanwhile, a blogger living in Cuba has engaged in a “war of words” with the Commandante himself, Fidel Castro (a demonstration of free speech?).

Glyn Moody, one of open source’s most famous and meticulous historians, conducted an extensive interview with NorthxSouth that goes into a lot of detail about our company, our background, how we do things and where we’re going. Glyn Moody runs a blog called open-dot-dot-dot and he’s also a columnist for Computer World UK.

"Latin America is emerging as a real hotbed of not only free software coding, but free software uptake by governments - to an extent that puts the UK's pathetic bumblings in this area quite to shame." Glyn Moody interviews Ryan Bagueros of northxsouth.com about the Latin American free software revolution and North-by-South, a company that is giving US businesses access to this incredible phenomeno read more

Brazil is continuing to solidify its role as the leader of technology innovations for developing countries. As noted here on this site, Brazil is exporting its open source tech solutions at the Brasil Tech 2008 conference being held in South Africa. One such innovation is reconditioning old hardware and using free software to put them back into circulation in Brazilian schools.

Inspired by the decision of the government of Munich to migrate to open source software, Scott Morris has compiled an impressive list of migrations to open source from around the world. You should take a look at his entire list (almost 100 examples) but some of the highlights, relevant to us, include the governments of Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Japan, Norway, Israel, China, Spain, Australia, South Korea, Indonesia, France, Austria and a bunch more.