If you can read Spanish, the Madrid-based newspaper Público has come out with a nice article which surveys the Latin American open source movement: Linux conquista América Latina. The article’s tagline is Los Gobiernos suramericanos impulsan el uso de software libre frente al propietario buscando independencia tecnológica, seguridad y desarrollo local, which translates as “South American governments boost the use of free software over proprietary software, searching for technological independence, security and local development.” Similar to North by South’s recent presentation at GOSCON, the article surveys the development of free software in each of the Latin American countries adopting free software: Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Cuba, Uruguay.

A North by South developer from Buenos Aires has posted pictures of the Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre 2008. The JRSL is a non-profit event designed to promote the use of free and open source software. Thank you, Mat, for the pictures!

North by South will be presenting at this year’s Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON 2008) about the use of open source software by governments in Latin America: The Latin American Free Software Movement. The presentation will give updates about the latest public sector efforts in Central and South America including Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay. Having just returned from CONSEGI 2008 and continuing to keep in touch with contacts from all these countries, NXS will be able to provide the latest news about open source in Latin America.

GOSCON was established in 2005 as an annual conference to discuss the use of open standards and open source software in the public sector. The latest that we’ve heard is that Marcos Mazoni, head of the technical committee to implement free software in Brazil, will join a panel discussion through a video link. NXS will provide pictures and further updates from GOSCON 2008 from the conference itself as it goes on.

North by South will be participating in the Open Sustainability Network camp in San Francisco this weekend. OSNCamp is “a BarCamp style conference about free content and knowledge sharing in sustainability, international development, appropriate technology and solutions to poverty.”

It will be happening this weekend, October 18-19, at San Francisco State University. The event looks to be a vibrant and diverse collection of people who will be coming together to discuss and network on topics related to sustainability of all kinds, poverty reduction and international development (values that drive NXS, the San Francisco Community Colo and other related projects). It is free and easy to register and, of course, participation or material support is encouraged from everyone who is interested in attending. A schedule of events is available online. Hope to see you there!

For some time, NXS has used OpenOffice internally — although we’ve been using the beta version of OpenOffice 3 to really make it work with clients who send us all kinds of documents using different versions of Microsoft Word DOC files, Powerpoint presentations, etc. Today, OpenOffice 3 is officially out of beta and available for download as a public release. In addition, OpenOffice is the standard office suite being used by governments and state-owned IT enterprise firms throughout Latin America (including BrOffice, the unique Brazilian version of OpenOffice). One main benefit is that OpenOffice 3 is now able to natively run on Mac OS X without having to first install X11. The OpenOffice website has been reduced to a crawl as people all over the world download the latest release — you can experience it yourself or read about it on Tectonic. OpenOffice 3 represents a major leap forward for the open source office suite and makes its usability more viable than ever.