The adoption of free software by governments, especially in Brazil, is starting to show us the trajectory of a migration that is not only about changing from one software to another or just saving money, but a wide-reaching cultural shift. Latin American culture is shifting towards a paradigm that gives priority to knowledge and information: creating it, sharing it, promoting it on a local level and developing innovative, free technologies. This contrasts with the culture in the north which is traditionally about keeping information secret, guarding knowledge, spending millions of dollars on licensing and spending even more on patent lawyers who use the force of law to keep information and knowledge private.

We interviewed Cláudio Dutra (Director of IP and Multimedia for CELEPAR, Paraná’s state IT firm) and Pedro Luiz Viesser (Coordinator of CELEPAR’s Networks Services Implementation Division) about Expresso Livre (Free Expresso), an enterprise free software suite that was developed, at the beginning, inside of CELEPAR. Expresso Livre is based on E-groupware but CELEPAR has extended its capabilities significantly, including a new mobile access module.

In the interview, Cláudio and Pedro tell us how the process inside the government led to this free software implementation … not only to improve the software but also to open it up to other government agencies as well as the world of free software developers and users. Currently, there are 21 private and state-owned companies and institutions that have joined the community. In the State of Paraná alone, there are at least 110 thousand users.

The lesson of Expresso Livre is that the migration to free software is an organic process which takes time but this is also the most rewarding part of the effort, as the software improves day by day and the community grows. You can read the interview in the original Portuguese or in English.