In Brazil, the adoption of free software in the public sector continues its unparalleled expansion. In the state of Paraná, the IT institution that maintains all of the state’s computer systems (CELEPAR), has developed a free software Ombudsman: OUV. The system manages incoming correspondence from the citizens of Paraná: suggestions, requests, complaints, compliments and general feedback about the government’s actions. It also handles responses and referrals released by the State Ombudsman. “This allows better monitoring of requests made by citizens and a direct communication with the listeners registered with the system,” explained the chairman of CELEPAR, Vanderlei Iensen.

Because the software is free, OUV is now being used by the State University of Londrina (UEL). It is also used by CELEPAR itself, the Government of Santa Catarina, the Court of Accounts from Paraná and the state of Santa Catarina, the City Hall of Almirante Tamandaré, the Assembly of Cascavel and many other government institutions and companies. To use the software, organizations sign an agreement in which the software is distributed for free (in both meanings of the word: it doesn’t cost anything and the source code is included) and the signee agrees to notify CELEPAR of any changes they make to the code so it can be incorporated into future releases.

OUV is one of many software applications developed and released by CELEPAR. While Brazil’s government is saving millions of taxpayer dollars using free software and cultivating a digital community that encourages citizen participation, Microsoft is kind enough to offer US taxpayers some volume discounts for government organizations.

Tax payers in the United States paid at least $75 million to Microsoft in FY2008, with at least $71 million of that money being granted in non-competitive bids. And that’s just to Microsoft, one of many companies selling proprietary, closed source software to US taxpayers.

The Open World Forum (OWF) is an international organization based in Paris, France. OWF organized an event in December 2008 which brought together people from across the FLOSS spectrum: programmers, advocates, corporate and small business users, hobbyists, academics and investors. OWF’s focus is the future of information technology within the context of the FLOSS revolution. One significant outcome of the 2008 event was the culmination of strategic, tactical and political discussions in the form of a roadmap through the year 2020.

This first version of the roadmap is open for comments and will be re-assessed annually during the OWF event. Experts from all around the world will conduct studies in 7 key themes (public policies, innovation, ecosystems, cloud computing, IT governance, careers and FLOSS in an open world). The OWF 2020 FLOSS Roadmap can be downloaded here.

The Brazilian government’s experience with FLOSS was chosen as one of the best real-world cases for the adoption of free software in the public sector. The case was presented by Professor Christiana Freitas, from the University of Brasília (UNB), and Corinto Meffe, coordinator of Brazil’s Portal do Software Público. All of the key themes will be evaluated annually until 2020, documenting the positive and negative experiences and results.

The Public Software Portal of Brazil works to aggregate all the initiatives with FLOSS inside of the Brazillian government. It also connects them with the community in that it’s open to anyone (companies, individuals, etc) who want to contribute or propose a new solution. It’s an important step forward when the citizens of a country can see and contribute to the technology and the source code used by their government to serve them. This is a level of transparency that, without doubt, has become a critical element of modern democracies.

Many of the predictions in the existing roadmap have already started to come to fruition. For example, FLOSS has already begun to bridge the global digital divide. FLOSS continues to become more and more mainstream, despite the billion-dollar initiatives to marginalize it.

In particular, North by South is interested in OWF’s prediction that “FLOSS communities are enablers of Business Ecosystems” — the unique nature of North by South’s business structure is an early example of this prediction. NXS operates as a distributed, global company with a flexible network instead of a monolithic corporate structure.

OWF makes a number of other predictions as well as recommendations for the expansion of FLOSS adoption. North by South is proud to do its part in contributing to these recommendations for success.

A story about Cuba’s Linux distribution, Nova, has been in the top ten most popular articles all day on Reuters and has received attention all over the tech industry press. Nova is the result of two years of work and collaboration between the Cuban University of IT Sciences and UTUTO Project from Argentina. The Cuban government announced the release of the Linux distro at this year’s International Conference on Communications and Technology in Havana.

At last year’s conference, Richard Stallman spoke and many others used the conference as a forum to discourage governments from using Windows products, based on fears that Microsoft’s relationship with the US military-industrial complex should make public decision-makers wonder about what exactly is happening under the hood of any closed source operating system.

That idea doesn’t seem too strange considering that Venezuela’s oil industry was almost brought to a complete stand-still by a US Defense Department-affiliated software company that took remote control over critical Venezuelan systems because their corporate interests didn’t coincide with changes that were being made by the government.

Like many of the progressive governments which have adopted open source technologies in Latin America, licensing cost has only been part of the rationale. As Hector Rodriguez, dean of the School of Free Software at Cuba’s University of Information Sciences, is quoted in the Reuters article: “The free software movement is closer to the ideology of the Cuban people, above all for the independence and sovereignty.”

Colombia doesn’t usually get as much attention regarding free software in Latin America, largely because the federal government lags behind their regional neighbors in embracing open source. However, on the municipal level, the town of Yumbo will become the first model of a ‘digital city’ in Colombia starting next year, thanks to the development of a project that seeks to put information technology and communication in the service of social development.

The announcement was made by Abraham Rubio, president of the Foundation for Support to Local and Regional Human Development, Fundehumano, during the Second International Congress of Free Knowledge, Local Development and Regional Economy, held at the University of Santiago de Cali.

Rubio said that in the development of societies, it is necessary that people have access to new technologies, but given the high cost of licenses to use proprietary software, experimentation in using tech for democratization is cost-prohibitive.

“With free software, costs are reduced and equipment and training can be more useful, with the goal of citizens being closer to their governments and the functioning of their communities,” he explained.

The digital city project has an initial budget of 5 million euros for four years.

Campus Party, an enormous LAN party that originated in Spain, began migrating to Latin America in 2008, with events in Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador, during the XVIII Ibero-American Summit (which included heads of state of many Latin American countries as well as Spain and Portugal).

This year, Campus Party continued in Latin America with double the number of people in attendance from 2008 converging at the Immigrants Exposition Center in São Paulo, Brazil from January 19 - 25th. With support and participation by the Brazilian federal government and the state of São Paulo, 6,655 registered “campuseiros” were joined by thousands more people who came through the open event areas. Campus Party has become regarded as one of the most important events for innovation in technology and electronic entertainment throughout the world, with an emphasis on free software, programming, robotics, computer modeling, grid computing and a lot more.

At this year’s event, there were around 19 tech-talks planned for Campus Party Brazil, including discussions about “OpenSolaris, Java, MySQL and Open Source”. The free software community in Brazil is one of the most vibrant in the world and activities were organized by and for the movement, at all levels of knowledge.

John “Maddog” Hall issued a challenge for participants to create a one or two minute video or audio “advertisement,” suitable for displaying on sites such as YouTube but captured, edited and otherwise produced using Free Software.

The surge in popularity and participation of Campus Party in Latin America is no surprise, given the leadership provided by the region in wide-scale adoption of technology innovations, backed by an enormous community movement that makes it all happen. Campus Party 2009 in Brazil was documented in photos on Flickr, a blog hosted by the event organizers and by nearly a hundred thousand other bloggers.