The Brazilian free software movement is in such high gear that it is almost impossible to keep up on all the new developments and projects that are happening throughout the country. Brazil is larger in size than the continental United States and has a population of almost 200 million people. Given the strong support of free software by the Brazilian government at all levels (federal, state and municipal).

For example, a new technology being used is the Digital Boards project for the public schools. The board is almost 6-1/2 feet wide and it’s sensitive to the touch of a magnetic pen that is connected to a computer running Vix Linux, a distribution specially customized for educational proposes by the City Hall of Vitória, in the state of Espírito Santo. You can watch a demo video for the project (in Portuguese). The public schools in Vitória started the school year using the Digital Board which is bundled with hundreds of educational applications for their classes. Also, because it is free software, any teacher or student can run the same OS on their computers at home, giving them the ability to contribute back to the project.

Another project being implemented around Brazil is the Prefeitura Livre project, a free software package which provides software solutions for municipal administrations around the country. The project was added to the federal government’s Public Software Portal during the National Meeting of New Mayors, who were elected last year.

An outgrowth of this project is a newly-announced partnership program which facilitates involvement by innovative businesses based around open source (like North by South) who want to contribute development into the suite of Prefeitura Livre applications. OpenGEO, a Brazilian open source company, is coordinating the partnership program. OpenGEO developed the original set of applications for the project, using CakePHP (the same framework favored by North by South), PostgreSQL for their database backend and PostGIS, a spacial database extension that provides geographic information services.

Given the spectacular example set by Brazil in using cutting-edge open source platforms for public schools and public administration, there is some hope being expressed in the US infotech press that perhaps President Obama will be receptive to breaking the US government’s “dependency on proprietary software.” Given the recovery package’s goals of fixing the current economic crisis, President Obama’s policymakers should focus on governments throughout South America, who continue to demonstrate that the millions of US taxpayer dollars spent on licensing proprietary software are the perfect example of “wasteful spending.”