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. He also lists some major corporations including the Royal Bank of Scotland, the biggest bank in China, Amazon, the US Postal Service, Telstra, DoCoMo, Travelocity, Tommy Hilfiger, NASA and a lot more of these, too. The open source momentum just keeps on going.

In 2006, the United Nations produced a report called Breaking Barriers: The Potential of Free and Open Source Software for Sustainable Human Development. It was a compilation of case studies from around the world which described the impact of actual free software initiatives that made an impact in the developing world. It has come back into the news because an organization called Zea Partners has recently released supplemental case studies that they’ve been involved with, mostly centering around the use of Plone, a Python-based CMS that many of the NXS developers have implemented for the Brazilian government. This is a great idea — to take the original United Nations document which describes case studies and, in a distributed way, keep it updated with supplemental reports about case studies. Many of the side projects that NXS developers are involved with could be put together in a report like this and we are currently discussing doing exactly what Zea Partners has done. This “living compilation” of case studies could go on and on, showing to the world the incredible impact of open source and free software.

We’re very honored that Upside Down World contacted us and asked us if they could reprint our interview with Marcos Mazoni. Upside Down World is an interesting web magazine that covers Latin American news and politics (in English) with a perspective that is rarely seen in the corporate press in El Norte. UDW has been around since 2003 and is 100% reader-funded which eliminates its reliance on corporate sponsorship for funding (and, therefore, is probably a more accurate source of news!). Please check out Upside Down World and consider helping them with the good work they’re doing.

We are happy to have released the announcement about the close of our round of funding with our investment partner, Launch Capital LLC. From the press release:

Backed by government support of open source software in Latin American countries like Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and others, a wave of free software enthusiasm is sweeping across the southern hemisphere. A generation of tech-savvy Latin American programmers exhibit all the best qualities of open source programmers: passion for software development, meticulous attention to detail and a thorough understanding of the inner-workings of operating systems, databases and web platforms.

You can read the entire press release on our website: Open Source Software Company Provides Near-Shore Services from the Latin American Free Software Movement

The power of the distributed commons! Our interview with Marcos Mazoni, new head of the technical committee to implement free software in Brazil, which we published in English and Portuguese, has been independently translated by people we don’t know into Spanish and Vietnamese.

Independent of that interview, Linux Magazine Online in Brazil has written a nice piece about North-by-South: Empresa de Código Aberto investe na América Latina.