For a long time now, NXS/San Francisco folks have begged, pleaded and cajoled our local government to follow the example set by Latin America to mandate a switch to free software whenever the taxpayers are footing the bill.

After all, this is San Francisco! We have more free software user groups than many small countries!

Well, finally, San Francisco has taken a small step towards our goal of a free software government. It isn’t exactly what we wanted … but it sure does come close.

On January 21, San Francisco adopted a policy that “mandates that city agencies always consider open source options when buying new software.” Ok … there’s not much real enforcement there. But San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom went on the record with: “[T]his is just the beginning. The potential is there for millions of dollars [saved] in software licensing costs. That’s the reality.”

More importantly, for free software advocates, this presents higher ground from which we can continue arguing for a stronger policy in favor of free software.

And, this policy has come out of a larger push called the Open Gov Initiative for the City and County of San Francisco, which validates many of the values of free software.

So, even though the policy lacks teeth and might just be a way to get us to stop calling the city’s IT department and complaining, it is, at least, a step in the right direction. Keep watching this space for more information on a stronger, coordinated effort to push for policies and/or legislation that contains real enforcement. If you are a resident of San Francisco and you’re interested in helping out, please get in touch!

In the interest of discussing software freedom, this bit of news is both surprising and challenges the ideas that we hold about freedom & democracy as “exports” from the United States.

Currently, President Obama is attending the Fifth Summit of the Americas, where Heads of State from 34 countries in the Americas meet to discuss regional policies for North, Central & South America. All of the countries of the Americas are represented - except Cuba.

These summits have a history of controversy and violence. During the Fourth Summit of the Americas, held in Argentina in 2005, large protests over the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the policies of the Bush Administration in Latin America led to pitched battles in the streets, complete with tear gas and Molotov cocktails. The Third Summit of the Americas became known as the Battle of Quebec, with similar violence erupting out of large-scale protests.

The Fifth Summit is being closely watched because of the significant political re-alignment of the Americas since these “siege summits” happened. Along with the new leadership in the United States, the wide-scale shift to the left in Latin America has meant that people like Evo Morales (who was one of the protesters during the last two summits) are now participating in the summit as Heads of State. Because of this shift, there is heavy pressure on the United States to end their 50-year embargo on Cuba and insistence that Cuba be banned from the Summit of the Americas.

In a related issue, bloggers are starting to take notice that countries like China are not the only ones to enforce a “national firewall” - as every sysadmin knows, a firewall controls both incoming and outgoing packets! And the “United States firewall” has been exposed by LinkedIn’s official policy of banning users from Cuba, Syria, Sudan, Iran and North Korea. Apparently, Google and Sun also ban users from these countries because of U.S. embargo laws.

Here is the official support response from LinkedIn to a user from Syria who lost their LinkedIn account:

Dear Anas,
Per the terms of our User Agreement, use of LinkedIn services, including our software, is subject to export and re-export control laws and regulations. This includes the Export Administration Regulations maintained by the United States Department of Commerce and sanctions programs maintained by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Under the User Agreement, LinkedIn Users warrant that they are not prohibited from receiving U.S. origin products, including services or software. As such, and as a matter of corporate policy, we do not allow member accounts or access to our site from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria.
Regards,
Kelly
LinkedIn Customer Support

Are you excited about fisl 10th edition? We are! The International Free Software Forum happens every year in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Celebrating a decade of the event, this year will be particularly special. For those who still don’t know, fisl is the oldest free software event in Latin America, happening this year between June 24-27. Registrations are open already and the earlier you do it the less you will pay! Applications for presentations/talks are open until April 26th and the results will be announced on May 25th.

The organizers just published on their blog the 14 international attractions confirmed so far (international from the Brazilian point of view). One of the most important names is Peter Sunde, co-founder of Pirate Bay. Their trial is related to the Azeredo internet law (1, 2) and the on-going discussion in Brazil about internet laws and ‘cultura livre’, which means ‘free culture’ (free as in freedom). And, yes, Stallman is going too.

The founder of LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project), Jim McQuillan and Scott Balneaves who develops LTSP packages for Ubuntu will participate as well. LTSP is pretty much the base for digital inclusion and computer recycling in Brazil for programs like GESAC and Cultura Digital which have created over three thousand computers labs around the country.

Another international attraction is John “Maddog” Hall, who says that fisl is the biggest community event for free software on the planet. Other names in the list are: Seth Schoen - a technologist from EFF who has been directly involved in the discussion about copyright law and encryption since 1990; Daniel Baumann - from Debian; Leslie Hawthorn - responsible for Summer of Code and Google Open Source blog. And this is all just the international attractions part of fisl, there are also workshops, a showroom, local attractions, meeting FOSS community folks from all around the world and lots of parties! This will surely be just the first of a number of news items we’ll post about fisl10 … thinking about a trip to Brazil and participating in 10 years of celebration with fisl? Yeah, we are, too!

North by South has always described itself as a “free software business” (or, sometimes, an “open source business”). Interestingly enough, what exactly it means to be a free software company is something which has been the subject of debate on various blogs.

It all begins with a report titled “Open Source Is Not a Business Model,” which is available for purchase by The 451 Group, who describe themselves as “an independent technology-industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation.”

In February, a post on the 451 Group’s blog caused some controversy because it describes two companies as “open source vendors”. These companies use an Open Core licensing strategy. The Open Core licensing strategy is an attempt to answer the age-old question of how a company can make money by giving away their product and it describes the model that SugarCRM (amongst many others) has adopted: they give away the core application but sell feature extensions (as well as support & SaaS hosting).

The controversy is that Tarus Balog, CEO of OpenNMS Group, took issue with Matthew Aslett of The 451 Group referring to Hyperic and JasperSoft as “open source vendors.” The problem is that the partnership between these two companies (Hyperic and JasperSoft, if you’re starting to get lost) results in a product where JasperSoft’s Professional Edition is embedded in a completely closed-source, proprietary software. Since both companies do maintain and provide open source software (evaluated using the “CentOS Test“), the conclusion was that it was fair to refer to these companies as “open source vendors.”

The reason this story is relevant is that it leads into another blog post by Matthew Aslett of The 451 Group, in which he tackles a wholly different description: a “Free Software vendor”! This was prompted by a post on George Greve’s blog, titled “What makes a Free Software company?” George Greve is President of FSFE (Free Software Foundation - Europe). Mr Greve makes it very easy on all of us when he describes what he thinks a “free software company” is:

“So usage of and contribution to Free Software are not differentiators for what makes a Free Software company. The critical differentiator is provision of Free Software downstream to customers. In other words: Free Software companies are companies that have adopted business models in which the revenue streams are not tied to proprietary software model licensing conditions.”

! - so, what does that mean for NXS? Is NXS a free software company? Are we an open source company? Well, at least for the time being, we’re going to continue referring to ourselves like that, for these reasons:

1. NXS was born out of collaboration between free software programmers/managers/etc in San Francisco and Latin America. Our Developers Network is deeply involved in the free software movement happening in Latin America and we have always been very open that one of our key goals as a company is to materially support this movement.
2. NXS’s business model does not revolve around a particular piece of software that has any particular license. Instead, we use our experience in building scalable applications and migrating organizations to free software to bring free software into even more organizations. When we come into contact with a project, we demonstrate to our potential client the numerous advantages they’ll reap from adopting a technology strategy that is based on free software.
3. Sometimes, our clients are foundations or non-profits who exist to promote and develop software for the community. We definitely go out of our way to find clients like this.
4. We don’t really work with proprietary software. Sometimes, in order to meet a particular need, we have used proprietary software but only when all other options are exhausted.
5. Our business model is based around developing free software solutions which often replace proprietary solutions within organizations.

Granted, many of these reasons are dismissed in Mr Greve’s definition of a free software company. In the end, what is and is not an “open source company” or “free software company” is incredibly less important than whether a license is free or not. Conclusion? If we are not a “free software company,” we’re content to build a business model that benefits not only the free software community and the phenomenal free software movement in Latin America but also companies and governments who are trapped in the stranglehold of proprietary software. That’s good enough for us, for now.

While companies should always be focused on cost reduction, recessionary economics can force the hand of many businesses. JP Morgan Chase has announced that they’ll be outsourcing $400 million worth of IT work to India, as part of a project to streamline their IT infrastructure. An unidentified source explained that “[i]n this economic environment, Mr. Chiarello, the current CIO, wants to ensure that he helps JP Morgan meet cost-reduction goals.” JP Morgan is the first bank to announce an off-shoring strategy as part of their efforts to decrease costs in the wake of recent bank mergers.

For smaller companies, technology off-shoring can also be a way to immediately decrease costs in this economic climate. For companies who aren’t throwing around $400 million contracts, near-shoring is a way to further decrease costs as well as mitigate the risks of off-shoring.

In the internet world, a unique opportunity exists to combine the cost savings of near-shoring with the cost savings of using open source software (another tactic being used now to combat the realities of the economic downturn).

The open source phenomenon happening in Latin America for the past 10 years has created an enormous pool of talented, open source developers. They are near-by, they have enterprise-level experience in developing with open source technology and they can be well-paid employees for a fraction of the cost of a US-based engineer. Sure, this is a shameless plug for North by South but by going the route of adopting open source software via Latin American developers, companies can also make a material contribution to a revolutionary movement which is proving out the potential of free software to completely replace proprietary software and all the downsides that come with it.

It’s the right time, it’s the right place and it’s the right thing to do!