Roberto Galoppini maintains a website described as “where business meets open source”. He recently e-mailed us with some questions and then featured some info about North-by-South on his site. He articulates our model with some technical economic terms:

Brazil and South America as a whole have an absolute advantage over USA in producing open source software, and as a matter of fact what is going on with the free software movement in Latin America is pretty peculiar.

An absolute advantage is a concept that comes out of economic theory and it is described on Wikipedia as:

A country has an absolute advantage over another in producing a good, if it can produce that good using fewer resources than another country. For example if one unit of labor in Scotland can produce 80 units of wool or 20 units of wine; while in Spain one unit of labor makes 50 units of wool or 75 units of wine, then Scotland has an absolute advantage in producing wool and Spain has an absolute advantage in producing wine.

And, this is true! One of the side benefits of the widespread adoption of free software by Latin American governments is that they are developing the absolute advantage that their countries have in developing open source software and North-by-South, through 10+ years of collaboration within the region, is uniquely positioned to give companies in O Norte access to this advantage. Thank you, Roberto!

North-by-South is proud to announce the first in a series of articles that will document the Latin American free software movement in detail. We recently spoke with Marcos Mazoni, who made news last month when he was appointed as the new head of the federal Technical Committee for the Implementation of Free Software in Brazil. The interview mostly focuses on the efforts to migrate Brazil’s state-owned IT firms to open source software, as this is what Mr Mazoni has been working on for the past decade or so. Our next article in the series will look at Brazil’s Digital Inclusion program in greater detail. To read the interview with Mr Mazoni:

• Read the interview with Marcos Mazoni in English
• Read the interview with Marcos Mazoni in Portuguese

There was a very nice write up about North-by-South today on Matt Asay’s Open Road column at CNet. From the article:

As the rates for Indian and Eastern European developers continues to climb, it may be wise to look south to Latin America. There are some exceptional open-source developers in or from Mexico and Latin America (Miguel de Icaza being the most famous of them), and Latin American governments’ adoption of open-source software is only going to increase this. […] Perhaps most importantly, this is a team that groks the spirit and code of open source. I may just be optimistic on North-by-South because of my family’s affection for Latin America, but whatever the reason, I’d encourage you to take a look.

Matt “gets” the reason we’ve seen an opportunity here: the Latin American free software movement is creating experienced talent in near-by Latin America who can provide the services needed in the San Francisco Bay Area with a lower cost but increased return.

This is an interesting story because it provides a direct link between San Francisco and Sao Paulo. For North-by-South, our two main hubs are in SF and SP. In Brazil, Inclusao Digital is a project initiated by the administration of President “Lula” da Silva in 2005. Its intended goal is to bring technology and training to the poorest sectors of Brazilian society in a country with some of the sharpest contrasts between rich and poor. Combined with Brazil’s commitment to open source software, this program has done amazing things like build media centers in urban favelas (basically, huge ghettos that encircle Rio and Sao Paulo and other major cities) but also in remote regions of the country (like the Amazon) where many indigenous populations live. The entire program is built on open source, free software so not only has this program helped bridge the digital divide but it has also provided state-funded employment and experience for open source programmers.

But, this isn’t really news. The program in Brazil has been active for over 3 years and many of the developers working with North-by-South have experience working at Inclusão Digital. What led me to bring this up is a recent story in PC World about a digital inclusion program beginning in San Francisco. While SF is the center of the internet world, there is an enormous gap between the high-paid technology workers and the poorest sectors of San Francisco:

Access to technology is substantially below average for San Franciscans earning less than $10,000 up to $25,000 per year, the study said. There is also a big technology gap for the large numbers of residents who speak only Spanish or Chinese.

And, like in Brazil, open source is playing a key role in San Francisco’s digital inclusion program:

The PCs were ill-equipped with old operating systems like Windows NT and Windows 2000, Griffiths said. “They were a wreck, there were pop-up ads and spyware and most of them didn’t load Internet Explorer because no one took care of the lab.” Griffiths got to work, replenishing the lab with 15 donated computers and getting volunteers to load up Edubuntu OS, a version of Linux for the classroom. Now the training center offers free classes to teach basic computing skills to individuals.

The task force for a digital inclusion program in San Francisco was joined by the mayor’s office last year. However, a local non-profit, Media Alliance, has indicated that San Francisco needs a more comprehensive program, similar to the one in Brazil. In an area which has generated so much wealth from the technology industry, it seems like we could at least do as much as Brazil has. That said, this link between San Francisco and Sao Paulo is compelling and highlights the real world impact of open source software. It isn’t just a serious option for enterprise-level business, free software is a critical part of closing the digital divide. When you support free software, you’re helping to change the world for the common good.

LugRadio is a fortnightly British radio show with a very humorous vision of free software/open source. You can get the show’s podcast at their site. The radio show became such a cult that an event was created, LugRadioLive. The event is done by the community for the community, with speakers, a live recording of the show in front of an audience, and lots of fun within an inclusive atmosphere.

San Francisco is hosting the event in the USA, it took place on April 12th & 13th. North-by-South and the San Francisco Community Colocation Project were at the event and we met with a lot of people, including Google’s Open Source Program staff, FreeBSD, KDE, Postgres, the various Linux user groups in the Bay Area and a whole bunch more. Everyone was interested in the work we’re doing with the Latin American open source movement.