Vator.tv is a social network for technology start-ups to connect with investors. They also host a newsroom which provides technology industry news & analysis. North by South was recently featured with this article: Developing your technology in Latin America: Near-shoring software engineering in Latin America is a side effect of progressive state policies. The article examines the near-shoring potential of Lain America as an unintentional consequence of the socially liberal initiatives that have been implemented in recent years.

Last week, a law case that started in San Francisco came to a conclusion in favor of free software supporters. Robert Jacobsen wrote a Java software system for controlling model railroads known as JMRI, which was released under the Artistic license. Jacobsen accused the firm Katzer/Kamind of copying and incorporating part of the free software created by him in a non-free derivative product without respecting the license rules.

The question was whether or not the original creator could sue under copyright law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C ruled in his favor. It has ruled that even software developers who give away the programming code (i.e under GPL, CC or similar licenses) can sue for copyright infringement if someone misappropriates that material.

That is a great victory for the free software supporters because the most important thing to keep the movement growing is that the 4 freedoms are respected, so that software can be free if it is modified, re-used, distributed, etc. For the community, who builds this software, the recognition of the work doesn’t come as money (with exceptions of course) but by retaining the credit and rights to the authors. A history of the case can be found at the JMRI website.

Much of the news on this website talks about the creative ways that developing countries are using open source technology to build educational initiatives that are impressive when compared to education policies in the United States, which is much richer and could easily afford to replicate these outstanding programs in countries like Brazil.

At the same time, the United States public education system faces one crisis after another. In California, which is already facing embarrassing infrastructure problems, Gov Schwarzenegger has fired 20,000 teachers with another 80-some thousand pink slips to come. Parents are, of course, outraged:

“Already the bathrooms stink, the roof is leaking, and we never have enough textbooks. Now the school is going to take away key teachers and personnel,” says Fidel Garcia, father of two at Manchester Ave. Elementary School in downtown L.A. “This can’t be right.”

But keeping on-topic to this news site, the technology within U.S. public schools is a disgrace. The aging and expensive desktop computers are running out-dated versions of Windows, slowed to a crawl by all the spyware and viruses that have accumulated on them over the years:

“We’re seeing the stand alone desktop PC as a colossal failure in schools.” says Paul Nelson, Technology Director for the Riverdale School District in Portland, Oregon. “After several years of installing PCs in classrooms, it is evident that schools do not have the staffing to support them and keep them running. Often infected with viruses and subjected to student abuse, these systems can quickly turn into a useless but expensive pile of junk in the back of the classroom.”

Nelson recommends a switch to thin-client systems — a model already adopted and being implemented on a wide-scale by much poorer countries like Brazil. An informal study that examines a public school switch to open source software shows not only concrete dollars saved but overwhelming gains in terms of hardware cost savings, security, virus protection — not to mention the educational value of allowing students to reach their full potential by getting under the hood to examine source code, operating systems, how network protocols really work, etc.

And, we haven’t even gotten into the truly cruel relationship between Microsoft and the public school system in the United States. In Philadelphia, acting on an anonymous tip, Microsoft is forcing the school system into a “lengthy and expensive audit of every computer in all 264 schools within the impoverished school system” (when all was said and done, Philadelphia owed Microsoft close to $5 million, all on a licensing technicality). And it isn’t cheap to begin with to go the closed, proprietary route for technology in classrooms: $50 million in Maine just for 7th and 8th graders in a deal with Apple, $45 million in equipment alone with IBM’s education offering, $46 million for Microsoft’s deal with Philadelphia school districts. All in all, public schools spent $9.6 billion on technology in 2006 with rates increasing around 16% each year. Taxpayers need to be asking why $9 billion in public spending ends up giving them worse and worse technology in public schools! Taxpayers need to be asking how developing countries can offer their students a better technology curriculum at much lower costs while US public schools continue to throw money down the drain.

Meanwhile, the community is filling in where the public schools refuse to act to rectify this expensive and socially-devastating trend. A non-profit in the Bay Area is recycling old computers, installing open source software on them, and donating them to needy schools. Individual heroes like Heather Carver in Windsor, California is saving her school district money by adopting the Brazilian open source model. But these individual efforts cannot save the system — what is required are bold, institution-wide initiatives like what’s happening in Brazil and the state of Kerala in India, which is distributing 40,000 open source laptops to their students.

Open source is ready to be used by nation-wide educational institutions. Governments in much poorer countries are leveraging these advantages to outpace the United States in education, creating a generation of students who understand the intricacies of operating systems while US students can barely fight their way past a dozen spyware windows. The only obstacle is political — and condemning a generation of students who entrust us to teach them to the best of our abilities is inexcusable. Concerned parents should educate themselves on these issues and then force public education decision-makers to give our kids the technology education they deserve.

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

As news continues to trickle out about Microsoft’s potential buy-out of Yahoo, lots of speculation is being written about what will happen with Yahoo’s open source culture, as just one of many cultural differences between Microsoft and Yahoo. For instance, Yahoo is a big supporter of PHP and Rasmus Lerdorf (credited as being PHP’s inventor) works there. Yahoo is also probably the most famous company that uses FreeBSD (our open source OS of choice, also). But if Microsoft buys out Yahoo, what’s going to happen to that open source culture? Some people are speculating that it will give Microsoft a convenient excuse to start being more accepting of the open source phenomenon. Other predictions are more downbeat and gloomy. Only time will tell.