northxsouth : free software news from latin america

Brazil exports open source solutions to Africa

ryan — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:47:49 +0000

In addition to an impressive domestic free software initiative, Brazil is increasingly exporting open source government solutions to other countries. An upcoming example of this is Brasil Tech 2008, being held in Johannsburg, South Africa. The 2-day conference will cover topics like: “How Brazilian technological advances can be adapted to South Africa’s needs” and “the successful use of Open Source software in Brazil’s public administration and the feasibility of sharing these programmes with the South African government”. In his recent interview with us, Brazil’s head of free software implementation indicated that co-operation with other governments and exporting their open source policies was one of their goals.

North-by-South featured on open source business analysis website

ryan — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:16:22 +0000

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!

Hackerteen comic showcases unique Brazilian school

ryan — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:07:05 +0000

Hackerteen is a graphic novel that is generating a lot of buzz in California right now. And Hackerteen is also an educational project based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Hackerteen offers distance learning classes intended to share knowledge related to free software ethics, developing an entrepreneurial mindset and technology skill sets. Hackerteen is a good example of the emerging open source culture in Brazil and demonstrates how the free software mindset impacts society-at-large. Hackerteen is available in English, Portuguese and Spanish. The free software movement in Latin America is preparing a new generation of computer programmers who will certainly have a major advantage over students from the United States, who get a very superficial technology education based on closed, proprietary software.

Interview with Marcos Mazoni, new head of free software implementation in Brazil

ryan — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:18:10 +0000

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:

Near-shoring development to Latin America with North-by-South

ryan — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:37:02 +0000

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.

Schools in Kerala ready for switch to Linux

ryan — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:11:46 +0000

We have written before about the large state of Kerala in India which has been one of the biggest regions supporting free software in the BRIC countries. Kerala is now set to be the first state in India to completely phase out Microsoft in favor of Linux as not only their operating system of choice, but also as the only platform that students will be tested on for state examinations. According to K Anwar Sadath, the administrator in charge of the migration, it is the biggest mobilization of its kind:

Since last September, some 15 lakh students have been busy training on or migrating to free software on 40,000 computers put up in 2,832 high schools watched over by over 60,000 IT trained school teachers (some 86 private training institutions train the teachers) besides 161 master trainers and 5,600 school IT coordinators.

Why Brazilians like free software

ryan — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:01:26 +0000

This chart has been floating around since Gustavo Duarte posted it on his blog a few days ago. These figures illustrate why the cost of living difference between the US and Latin America makes Microsoft a bad business concept for the region and also why North-by-South is a good one! It has found its way to both CNet and Slashdot (where, sadly, Commander Taco downplays the Brazilian free software movement by referring to a Linux.com article from a year ago which highlights a few negative comments and ignores almost all the concrete work being done for free software in Brazil).

Ecuador Weekend of Free Software

ryan — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:55:27 +0000

Fourteen cities in Ecuador participated in the recent Latin American Festival of Free Software Installation. A detailed report about the events in Ecuador, given the recent decree by President Rafael Correa, was published on Global Voices Online.

Marcos Mazoni appointment and other leadership changes in Brazil free software migration

ryan — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:02:46 +0000

The Brazilian government has recently announced changes in the technological leadership of the country and observers expect that the appointment of Marcos Mazoni to lead the Technical Committee for the Implementation of Free Software will accelerate this process during the last two years of Lula’s presidency. Mazoni has been the President of SERPRO, Brazil’s federally-owned data processing company, where he effectively managed a transition to open source software in most cases, and felt the heat in cases where he thought open source wasn’t appropriate.

Costa Rica faces software-related challenges that open source can solve

ryan — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:59:22 +0000

There is an excellent article at Costa Rica Pages which talks about the challenges this small, Latin American country faces. Costa Rica only has a population of 4 million people and software piracy is a rampant problem there. Their vice-president, Laura Chinchilla, has said that “if the government legalized all its software licenses, we would have no funds left to build public housing or finance public education.” It is estimated that software companies lose $27 million from piracy in Costa Rica. The suggested response in this article is that Costa Rica should join other Latin American countries in a complete migration to free software. Towards that end, a free software installation festival is being held this weekend at the Universidad de Costa Rica. While the government may be slow to make this change, the population is starting to embrace free software as a legal alternative to proprietary software. Our hats off to the free software pioneers showing their country the way this weekend! :)