By: Rafael Bonifaz

The liaisons for the Latin-America’s Free Software Brothers and their African cousin. Right after participating on three days of CONSEGI my understanding about Free Software in Latin America has changed a lot. For me, each country had a mysterious history with a lot of myths about the success or failure related to the migration to free software. Today I will tell the history of my four brothers - countries who had bet on using free software inside the government: Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Paraguay.

Brazil is the big brother and because of that he has more experience in the implementation of Free Software in the government. It’s been a while that many states from Brazil have been working with Free Software and since Lula has been in power, the federal government started to do it as well. This has permitted Brazil to generate a lot of knowledge which we, the younger brothers, can learn from. For instance, we have the Migration to Free Software Guide written by Brazil, their public website with many software solutions that can be used in the government. One of the main reasons for the Brazil success is that they have adapted the way the government works to the way Free Software works, not the contrary.

Venezuela is the second brother and it is in its adolescence with already four years of working with Free Software. As a teenager it wanted to do everything fast, but after a while it learned with time to be more mature and now it’s doing it’s work much better.

The third of us is Ecuador … we only have 2 years of government and one with the sub-secretary of free software which supports the Free Software. We have had our first success and we already learned how to walk. Probably as any other young kid who is learning how to walk we will have our falls, but we will learn step-by-step. Now we already met our two older brothers who will pass to us their experiences.

The forth brother is Paraguay, just born. He has a lot of enthusiasm knowing about the fascinating world of free software, but different from Ecuador, Brazil and Venezuela, Paraguay wasn’t born alone in this world since it has a family which it just became part of.

For the free software family, this isn’t over yet, because there are many other countries in the region like Argentina and Colombia where they are still trying to have the baby, but are enjoying it while they are trying :)

CONSEGI was a historical moment because the government and the communities from those countries of South America as well as communities from those countries where the government still doesn’t support Free Software were able to get together and unify themselves, to collaborate and work together to implement and promote free software, as well as it’s philosophy.