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Introduction to LAC and FOSS

The FOSS community in LAC is relatively well developed compared to the other parts of the world such as Africa and parts of Asia. But still, its presence varies greatly from country to country, with Brazil, Mexico and Argentina on the lead. The presence of FOSS is found in a few different sectors which we have categorized as the following:

Academic, education sector

Universities are using FOSS and there are even some courses based on the FOSS curriculum, but they are deemed to be of low to mediocre quality. There are various schools projects in different states of evolutions like Brazilian “Rede Escolar Livre RS” (http://www.redeescolarlivre.rs.gov.br) based on the idea from Mexican Red Escolar Libre project.

Government and public sector

In various countries, there are many legislative initiatives to require the use of FOSS in public sector: Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico. However those legislative proposals are in different states of realization and most have yet to be partially or fully applied. In some countries, like Peru, the initiatives are largely “on hold”, while in Brazil they seem to be moving forward in both macro and micro levels. It is however worth mentioning government initiatives that have led to the creation of “telecentros” in various countries like Brazil and Argentina because many of them operate as NGO's and some of them also use FOSS. Particularly successful initiatives are to be found in the Brazilian province Rio Grande do Sul and local government initiatives like São Paulo, the biggest brazilian city, http://www.telecentros.sp.gov.br/

User Groups

In most LAC countries, there are many Linux and Free Software user groups. They hold a number of demonstration events, install fests, and provide some limited local support, etc. In many countries there have been initiatives to create federations of user groups – yet most failed. This demonstrates the difficulty of cooperation among different local actors to create global umbrella organizations. People are more focused on the local scene than the LAC scale or even the national community. However, one can easily find Linux user groups that are not only active but vibrant.

Few organizations:

Perspectives/Comments from Participants:

In LAC countries “FOSS is not competing with the proprietary software it is competing with the pirated software”. Some gov's use BSA to fight piracy Biella: Was it the government using the BSA or was the BSA entering into LAC to fight piracy? Wojtek: I think BSA could not exist without the strong support from gov. Some however, “are noticing that by using and fostering FOSS development and usage, they can, at the same time, fight piracy, increase jobs and acquire technological independence.” And it is easy to use Linux when you do not have to unlearn how to use Microsoft.

Only a “small percentage of Linux and other Open Source developers come from Latin America, among those few are some famous contributors, from Miguel de Icaza of Mexico (Ximian) or Marcelo Tossati of Brazil (Linux kernel maintainer)” to some (12 out of 1000) Debian LAC developers.

Localization projects:

  • Kurumin – Linux distro, community-driven project led by Carlos Morimoto and Flavio Moreira, live-CD based on Knoppix, Brazil, Portuges, http://www.kurumin.org
  • Ututo – Linux distro developed by Diego Saravia at the Universidad Nacional de Salta in Argentina and based on Debian GNU/Linux and SuSE Linux, http://www.ututo.org
  • Indymix – Brazil, Indymedia, it is not clear wherever it exists?
  • Linux/OpenOffice translation to Maya languages – Guatemala, http://www.linuxmaya.org/postnuke/html - project will start in next few mounts
  • please add more
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