2004.08_International Open Source Forum, Brazil.pdf

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International Open Source Forum, Brazil

It’s Brazil’s Time

ably you also know local developer

groups like Python-br, KDE, Gnome,

linked together in stupid rivalry.

This panel brought together represen-

tatives from all these Brazilian groups on

the same level, in the best hacker spirit,

and urged the large crowd (many even

sitting on the floor) to stop their ani-

mosities. A feeling that this would unite

the Brazilian Open Source software

movement was in the air.

Let’s take the endless GNU/Linux

story, which too often takes on religious

forms. The panel surprisingly enough,

left participants with a sense of why

GNU/Linux isn’t the appropriate brand

for the operating system, and not even

for distributions built around this OS.

Why? Because branding something with

its licences (or the major contributors),

would mean to name Linux something

like GNUApacheBSDXFreeMIT…/Linux.

Not just GNU. Fair is fair.

Another issue discussed at this panel

was the question of how to protect the

Open Source community from the influ-

ence of political interest groups and

takeovers. Let aside the necessity to

interact with government officials, the

Brazil Open Source community could

end up in a position where many people

talk about OSS, but don’t act.

Finally, even the rivalry between sev-

eral development groups was addressed,

and, for the first time Brazilian Open

Source tech writers and community rep-

resentatives were talking together, with

one tongue. Their message: don’t mili-

tate against your rival, help him and

create an atmosphere of good competi-

tion (and go out and have a beer

together).

The world is changing – and Brazil is proud to be a driving force in this process.

The lesson to be learned from a huge Open Source conference in Porto Alegre

is all about optimism. BY HELIO CHISSINI DE CASTRO

while the Northern hemisphere

engages in huge battles on the

frontier of software patents, while it is

worried about its future in technology,

the other hemisphere decides that the

rules are changing, and no one can stop

the move of its people. A noise that

sounds like the self-proclaimed third

world is making a dream coming true

that many in the first world are dream-

ing.

The echoes of this move are exactly

what we saw at the 5th International

Open Source Forum FISL (Fórum Inter-

nacional de Software Livre) in Porto

Alegre, Brazil ( http://www.softwarelivre.

org/forum2004 ). Some of the visitors

from Europe and North America shook

their heads in disbelief when confronted

with the statistics: More than 4500 regis-

tered participants from 35 countries

attended more than 100 panels and tuto-

rials held during the four event days

June 2 through 5, 2004. Of these, the first

day overlapped with the last day of the

4th International Debian Conference

DebConf ( http://www.debconf.org/deb

conf4/ ) in the same city, mak-

ing the event even more

visible and interesting.

According to Martin Konold of

the KDE project, FISL was

larger than Linux-Kongress in

Germany, Europe’s biggest

Open Source show. And yes,

we had many of the Open

Source stars there, among

them John Maddog Hall (more

and more becoming a Brazil-

ian kind of guy), Lawrence

Lessig and Jim Gettys.

After the Brazilian govern-

ment’s large-scale Open

Source software training for as

many employees as possible a couple of

weeks before (see Issue 44, p13), there

was some apprehension in the Open

Source community that this could

become yet another vaporware program.

But no, things are really changing, as the

FISL showed: Virtually everyone was

there, sharing one community, sharing

one goal. Given the fact that this year

sees local elections in several major

Brazilian cities, no one was surprised

that political aspects were a major topic

in talks and conversations. Consequen-

tially, one of the surprises the event was

to produce was about politics.

What’s your name, Linux?

This surprise became manifest in form of

a panel chaired by Porto Alegre local

Leonardo Vaz, a result of a growing

movement started by him. It aims to stop

the fighting within the Open Source and

free software community in order to

avoid a political takeover, and to unite all

“tribes”. You know them all, the advo-

cacy groups formed by users sharing an

often fanatic belief in their favorite distro

like Debian, Slackware, Conectiva. Prob-

Figure 1:Stylish Apple laptops are LinuxChix’favorite.

There’s no place like

$HOME

And it worked: At the User

Group place, a mingling floor for

distro, user group and develop-

ment projects, we saw KDE

proponents being approached

by visitors and asked to line up

for a picture in front of the

Gnome banner. Guess what:

they agreed without a single

sign of embarrassment.

We watched everybody freely

transiting from booth to booth,

no matter what kind of booth it

August 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

5th International Open Source Forum in Porto Alegre/Brazil

S trange times, we are living in:

International Open Source Forum, Brazil

COMMUNITY

was. It was hard to spot a booth occu-

pied by only its own staff, there was

always some “alien” around. Even gov-

ernment officials mixed with anybody on

a level of equality. Geek met politician,

met nerd, met hacker. And chimarrão, a

traditional preparation of herbal (mate)

tea was there for everyone.

We saw the KDE booth becoming a

German embassy, when besides the two

German KDE guys on booth duty, a lot of

Brazilians arrived, speaking fluent Ger-

man, among them even guys from the

cities of Rio Grande do Sul. A couple of

Debian folks from Germany added to the

picture.

And finally we observed a Linux user

group from Argentina partying with

Brazilian LUGs on the day of a Brazil vs.

Argentina soccer match (which is kind of

a religious thing there).

It is worth mentioning that the booths

were organized the Brazilian way, mean-

ing without requirements on the level of

perfection. Helpers pointed out: “This is

your place!”, and people arranged every-

thing in their own fashion.

Figure 3:Brazilian Open Source events can easily compete with those in Europe and North America.

And they weren’t the only camera team

at a time when documentary fever has

taken over Brazil. About 10 or more were

going to feature FISL, and even two for-

eign teams were there. In addition, the

event saw the official launch of two Open

Source and Linux oriented print maga-

zines, and it got a lot of non-tech media

coverage. For the latter it was especially

interesting to see how the Open Source

movement was affecting culture, econ-

omy and politics, which leads to the

major presentation of the conference.

the power of freedom. After further talks

from Brazilian representatives and John

Maddog Hall (who received a 3 minute

standing ovation from the crowd), the

long awaited Minister of Culture arrived.

It’s impossible to describe how proud

everyone was about this being the first

time, a minister had attended an Open

Source event with innovations of his

own, and not only with a boring speech.

Due to a tight schedule, he wasn’t avail-

able for interviews or pictures

afterwards, leaving not only Linux Maga-

zine frustrated.

Another important speech came from

Luís Nassif, one of the most respected

economists from Brazil and a columnist

for one of the major national newspa-

pers. He, a former critic of the Open

Source economy model (and still not

fully convinced), has been looking at it

from a slightly different angle after he

learned from Sérgio Amadeu, the head of

the governmental Brazilian Institute of

Technology, how well structured Open

Source software is. Did you ever think a

government official would convince an

economist about Open Source?

But the world is changing, and

Marcelo Taz, a well-known Brazilian TV

entertainer, put it in words when

addressing an audience of almost 2000

people at the Creative Commons panel:

“Look, everybody, I am here, in 2004, at

a computer event, sitting with econo-

mists, musicians, lawyers in front of a

huge crowd that looks like a rock’n’roll

crowd, speaking about freeing copy-

rights, and our Minister of Culture is

Gilberto Gil!!!”

Interviews, interviews, …

Unnecessary to say that a huge and col-

orful event like this would come to the

attention of the media. But this time it

wasn’t the regular computer press only,

but a renowned and hip program from

Brazilian culture television called “Vit-

rine”. They recorded interviews over

interviews in a fresh and funny style,

and things grew beyond expectations

when geeks started to show up. It was

easy to tell that the TV folks had a good

time, too.

Read, hear, use, copy, sample!

It was, of course, about “Creative Com-

mons”. In a major move by the Brazilian

Ministry of Culture, Brazil, together with

Finland and Japan were the first coun-

tries to fully adapt the Creative

Commons licenses to their legal systems

(Germany followed at the “Wizards of

OS” conference, http://www.wizards-of-

os.org/index.php?L=3 , in Berlin, a cou-

ple of days after FISL). At FISL, Brazil

went further on this path and launched a

new license called Recombo, a DJ

dream. A license that allows you to sam-

ple and to legally reuse any part of

music.

Its legal definitions are the work of the

Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School in

Rio de Janeiro, and project leader

Ronaldo Lemos da Silva Júnior himself

approached Brazilian’s Minister of Cul-

ture, the famous musician Gilberto Gil,

making him buy the idea. It was

Lawrence Lessig’s turn to hold the lauda-

tion, poking fun at the self proclaimed

free nations who are still afraid to use

Figure.2:Television was everywhere.

■

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August 2004

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