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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
86
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.
■
www.linux-magazine.com
August 2004
87
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