Louis in Brazil
Louis Suarez-Potts blogs about his experience at FISL 8.0 in Brazil this year.
He sees several corporations in Brazil, including IBM, are beginning to “tell employees and would-be employees that knowing about free software, Linux, OOo, etc., is a real advantage, not just a gesture of personal (and possibly useful, but probably indifferent) accomplishment, but rather something that can lead directly to a job, middle-class things, security. Free software comes of age when the knowledge itself of how to use it is itself a commodity, something that can be exchanged, ultimately, for money.”
Louis feels the growth of FOSS is particularly important in Brazil and other rapidly-growing economies, “fisl is the most important free software event of the year, for the future lies, in development and distribution and use, not with the developed nations but the developing…”
A perfect illustration of this is the Brazilian distribution of OpenOffice.org, “BrOffice.org,” which is at the forefront of OOo development in a number of areas. CoGroo, a grammar checker for Brazilian Portuguese, was developed by this team and is presently being expanded to support English and other languages.
Free and open source software showcases the talents of the world, illustrating that great code can be developed outside of the “developed world” and can compete with software made anywhere.