Slashdot Mirror

Your portrayal of the situation in Brazil is at the very least unfair.

The Brazilian government is spending on developing the code base that will save them millions, but I'm sure government management software does not make Slashdot headlines like "a tool for hacking GTK+". Migrating to a Free Software platform does not involve only installing Linux distros; migrating the actual systems that run on top of the platform is the most substantial work.

Brazilian involvement with Free Software started in my home state, Rio Grande do Sul, where the state government started a big push for free software in its IT agency. The systems of the state's public bank were migrated to free software, and its very pleasant sight to see Tux in the ATM's wallpapers. Incidentally, it is also in Rio Grande do Sul that the International Forum on Free Software takes place (and where the World Social Forum was created). The party who was in state government when these initiatives took place has now won the federal elections, so these developments are now starting to take place in national scale. Brazil spends billions every year in proprietary software licenses -- yes, spend money installing free software is a great move, especially in the long run.

In my personal experience as a Brazilian from Rio Grande do Sul, I can say that the development of a culture of Free Software there is as important as funding coding. The Forums served as a great incentive to the FS project I'm involved with, the GoboLinux distribution, a project born in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. It was also in the Forums that I was exposed to another Brazilian Free Software project, the Lua language, which I now took part in my MsC project, funded by -- you guess -- the Brazilian government. So there's your "big project the Brazilian government funded on FOSS". Of course, we could use more research grants, but that's a more general problem of low incentive to science R&D (a recurring problem in the so-called Third World). At least, now, the grants are given by the government with the explicit condition that research results are made available under an OSI-approved license. To me, that's a great thing.

The World Social Forum (WSF) (choose your language on the site), which ends today in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has less money to spend on computing than the World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos, Switzerland. But at both events, many different languages were spoken, meaning that simultaneous translations were an absolute necessity. If the WEF can afford professional translators and costly computers, in Porto Alegre, translators are volunteers, and the software to distribute the translations is open-source. The NIFT (Nomad Interpretation Free Tool) was already used for the 4th WSF held last year in Mumbai, India. The free software, which runs on a simple PC, collects and digitizes the translations from the interpreters before broadcasting them to a variety of devices. In fact, the technically-advanced NIFT allows for real-time streaming over the Internet of speeches in several different languages. Read more...

First, here is a short description from Babels , the international network of volunteer interpreters and translators, as told in this article from the January 2005 issue of Red Pepper (scroll towards the middle of the article).

Babels, the network of volunteer interpreters and translators, is another good example of prefigurative politics. From its birth in a squatted medieval tower in Florence to its difficult coming of age in London, Babels offers a non-market alternative to professional translation services -- relying on solidarity and a massive collective effort of voluntary labour to make the Forum a space in which language diversity (and, through that, political and cultural diversity) can flourish. As such, it is a political actor within the space of the Forum and not simply a 'service provider.'

Babels was also involved in the creation of NOMAD , an international network of people, committed to putting the essential technologies into the public domain.

The aim of Nomad is to extend the GNU perspective to other technological issues, including the re-appropriation of the knowledge and the control of the technologies by the users in their digital, electronical and analogical forms. The Nomad's sphere of activities at present ranges from communication to renewable energy.

This issue of re-appropriation of knowledge is closely linked to the political perspective of developing local production in an economy based on solidarity. The Nomad network is not a technical service provider but a political network run on a voluntary basis.

Now, let's return to Red Pepper for a brief description of NIFT.

The Nomad Interpretation Free Tool (NIFT) combines a piece of free-software to record and transmit different translated versions of speeches, with various forms of audio transmission (such as FM radios or magnetic hearing-aid loops). To fully appreciate NIFT, it is worth thinking of it in terms of the existing professional interpretation equipment. NIFT is technically more advanced than these systems in several respects because it is fully computerised. This has positive side effects in terms of the number of different languages that can be offered simultaneously or, even more innovatively, in allowing for the real-time streaming over the internet of speeches in several different languages.

The diagram below shows the network infrastructure used at Porto Alegre (Credit: NOMAD). You can find a larger version of this image on

after consulting this i conclude that Porto Alegre is the correct spelling.

Its Miguel's company, and in the free market he's free

Ummmm - what part of the idea behind GNU dont you understand? Shared, Co-Operative, Democratic (like) development.

Since when did "free markets" mean fucking anything in GNU? This is not about corporate profit friend. Its kind of fitting that RMS was at the World Social Forum, GNU is *exactly* about removing top-down, corporate domination.

RMS, being a (more) equal member of the GNU Community, has every right to ask Miguel what he's up to...

Half of the funds are spent in the way that neighbour associations decide in public debates. From the moment this model was adopted, the city has made spectacular progress in public infraestructures.

Porto Alegre has been chosen as the meeting point for the World Social Forum as an acknowledgement of its innovative democratic operation.

indeed.

Met him in World Social Forum 2000.

They basically have a whole pro-linux initiative, which mostly came from geeks at the govt's IT department. They are creating a press, to make linux docs available in portuguese, and are shifting as much as possible away from proprietary software to open-source software. Their rhetoric is very public service oriented, making claims of spending money upgrading proprietary licenses from previous adminstrations, money which could have been used to deliver public services. Furthermore, they see open source as a way of achieving development without "northern" control. Their state development bank has begun curtailing loans used for purchasing proprietary software when open source alternatives are available, and give pointers to such alternatives. Its a shame that it takes a dynamic left-wing government to take reasonable steps such as this and i hope more start doing the same.

On the net, everyone has the possibility to have an equal say. But, being used to the traditional system, many people still go get their news from CNN.com and don't comment much. Others are too excited about being heard that they don't stop to think about what they say. It's still too new to everyone. But life has an incredible capacity to adapt itself. Things will change, and are changing. And everyone sharing ideas, debating opinions are reaching compromises is what democracy is all about. This can only be achieved on a local scale through physical meetings. And it can't be achieved through traditional medias. The net can make this possible, but the net is only a tool. Everything will depend on how it is used. Tools to not make revolutions. Humans use tools to make revolutions possible.

To summarise, the net is not a revolution: it is merely an instrument of the revolution.

Will the computer revolution bring about the victory of one class over another?

Right now, the financial elite is winning over the people. Most of you don't want to see it, but your beloved capitalism is leading us to totalitarism and the plain destruction of our Mother Earth. The net is an awesome tool for the people to inform and organize themselves to counter this. Do not expect it to do it by itself. And the technology doesn't discriminate and make itself unavailable to the masses and make them poorer and poorer. The elitism of the distribution system makes it that way. The internet could be available to everyone without any problem. And internet doesn't deceive my expectations at all. It only deceives those who wanted it to make them rich.

A revolution only leads to the same starting point if the people then put someone else in power. A true revolution gives the power to the people. Participative democracy is not only possible: it's the way to go if we want to reclaim our earth, society, freedom and happiness.

Related Links : An Anarchist FAQ - Independent Media Center - Mobilisation for Global Justice - World Social Forum - Industrial Workers of the World