Software Livre!

"Software Livre! Software Livre! Software Livre!"...the words got louder and louder like a chant. No, not like a chant, it was a chant--and I was leading it! Hundreds of people were in the Forum Internacional for Software Livre held May 2-4, 2002, chanting "Software Livre" (free as in freedom). While this was only a small fraction of the 2,900 people who attended, it was late at night, after the event closed, and they were still talking to each other, still enthusiastic.

Held in the port city of Porto Alegre, in the southernmost state of Brazil, it was a different culture than the other six times that I had been to Brazil. What Porto Alegre lacked in the physical beauty of Rio de Janeiro or the beaches of Recife, it made up with the intensity of the conference and the warmth of the people.

Several things made this conference stand out from some of the others I have attended.

First of all, this conference was sponsored by the government of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), as well as private industry and the Linux community. RS (as it is always abbreviated) has been using Software Livre for several years as a method of meeting their needs for production software in various areas. By using Software Livre, RS has been able to cut software costs. The money that they do spend on software stays in the hands of Brazilian programmers, who buy Brazilian food, live in Brazilian houses and pay Brazilian taxes. None of the last three points was lost on the political leaders of RS, and several of the leaders showed up at the opening of the conference to speak and lend their support.

Held at a university (rather than a conference center or large hotel like a lot of other conferences), the costs were kept to a minimum, and all of the necessary items that a conference needs (audio-visual, security, networking, etc) were available. In addition, because Brazil speaks Portuguese and a large number of attendees came from outside of Brazil, simultaneous translation into English and Spanish from Portuguese (and vice-versa) was offered in the main hall, where one of the conference tracks was held. For this was an international conference, drawing people like Robert Chassell of the FSF, Tim Ney of the Gnome Foundation, Peter Salus (author of A Quarter Century of Unix and a lot of other books), Mario Saito of Cyclades, David Sugar of the Open Source Telecom Corporation and other foreign speakers.

We also had a strong contingent from Uruguay, who not only presented several times, but reinforced for me the art of chimarrao, which is drinking a strong "tea" made of the leaves of erva-mate. A very social type of event, the tea is made in a hollowed out gourd called a cuia and sipped through a straw called a bomba. People pass it around from person to person, each taking a few sips from the cuia. High in caffeine, it is a somewhat bitter drink, but pleasant nonetheless. Even their LUG's penguin used chimarraro. An acquired taste, it is a lot like another communal event I used to practice back in college.

Other strong contingents were found in the Debian group and in the people from Conectiva. My friend Rik Van Riel, a kernel developer employed by Conectiva, and his lovely wife, Fabiana, spent some time with me also.

Three conference tracks and two tutorial tracks were offered on each of the three days of the conference, in addition to some workshops. Through an agreement with the university, some of the computer labs were used for the workshops. This cut down on equipment costs, and again showed the government of RS, the educational sector (this was a private university), the private sector and the Software Livre community all working together--very refreshing.

I mentioned that the conference was kept inexpensive. Through some generous donations by Hewlett Packard, PROCERGS and some other companies, the attendance fees for both the conference and the tutorials were kept within the reach of most people, including students. Yet the niceties were there too, like having shuttle service provided by PROCERGS to take the speakers back and forth from our hotel when needed.

There was also a show floor, but the low-cost of the venue and the generous sponsorship of the main sponsors also allowed this to be kept small and homey rather than being a huge show floor.

Finally, they had an on-line chatroom, where people could chat with the speakers about different topics. Therefore, even people who could not attend the conference could participate, if they wished.

We also had a lot of press people attend the conference, most of whom were quite familiar with Software Livre and what it meant to their country. Cyclades did, however, set up a dinner meeting for me with some press and analysts regarding Linux and the telecom industry. One of the press people had what Cyclades called a "challenging" attitude in his question asking, and he found out that I could be "challenging" right back. Polite but "challenging", I had an answer for all of his questions and some of the questions he did not even think to ask.

My job was to give the Footnote, the last speech. It is a little like a keynote in the fact that it should be "visionary" and "forward thinking", yet also reflect things that happened during the conference. One of the things that I have been pressing recently is that all of the people in the Free Software movement are important. Sure, there are people who are "known", like Richard Stallman or Eric Raymond, but when people come up to me and say they are "just" a documentation person or "just" a user, I have to tell them they are also important to the movement. So in this footnote I made two main points. I made everyone in the room promise to bring two friends who did not currently use Linux to next year's show, and I asked every programmer, documentation person, user and supporter of Software Livre to please stand and give each other a "thank you". The cheering of "Software Livre" almost deafened me, and it was one of the few times in my life I received a standing ovation.