"Throughout Latin America the “Latin American Festival of Installation of Free Software” (FLISOL 2008) recently concluded. This event, which has been held since 2005, has as its main objective to promote the use of free software, presenting its philosophy, its scopes and development.

Youtube video of president of Ecuador Rafael Correa Talking about free software on national television.

"...Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa pays homage to Max Headroom in a funny, low-budget YouTube clip promoting his new blog; in another video, he asks everyone to use free software. He is encouraging the entire country to start blogging and using social networks and YouTube for the power of collective action.

"It's been two years since Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa personally met with Richard Stallman [es], free software activist. Rafael Bonifaz reflects back on the meeting and what has happened since."

Marco Fioretti recently published an article (A look at free software in Ecuador) about his experiences at the Congress on Free Software and Democratization of Knowledge hosted in Quito, Ecuador. Rafael Bonifaz, a friend of North by South, is cited in the article talking about Elastix, a GNU/Linux distribution mostly developed in Ecuador.

The Italian region Puglia will make the use of open source software and open standards mandatory for its public administrations. A law, adopted on 2 December by the regional administration, instructs regional and local public administrations to use open formats for the electronic disseminations of documents, and wherever possible use free and open source software.

Participative democracy relies increasingly on the ability of citizens and stakeholders to access public information and to communicate with officials and elected politicians electronically. To highlight the impact of open standards on democracy, the Greens/European Free Alliance organized a half day event at the European Parliament in Brussels on April 17, 2008.

the Dutch government has recently attracted Microsoft's anger by launching an actionplan to adopt open standards, and concretely OpenDocument Format by April 2008 in the national government. Open Standards will become mandatory and Free Software will be preferred. As the Minister of State, Frank Heemskerk, argued, this plan is not to exclude any company, but to stimulate information exchange, vendor independence and choice for various software products that implement open standards. he Ministry of Economical Affairs has published an English version of the plan on its site today.

In a huge win for open standards, free and open source software and the public, the long-awaited UK government definition of open standards has come down firmly on the side of royalty-free, not FRAND. The UK government list seven principles as defining an open standard.