My recent visit to Brazil was a wonderful validation of the belief that I've held for more than 20 years: if you give people a better way to do things, they'll do better things. The Brazilian government continues to expand its adoption of open source, both across more and more ministries and deeper within each ministry.

Canonical has organized its Ubuntu partner program into three segments — business partners, technology partners and training partners. But to spot the next generation of potential Ubuntu channel partners you need to check out two areas: Cloud computing and the so-called Ubuntu Marketplace.

Canonical has organized its Ubuntu partner program into three segments - business partners, technology partners and training partners. But to spot the next generation of potential Ubuntu channel partners you need to check out two areas: Cloud computing and the so-called Ubuntu Marketplace. Here's the scoop from The VAR Guy.

Yesterday, I had an interesting lunch with Flavio Grynzpan, formerly president of Motorola in Brazil. Now a consultant who actively promotes the Brazilian IT industry internationally, Grynzpan is one of those extremely well-connected people who have their ear to the ground, so it was good to get some alternative views before hearing the government pitch.

"On April 17, Marcos Mazoni, the current director of Brazil’s Federal Data Processing firm (SERPRO) was appointed to head an arcane bureaucratic body: the Technical Committee for the Implementation of Free Software (CISL). Mazoni replaces Renato Martini, the current president of Brazil’s National Technology Institute (ITI, a small office within the executive branch).

Are you excited about fisl 10th edition? We are! The International Free Software Forum happens every year in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Celebrating a decade of the event, this year will be particularly special. For those who still don’t know, fisl is the oldest free software event in Latin America, happening this year between June 24-27.

"PGCon Brazil is the bigest PostgreSQL event in Latin America ..." —— PostgreSQL is free software licensed under the Modified BSD license. ——

In August, we wrote about the Law Project from Senator Azeredo (PSDB) in Brazil that will restrict the freedom of internet users in Brazil.

A public, Congressional hearing about the current Brazilian data retention bill will happen on November 13th, 2008 after months of political pressure by the civil society, especially the Brazilian free software movement.

"Brazil has just created the best-ever implementation of WIPO Copyright Treaty. In Brazil's version of the law, you can break DRM without breaking the law, provided you're not also committing a copyright violation. And what's more, any rightsholder who adds a DRM that restricts things that are allowed by Brazilian copyright laws ("fair dealing" or "fair use") faces a fine."