AboutWelcome to Free Software Daily (FSD). FSD is a hub for news and articles by and for the free and open source community. FSD is a community driven site where members of the community submit and vote for the stories that they think are important and interesting to them. Click the "About" link to read more...
Today I was in a public school near where I live for a interview with Nazareth, the coordinator of a social-inclusion project for the less afortunate kids in brazil, that live in 2 poor-communities: Alto do Coqueirinho and Bairro da paz.
I read this poor review of Mandriva Linux 2010 (the only poor review I’ve seen so far actually), which I got a bit provoked about, not that much because I’m taking things personal, but it’s rather more about stupid people pisses me off!
It's hard to take CNET seriously. Megatrolls from CNET tend to include people like Don Reisinger, who generate outrageous headlines just to flame and receive attention. It's sad to see similar nonsense from Matt Asay. His suggestion is so absurd that it's hardly worth repeating and Savio Rodrigues has already swept it aside.
It is ironical that the telephone, the internet and other communication technologies we think help to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, could widen it. This is because issues of cost and access will continue to create groups of info-rich and info-poor people. Considering that better prospects for economic activity take place in the realms of information, knowledge and communication in general, people who cannot afford them certainly lose out.
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.
Continuing our series of bringing information about the free software movement in Latin America to English readers, North by South interviewed Cláudio Filho (original in Portuguese), one of the people responsible for starting the OpenOffice.org project in Brazil (pt-BR), known in the country as BrOffice.org.
"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).
Instead of buying OLPCs or Classmate PCs, one community in Brazil is looking at their own solution to bring technology into their schools (using Linux of course). Their solution is a touchscreen desktop computer, according to CNet. At around $550 and lacking the mobility of the OLPC, it is not, however, clear if this new solution is really better.