North by South is pleased to inform that a member of our team Isabela Fernandes was invited to lead the Medical Project in Brazil. Medical is a GPL Hospital Information System created by the GNU Solidario project. North by South News wrote about Medical in 2009, at the time, with only one year of existence, they were finalists for the SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards at the category ‘Best Government Software‘.

Medical is being used at clinics in the rural area from the north of Argentina and at the Peerless Hospital in Nigeria. They are also at the Public Software Portal from Brazil federal government and soon with Isabela help will be full translated to Brazilian Portuguese and ready to be used by clinics, hospitals in Brazil.

Check out the new release launched on June 6th, Medical 0.0.50.

Below the annoucement from Luis Falcón creator of Medical:

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to announce that Isabela Fernandes is the new leader of the Medical project in Brazil. I met Isabela in Berkeley last year and since then we have been in contact working with the dissemination of free software. She is a member of the GNU Solidarity and have helped me, along with Cesar Brod and Corinto Meffe, in the dissemination of Medical in Brazil.

Isabela has worked more than 10 years as an advocate of free software in different sectors, from her company North by South in San Franciscon as well as from the IT sector of the Presidency of Brazil. She is a person who has been involved with social welfare organizations, working at GESAC, a digital inclusion project from the Ministry of Communications of Brazil and at projects of inclusion of women in the FOSS world.

She has always been in contact with the health sector, accompaning closely the proplems experienced by the Brazilian population. She is the daughter of a surgeon-dentist and a dental prosthesis, and she has studied Master Dental Technitianat the University of Alfenas, in Minas Gerais, Brazil. When she met Medical, she knew immediately the importance of the project in the health care sector, as in Brazil, where a federal government policy to use free software has generated significant progress in various sectors and institutions of the government.

Isabela believes that a project such as Medical will be the key to improve the public health care system in Brazil, as well as managing budgets in this sector. There is why she didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation from my part to be the leader of Medical project in Brazil.

From my side and from the Medical team and GNU Solidario she has our full support and I am sure that her management will be entirely successful.

Luis Falcón
http://gnusolidario.org

An annual survey conducted by CETIC (Center for Study of Information Technology & Communications) found that the use of free software in mid-sized and enterprise companies continued to grow through 2009. The survey, TIC Empresas 2009, has been surveying commercial trends in Brazil’s growing technology markets for five years now.

While government adoption of free software is ordered by presidential decree, voluntary commercial adoption continues to grow in Brazil. The survey found that open source software has been adopted in 65% of large business, up from 61% in 2006. For mid-sized companies, open source adoption increased to 49% in 2009, up from 44% in 2007 and 2008.

The study found that 35% of the companies had adopted free software at the operating system level (mostly Linux).

Alexandre Barbosa, a spokesperson for CETIC, said that “[t]he increase for Linux and other open source operating systems in mid-level and large businesses reflects a search for cost reduction, greater security and the fact that there are more professionals specializing in [open source].”

This analysis is in line with NorthxSouth’s own observations: that the widespread adoption of free software by the government, public schools and digital divide programs has created a unique talent pool in Brazil of IT workers and programmers that creates a bias in the labor pool that favors open source.

Another NXS organizational favorite — remote collaboration — is also trending upwards in Brazil. The survey found that telecommuting is used by 25% of companies in Brazil, a 10% increase since 2006. For large companies, working remotely is even more widespread, at 62%. Forty-three percent of mid-size companies use remote work arrangements while only 20% of small businesses have adopted it.

Finally, the survey also revealed corporate vigilance against the use of social networks on company time: 48% of the companies surveyed ban the use of Facebook, Twitter and Orkut (the most popular social network in Brazil).

North by South (NXS) is excited to be attending the SMASH Summit that’s happening in San Francisco this week. And, we’re also just happy to see more events like this happening, as the industry starts to normalize some of the innovations that we have been recommending to clients. It’s going to make our jobs that much easier.

The way NXS operates, we make a lot of recommendations to our clients (or potential clients) after we hear out what they want to do. This includes a lot of very specific recommendations that are unique to each project but, for instance, some recommendations aren’t confidential eyes-only secrets: Most projects we come into contact with, we recommend building everything with open source/free software platforms. We recommend that the project is managed like open source projects are managed (because it works). Obviously, we recommend building a flexible team out of a distributed network of developers from the Latin American free software world.

For the most part, all of this makes perfect sense to all types of clients. And once the website or application is built, and our client tells us their pageview/traffic/revenue goals, we recommend using a methodology that is one of our strongest skill-sets we offer: the science and art of social/viral analysis-based marketing. And, sometimes, it’s a little harder to convince clients that they should be doing this.

We explain the logic of it. We also explain that our core team in San Francisco includes people who have been involved in all facets of designing, engineering, launching, scaling and optimizing literally several dozen virality-centered websites for going on a decade now, including Tagged.com (which recently announced a deal to exclusively rock a streaming Bon Jovi performance to its 80 million users; the user metric makes them the third largest social network in the US).

Even though peer-initiated user acquisition (viral techniques and analysis) has driven the majority of the Web 2.0 era, there’s still surprisingly little interest and understanding in applying these techniques at many startups and existing web companies.

Our theory is that there’s something in the stories from the dot-com boom that bring out the Horatio Alger in people. With “honesty, thrift, self-reliance, industry and a cheerful whistle,” some startups are convinced that their website or app just needs to get online, get a little attention and the meritocracy will reward them for their one-of-a-kind idea. They underestimate how many websites are out there; they overestimate how many new websites the average user really takes seriously enough to register and come back.

Some companies are run by witnesses to the unnatural pay-outs during the dot-com boom and take this as evidence that whatever clever idea they have will lead to vast riches. Some serial entrepreneurs with successful acquisitions under their belt from a previous era and are convinced they have another winner. And, there are a lot of new-comers to the internet industry — they have their own money or “friends & family” funding and they’re convinced that if they can just get their site online, the users will come and then the money will come. As a famous American author said: “real Horatio Alger stuff.”

At NXS, we’ve gotten pretty good at explaining all this and walking clients through the scenarios. We’ve moved entire web businesses to healthy, metrics-driven growth. We’ve gotten pretty good at explaining the basic concepts of viral user acquisition — at least enough to help companies start the move in that direction. Once they start seeing the returns from disciplined, metrics/testing/analysis-based website management, the rest usually comes naturally.

The point is that it’s good to see events happening that help explain all this, that emphasize the use of metrics, social marketing, analysis, leadgen paradigms and so on. From the SMASH Summit’s website, the topics to be covered include:

• Social Networks, Platforms & Apps
• Search Engines (SEO, SEM)
• Mobile & PDA
• Social CRM
• Metrics & Analytics
• Lead Gen & Affiliate Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Links, Embeds, & Widgets

All these topics can become pretty complex but the hard stuff is part of what development firms like NXS should be providing these days. The more that it becomes accepted that these techniques are needed to build successful websites and web applications, the easier it becomes for us to steer clients in that direction. And we’re glad to see that happening.

The momentum of the Latin American free software movement is accelerated every year by the International Free Software Forum, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Last year, North by South was invited to speak at fisl10, where a decade of free software revolution was celebrated. NXS gave a presentation about our business model and we were honored to be included in the special audience for President Lula da Silva’s address to the free software world.

This year, we’re happy to help spread the word about the innovation being launched for fisl11 — a special social network that intends to facilitate on-going collaboration for people who meet each other during the event. The idea is to strengthen the bonds formed at the event and provide a vehicle for people to publish news & updates about their projects. Talk about an open social network outside of one company’s control has been happening at FISL for years, an idea that is gaining popularity in Silicon Valley.

FISL11 will take place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from July 21st to 24th. The call for submissions has ended already but you can still submit papers for the Free Software Workshop and online registration is now open.

Here is our coverage of fisl10.

After many discussions with private telecommunication companies, government institutions, civil society and LAN-house owners, the federal government of Brazil officially launched the National Broadband Plan on May 5. Between 2010 and 2014, an investment of R$ 15 billion Reais (about $8.5 billion USD) will bring broadband to 4,600 Brazilian municipalities and provide internet to 75% of Brazilian households.

The plan will reactivate the dormant optical fiber network from an old state company called Eletronet. In addition, the plan breathes life into Telebrás, a state telecommunications company that’s been inactive since the telecom privatizations in the 1990s. Telebrás will be the ‘manager’ of the project, but it won’t be a 100% state service; the government wants private companies to play a role similar to resellers, providing the service to the end user. Telebrás will be responsible for implementing the communication network of the federal public administration and provide support for broadband to universities, research centers, schools, hospitals and other public institutions.

The largest telecom companies who currently ‘own’ the market are concerned about the competition that will be generated by the plan. But, they only have themselves to blame. When Brazil privatized all of its telephone companies in the 1990s, the goal was to grow the market, make services available to more people and provide new & innovative technology products.

The market did expand and more people had access to telephones and cellphones. But, customer satisfaction is low and the services are expensive. But the real problem is that Brazilians pay 10 times more for broadband internet access than developed countries. Only 20% of households in Brazil have broadband. The private companies have no interest in offering broadband services to the poorer regions of Brazil, in the north/northeast.

In the spirit of Brazil’s current commitment to digital inclusion, the federal government decided that the free market would never have the incentive to provide internet throughout the country and the National Broadband Plan was born. Through the government plan, Brazilians will pay between R$15 ($8.50 USD) and R$35 ($19.50 USD) to get speeds between 512kb/s - 784kb/s. Currently, the private plans cost, on average, R$50 ($28 USD) for 256kb/s and high-speed plans cost over R$100 ($57 USD).

In 2010, the government will start building the backbones of the network in the Federal District, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Ceará, Sergipe, Bahia, Alagoas and Pernambuco.

Full broadband service will be offered this year to 100 cities. Exactly which cities will get the service this year is still not known but Cesar Alvares, coordinator of the federal Digital Inclusion Program, says that “[The list of cities] are diverse. Cities with a big population and cities with small populations, both, from the rural and urban areas, should be addressed.”

The goal is to offer broadband in 25 states and the Federal District by 2014. This leaves out the state of Roraima because the optical fiber doesn’t reach there but the government is starting a study to figure out how to provide services there.

Since 1988, the Office of the United States Trade Representative has released an annual Special 301 Report which “examines in detail the adequacy and effectiveness of intellectual property rights” for every country in the world. The intention is to classify countries that either encourage or turn a blind eye to intellectual property piracy and countries can be put on a “Watch List” or “Priority Watch List”. This designation can then be used to pressure countries during trade negotiations.

Andres Guadamuz, a lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh, recently noticed that the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has been lobbying US Trade Representative Ron Kirk to designate countries that have mandated the use of free software (specifically, Brazil, Indonesia and India) to be placed on the Special 301 Watch List. The IIPA is a private sector coalition of trade associations, including the Business Software Alliance, Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA); these names are familiar to digital freedom supporters as cartels hell-bent on using their power to suffocate internet freedoms and to change the course of humanity’s path towards information-based societies in the interest of their enormous profiteering.

The assertion that a country’s choice to use free software is equivalent to illegal piracy is an absurdity and a desperate response to the the free software revolution happening throughout the world. In the 498-page Special 301 report released by the IIPA, they attack Brazil’s policy of mandating the use of free software on page 183 as a reason to keep it on the watchlist:

“Government software procurement: The Brazilian Government should be encouraged to continue its efforts to implement effective software asset management practices in its public ministries and agencies, while avoiding mandates for procurement of software based on the model of development or the business model of the developer.”

On page 170, the IIPA clarifies its demands of the Brazilian government:

“Avoid legislation on the mandatory use of open source software by government agencies and government controlled companies.”

Then, the IIPA takes us to Indonesia. Starting on page 79, they attempt to form a coherent argument about how mandating a switch to open source software is somehow an act against US trade interests:

“[I]n March 2009, the Ministry of Administrative Reform (MenPAN) issued Circular Letter No. 1 of 2009 to all central and provincial government offices including State-owned enterprises, endorsing the use and adoption of open source software within government organizations. While the government issued this circular in part with the stated goal to ‘reduc[e] software copyright violation[s],’ in fact, by denying technology choice, the measure will create additional trade barriers and deny fair and equitable market access to software companies.”

Huh? It’s as if the IIPA forgot that plenty of US companies sell open source software — a fact that they probably “forgot” because no open source software company is paying them off. Why is this form of institutionalized bribery accepted? The IIPA goes on to demand that Indonesia rescind this order on page 80:

“IIPA requests that the government of Indonesia take the following actions, which would result in the most significant near term commercial benefits to the copyright industries: […] Rescind March 2009 MenPAN circular letter endorsing the use and adoption of open source software […]”

The IIPA’s war against the free software revolution then takes us to the Philippines on page 148:

“IIPA was concerned regarding reports of consideration of a Free Open Source Software bill which would require government offices to use open source software. Passage of that bill would deny technology choice regarding software usage and ultimately would stunt the growth of the IT industry in the Philippines.”

Thailand’s commitment to open source is attacked on page 353:

“Among other market access restrictions to be addressed, reverse proposed policy mandating use of open source software, and, e.g., requiring bundling of government funded computers and computers for schools with open source software; maintain neutral policies with respect to technology choice.”

Vietnam is instructed to avoid open source on page 396: “Cease government-endorsed open source preference policy which is limiting technology choice in Vietnam.”

And, Ecuador is also cited for dangerously choosing open source software on page 453: “Most of USTR’s concerns were directed at patent issues, but one major copyright problem highlighted involved a poorly drafted provision in the Education Law which appears to allow free software to educational institutions. Due to their concerns, USTR moved Ecuador back to the Watch List […]”

The IIPA Report makes a few things very clear. First, although this is already well-known, the software industry is scared to death of open source software and must resort to strong-arming as it’s only means of competing with it. Second, free software is spreading like wildfire all over the world as the smart defense against the proprietary software industry. And, finally, we can see why free software for taxpayers is not gaining traction in the United States, where industry lobby groups have a much easier time bribing decision-makers.

The Brazilian federal government has launched a new version of their portal, offering more than 500 online services to Brazilian citizens, built entirely with free software. The new design and layout looks great and, in honor of the release, NXS is providing a translation of the press release about the launch. Translated from Portal Brasil: um novo conceito de comunicação (March 5, 2010) by North-by-South:

“The Brazil Portal marks a new stage in the communication from the State with society and the media,” declared the the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during the launch of the new version of the www.brasil.gov.br website, held last Wednesday, the 3rd, by the Secretary of Communication for the Presidency - Secom.

According to Secom, the Portal was envisioned and developed to break with the current models of digital communication from the government. The proposed environment is to offer personalized content to diverse public interests, to gather in one space more than 500 services of electronic government and to promote interactivity between users and the State. “The Portal is a permanent work-in-progress and, therefore, open to everyone’s opinion,” the Secretary of Secom, Franklin Martins, said.

The Secretary emphasized the innovative design of the Brazil Portal and the importance of multimedia content. For him, this is an experience that treats information as a whole in the digital environment.

The form of navigation in the website is matched up with the user’s preference, since the Portal offers the organization of information by profile or themes. Workers, students, entrepreneurs and journalists get targeted content and Secom already plans for the creation of new profiles.

For the international version, the division is by focus of interest: investors, tourists and students. “We are radicalizing the experience of electronic government in Brazil,” said the Minister of Planning, Budgets and Management, Paulo Bernando.

Technology: The Brazil Portal is developed with Plone 3.1.7 and runs on Zope Application Server 2.10.6, programmed in Python 2.4.4. “The use of free platforms is the direction of the federal government. And the choice of the tools for the construction of the Portal would not be different. So, we chose Zope/Plone,” explained Silvia Sardinha, Director of the Internet and Events for Secom.

Cintia Cinquini, from the Presidency’s Department of Technology, said that Plone is a widely-used platform in the government to add distinctive features, such as usability (a multiuser platform with easy management), accessibility (standardized resources) and security.

The new Portal is hosted on servers at Serpro and counts on the support and experience of the company in the use of this software.

On January 25th, SourceForge.net published a post on their official blog explaining that they were denying SourceForge services and site access to users residing in countries on the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanction list, including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Since 2003, the SourceForge.net Terms and Conditions of Use have prohibited people from those countries from accessing their website but they only began enforcing the condition a week before posting the blog entry.

Part of their justification reads: “Our need to follow those laws supersedes any wishes we might have to make our community as inclusive as possible. The possible penalties for violating these restrictions include fines and imprisonment. Other hosting companies based in the US have similar legal and technical restrictions in place.”

Although, many users have posted comments criticizing SourceForge’s decision. Some, such as afsharm, who has contributed to projects hosted on SourceForge and can no longer access his work now: “I am an Iranian (an innocent one) and I am not responsible for what ever my government is doing. As nawwark mentioned I’ve sometimes have contributions in SF.NET projects, so why you are denying me from my own works? It’s against freedom and against FOSS.”

Others, like yemeth, could not understand how a project based in another country can be considered a US product: “I seriously can’t understand this. I’m Spanish, and my technology isn’t northamerican. It has nothing to do with the United States except that is hosted here. I can’t understand why said government has anything to say about my will to share my code with EVERYONE. I have no personal embargo against Cuba, nor does my country.”

And there were those, like pmarkiewicz, who pointed out the easier solution: “Folks, if you visit http://www.torproject.org and install tor, then SourceForge can not determine your country of origin. If you happen to traverse through an exit node that is not in an ‘axis of evil’ country, then there is no reason you would be denied that code. Senator Clinton even endorsed efforts to provide these tools to dissenters.”

The comment makes reference to Secretary of State Clinton’s request to Twitter to postpone a planned maintenance shutdown during the election protests in Iran, so that Iranian users could access and use the website (seemingly putting Twitter at legal risk, following the logic used by SourceForge). At the time, she said: “And it is the case that one of the means of expression, the use of Twitter is a very important one, not only to the Iranian people but now increasingly to people around the world, and most particularly to young people.”

Two weeks later, SourceForge posted another entry on their blog, announcing a change in their decision. Now, they have removed the block and added a feature that allows project owners to ban access to the sanctioned countries:

Beginning now, every project admin can click on Develop -> Project Admin -> Project Settings to find a new section called Export Control. By default, we’ve ticked the more restrictive setting. If you conclude that your project is *not* subject to export regulations, or any other related prohibitions, you may now tick the other check mark and click Update. After that, all users will be able to download your project files as they did before last month’s change.

While this was a positive change in the eyes of some, there are still many unanswered questions from SF users, especially those from outside of the US. They don’t understand the US laws and are not sure if they will be in some kind of trouble by choosing to freely distribute their software.

To be fair, SourceForge.net is not the only web service to block users from the sanctioned countries. NXS News reported on this before when it was noticed that Google was blocking access to users based on the country they were surfing from. The consensus being floated around the FOSS community is to start choosing hosts outside the US for their projects, where restrictions on internet use are not so strict. A good option would be Launchpad.net in the UK, used by MySQL and Ubuntu. Either way, the US Government’s arguments about standing up for freedom (remember, “they hate us for our freedom”) is certainly diluted by their own efforts to restrict the individual freedom of people to freely use the internet, regardless of where in the world they happen to be when using it.