BNamericas.com) The 5th International Open Source Forum held in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre last week has heralded a tide of investments in open source projects, according to the forum's web site and local press.
The most significant news was the 90mn reais (US$29mn) set aside by Brazil's Internet Management Committee for electronic government projects, announced by committee representative Antonio Alberto Valente Tavares. The projects will begin to move forward once the committee's permanent representatives are elected in the first week of July. All told, some 4,854 people from 35 countries attended the conference. The Programa Software Livre Brasil together with non-governmental organizations Hipatia and Solar signed an agreement to encourage the use of open source software across Latin America. Germany's Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, went to great lengths to explain that open source does not mean "free" but rather liberty of use. The government of Porto Alegre municipality, located in southern Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state, launched a portal to help public sector administrators create their own web sites on open source platforms. The municipal IT company, Procempa, believes the system, called Proweb Livre, will help government agencies keep web sites updated, Procempa president Joel Raymundo was quoted as saying. Brazil's Workers Party (PT), a strong supporter of open source software, runs the Porto Alegre city government and the federal government. Needless to say, federal representatives were on hand to provide their own support for the new portal. "We need this type of solution for the development of web sites with open source software," said Patr�cia Pessi, head of electronic government at the logistics department in Brazil's federal planning ministry. "It is good to know there are municipal governments developing this type of tool." But in the Rio Grande do Sul state, of which Porto Alegre is the capital, there was less enthusiastic support for open source software. The state government is run by the opposition Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), and one representative said open source has its limits. Carlos Alberto Pacheco de Campos, president of the state IT firm Procergs, told the conference that although he was in favor of open source, public sector bodies have to meet strict norms, unlike the private sector, or face punishment from state authorities. He called on the government to create a proper legal framework for software, as the existing rules do not make it clear whether a public agency can provide software for free. On the web: http://www.softwarelivre.org/forum200. ---------------------------------- WebMail service by rionet.com.br � ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Yahoo! Domains - Claim yours for only $14.70 http://us.click.yahoo.com/Z1wmxD/DREIAA/yQLSAA/5cFolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jug-petropolis/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
