[dot] Report on fisl 6.0

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1117897854/

From: Andras Mantia <Quanta+ developer>
Dept: you-have-to-eat-a-lot
Date: Saturday 04/Jun/2005, @17:10

 Report on fisl 6.0
===================

   This year I was invited to attend the 6th edition of the
International Free Software Forum [http://fisl.softwarelivre.org/6.0/]
in Porto Alegre/RS, Brazil, which I could attend with the help of the
organizing committee and our generous sponsor Carlos Leonhard Woelz, the
man behind the KDE Quality Team [http://quality.kde.org]. The forum is
the biggest open source/free software forum in Latin America, and it has
more and more visitors each year. There were more than 3000 registered
in advance participants and with well known names from the free software
community like Eric S. Raymond, John "maddog" Hall, Randal L. Schwartz,
Marcello Tosatti and others
[http://fisl.softwarelivre.org/6.0/speakers], including the LinuxChix
[http://www.linuxchix.org.br].

      [http://static.kdenews.org/binner/dot-stories/fisl60.jpg]
     The event is a combined exhibition and talks
[http://fisl.softwarelivre.org/6.0/program], an exhibitions which this
year big companies wanted to be and are present, like IBM, Sun, UniSys.
There are also a number of booths belonging to the Brazilian federal and
local government. For free software groups and organizations free booths
were offered, so there is a small KDE booth as well, mainly run by local
KDE enthusiastsc and developers, like Helio Chissini de Castro and since
today Thiago Macieira as well. Helio participated on a discussion about
object oriented programming, while I gave a presentation about how can
one adapt Quanta Plus [http://quanta.kdewebdev.org] for his own needs.
The slides for my presentation are downloadable
[http://kdewebdev.org/~amantia/presentation/quanta-for-your-needs.kpr]
in KPresenter [http://www.koffice.org/kpresenter/] format.

     As there are many talks in parallel it is hard to follow all of
them. You can watch them as they are broadcast
[http://tv.softwarelivre.org] on the internet. Most of the talks are in
Portuguese, but there are live translations offered to visitors for most
talks, so English speakers can understand Portuguese talks and vice
versa. If you were not yet aware of this forum and the live
broadcasting, you can still see some interesting talks from the last day
of the conference like Eric S. Raymond's about "The Cathedral and the
Bazar", Leon Shiman's about MAS or Jonh Hall's about pirated software.

     The conference is hosted in a private university, which offers the
infrastructure free for the organizers. Aside of the big hall for the
exhibition and the booths there are many conference rooms, free and fast
internet connection for every visitor, free lunch for invited speakers
and free shuttle from hotels to the location of the forum. As I did not
have yet the time to visit the city - but will do after the event with
the help of the organizers -  I can give only my impressions about it as
I saw from the bus and the area around the hotel and the forum. The
people are very nice and helpful, even if they don't speak English in
general. German and Italian speakers might have an advantage in this
area as according to Helio, many of the inhabitants have German and
Italian roots and they still speak the language. The climate is nice,
even in this part of they year, which is the beginning of the winter.
The food is great, and usually you can it a lot for relatively little
money.

     The government seems to be very interested in free software and
this shows up not only from the fact that they are present here and
supported the event, but also they are using open and free software in
their projects, like managing the health system of the whole country,
which has around 200 million inhabitants! In a follow-up of this report
Helio will present more about who was present here and what do they
shown and talked about as he is a native Portuguese speaker and also a
local person, who knows many of the exhibitors and the government
representatives.

     As a final note some words about the future of the forum and it's
possible relationship with KDE. The local KDE developers would like to
host next year's KDE conference here in Porto Alegre together with the
FISL 7.0, a good opportunity to show KDE for a lot of people, both
simple users as well as important companies and government
representatives. Based on the reception of the current event, I'd say
that KDE would benefit from it a lot, and that it would get quite
support from the government and the companies as well to make this
possible.

     You can see some pictures [http://kdewebdev.org/~amantia/fisl6] as
well. More will come later.