"Latin America is emerging as a real hotbed of not only free software coding, but free software uptake by governments - to an extent that puts the UK's pathetic bumblings in this area quite to shame." Glyn Moody interviews Ryan Bagueros of northxsouth.com about the Latin American free software revolution and North-by-South, a company that is giving US businesses access to this incredible phenomeno

"...Shorter time differences, better English speakers, the Latin American free software movement producing masses of quality programmers..."

You might have gathered from my article about hosting free software events, I work and am interested in the UK Voluntary/Community Sector (VCS)[1]. I also am a user and advocate of free software and I have a desire to see it used more often in VCS and non-governmental (NG) organisations.

"A proposed new law that restricts the freedom internet use in Brazil has already passed the Senate and is dangerously close to going on the books [...] The Free Software movement from Brazil is striking up against this project and they have a petition online against it.

"Throughout Latin America the “Latin American Festival of Installation of Free Software” (FLISOL 2008) recently concluded. This event, which has been held since 2005, has as its main objective to promote the use of free software, presenting its philosophy, its scopes and development.

The UK's budget is looming and the public sector is charged with increasing spending on front line services by 4% while budgets go up 2%. Free and open source software is a way of saving millions of pounds in licensing fees and delivering often better products, this article argues.

Public sector and Open Source Software (PS-OSS), a report commissioned by the EU Commission addresses the question : What would be the potential impact on the development of the Information Society if public organisations (administrations, research institutions, universities, agencies, public companies) were to release software fully owned by them under a Open Source licence?

With Independence Day coming up, I want to do a series of posts about freedom and what "free software" actually means. The English language is weak in the area of freedom, so when somebody says "free software" they think "free of charge" or "gratis" (to use the Latin term for the concept), which can really throw you, since most free software is available to anyone without monetary cost.

"...Arturo di Corinto, a sharp and ebullient Italian media activist, writer and film-maker, set out a bold vision of free software as a common resource: ‘Thanks to its characteristics, the free software is a distributed property that is capable of evolving into a common good’, he declared. [...] Can ideas, both inspirational metaphors and actual experiences, from the free software movement provide any guide for turning public services into commons?