"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).

We decided to start an impromptu video podcast called, "Spotlight on FOSS," or Spotlight on Free and Open Source Software. The premise of the show is that we interview someone in the Free and Open Source Software world, and spotlight a software solution they have contributed to.

"This is an interesting interview with a professor involved in the Cuban free software movement. He makes an interesting argument which is that the free as in price argument is not a compelling argument for Cuba to switch to free software. Because of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, in the past, their government and universities have used pirated, unlicensed proprietary software by default.

Running a free software project can be a rewarding experience if you begin with your eyes open. In my personal experience, starting a free software project with only a head-on view of a few existing free software projects is not really enough. Some basic background information can really help get you started in the right direction.

Open source software initially was a head-scratcher: “How can you make money selling something for free?” But once open source advocates clarified the meaning of free – “Free as in speech, not as in beer” – the open source economy took off.

"...It is focused on what the free and open software/content communities desire, so the entire operation is transparent and open. There is the SIL Open Font License and CC Public Domain declaration in place to help free fonts for use, re-use and remix. Also, the software is completely free software and using Creative Commons’ open source project, ccHost..."

"Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that non-free software is a suboptimal solution.

An interview with IBM's Vice President of Open Source and Standards about their Open Source Strategy, the recent pledge of its patents for more than 150 open software standards, his take on the ODF vs. XML issue, and much more in The LXer Interview of Bob Sutor.

Like the future, open source is already here, it's just unevenly distributed. In particular, 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.