Free Software with a Female touch

Brazilian president, Lula, at the International Free Software Forum

June 27th, 2009

Free Software’s history in Brazil is divided in two: before Lula became a nerd, and after that.

For the first time, we managed to get Lula to the International Free Software Forum, where he spoke about freedom, free culture, and commented about a law project proposed by a Senator, which aims to “regulate” internet in Brazil: “At the Brazilian government, it is forbidden to forbid”, said the president. He said the project is censorship, and needs to be reviewed by the Senate.

He also said, making an analogy between software and food, that Brazil had the choice of “cooking its own food, and choose the spices, or eat Microsoft’s food”, and added, “we decided for freedom”.

The organization of the conference distributed pictures of the president to the participants, with phrases like “Lula is nerd”. And he loved it and distributed autographs on the pictures.

He is spoke to a 300 people’s audience, and walked through the exhibition area, visiting user groups, taking pictures wearing community hats and holding shirts.

I think we can’t aim to fly much higher around here, we got to the highest hierarchy of Brazilian’s government, and had Ministers and the President himself, talking about software freedom. The 10th anniversary of this event is definitely making history. And I am glad to be part of it.

Come and help us building this dream!

March 12th, 2009

We are launching the tenth edition of the International Free Software Forum (FISL), the biggest gathering of Free Software communities in Latin America, one of the biggest in the world, and the largest and most important technology event in our country.

In 1999, when we idealized FISL and immersed into the construction of what is today the “Brazilian Free Software Project”, we were being visionaries, as we didn’t know the exact dimension that Free Software would reach in the whole world. But the visionaries had a firm conviction that the fight for freedom and technological autonomy of our country would necessarily pass by Free Software and the ideals built, initially by Richard Stallman, and, later, by the hackers and developers of the GNU/Linux operational system.

We were able to build a collective event with the participation of the various Free Software communities from our country, the heart of FISL and, later, aggregated other social subjects into this scenario: public administrators, entrepreneurs, academics, Information and Communication Technology professionals and defenders of the freedom of knowledge in all areas. FISL has always been, in all its editions, a major physical meeting point for those who daily meet on the web to work and share knowledge and ideas.

We are also certain that FISL has helped consolidate a positive image of Brazil in the international scene and is today the most well-known and respected Brazilian technology event outside our country.

Surely many of us have in our minds  thrilling and unforgettable moments which we carry for all our lives. Many of today’s professionals, activists, entrepreneurs and public administrators had FISL as an inspiration and a great time of opportunities.

We launch the beginning of our tenth anniversary in a global scenario of economical crisis and strong attacks to the liberties of the Internet all around the world. For these reasons, FISL becomes even more important. Never has Free Software and the new forms of social relations, initiated by our community in a global scale, have been so important for overcoming the crisis of an old model. Never has the fight for democracy and freedom have been so important for guaranteeing a sustainable development and a better future for our country. All these elements have been and will be present on our tenth anniversary.

We cheer on our Brazilian Free Software community, the heart of FISL, to present lecture proposals, workshops and courses, and to help in the construction and mobilization of yet another  extraordinary moment for our country and for our personal lifes.

We call upon our strategic partners of the public and private sectors to join this great network that surrounds FISL, helping make this dream come true. Do not miss the opportunity to expose your brand and your projects to the biggest and most important community of the Internet, establishing contacts, discovering news paths and creating new business possibilities.

At FISL you will find the greatest technological innovators of the Brazilian Internet, will be in contact with new forms of relations brought by the social networks of the Internet, and with the new and successful business models of the network society.

FISL is a great opportunity for all of us.

We officially open the process of construction of FISL 10.

Porto Alegre,  March 10th,  2009.

Madonna and Load Balancing

September 3rd, 2008

Madonna finally visits Brazil for the second time ever, with her new tour, Sticky and Sweet. The Brazilian concert in Sao Paulo happens on the 20th of December, and since I am planning to go to Brazil for Christmas, I thought: “why not”.

Today, finally, the website started to sell tickets for the presentation, so I went there to check it out. Surprisingly, I ended up not only learning about the prices, but about new technologies on Load Balancing, which for me is personally interesting.

Add an Image

 

In case you need translation, the text in portuguese in the page says: “Please select one of the servers bellow. In case it is busy, please try another one.”

Why the hell didn’t I think about it before?

JeguePanel 2.0 – More power on your network

November 7th, 2007

I decided to post here about an important release happening in Latin America these days. It is a project developed there, by my friend Anahuac, and since we do not have many of such initiatives, I thought it would be nice to spread the word. If you are sysadmin and has to interact with postfix, you will love it 🙂

With full support to Active Directory and MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, JeguePanel comes to it’s 2.0 version bringing you a lot of management options to Gnu/Linux and Windows networks.

Organization is the key-word to reduce costs and efforts with IT. The efficient management of servers, users, permissions and resources are the basic level of any network environment. This is the JeguePanel goal: be a management servers tool, specially to E-Mail and Samba Servers.

After two years of absolute success on the 1.x series, finally JeguePanel comes to it’s 2.0 version. On it OpenLDAP isn’t mandatory anymore to store users and it’s data. Now you can choose to use SQL database instead. This is a regular request by JeguePanel users that already has it’s users data in SQL databases and don’t want to migrate to any other option like OpenLDAP. So, from now on, it’s just easy to use JeguePanel with it. On this version you can migrate data from Access, SQL Server or Oracle into MySQL or PostgreSQL and use JeguePanel.

The new support to Active Directory allows JeguePanel to work integrated with Windows Servers based on this technology, synchronizing all your users, passwords and additional data between AD and OpenLDAP. This is a great option to companies that already has it’s network based on Windows Server and want use an E-mail Server powered by Gnu/Linux.

It’s simple and friendly interface make easy manage any number of users and deeply decrease the management work. You don’t need to lost hours making replications between servers and trying to find out who is this or that user. With few clicks in the JeguePanel web interface all the management tasks are done quickly and easily.

JeguePanel manage more than E-mail Servers. It’s allow complete management of Samba Servers as well. This is a new step to get the wanted management efficiency of the network resources and permissions, totally integrated with Gnu/Linux and Windows Servers.

Take a look in all the news and bug fixes of this version below:

  • New installer with Ajax to make easiest to chose and configure your options.

  • The default JeguePanel language, on this version, is Enlgish. All others languages are supported trough gettext.

  • Messages disclaimer. Now JeguePanel managers can easily include any text in the bottom of all messages sent by the E-Mail Server.

  • Active Directory support. From now on, Windows 2003 Servers and JeguePanel with OpenLDAP can be synchronized. To make it possible we use an agent thats run on the W2K3 side, sending data to the OpenLDAP and vice-versa. This agents are used to synchronize users and passwords. More data can be synchronized by the new jpsync script, developed in Perl, that runs trough cron and compare and synchronize any changes.

  • SQL database. From the version 2.0, JeguePanel get free from OpenLDAP and offers the option to use SQL as users, domains and passwords database. The only case when OpenLDAP became mandatory is when you want to use the integration with OpenLDAP.

  • New interface to setup return error message, when some e-mail is deferred by virus infection.

  • From now on, disabled users by full quota, don’t get only disabled to receive new messages, but to send too.

  • OpenLDAP only accept text with accents using base 64 encryption. This method has been rewritten to avoid some errors in the text fields.

  • Improved Egroupware support. Now JeguePanel has an option to add/remove applications to many users at once.

  • The jpr.pl script, responsible for the Postfix reports don’t run trough cron anymore. It’s has been rewritten and it’s a daemon that still reading the mail.log file and collecting all the needed data. It’s became a very lightweight tool.

  • The add domains function has been changed to improve it’s performance. Now it’s uses the postconf command to change the main.cf file.

  • Improved ClamAV support. The command clamscan has been replaced by the clamdscan. This little change make the virus scanning much more lightweight.

To know more about JeguePanel, please visit http://www.jeguepanel.net and try our on-line demo. You will see that JeguePanel is perfect for your business.

FSFLA frees Brazilian tax software

May 14th, 2007

Finally a more extensive article on what FSFLA has done about the tax stuff in Brazil. 

"The FSFLA, the Latin American branch of the Free Software Foundation, is claiming a last-minute victory in Brazil in its struggle to remove the requirement to use non-free software for filing taxes online. Having reversed-engineered a free command-line program for filing taxes, the FSFLA is jubilantly announcing that it has "freed the lion" — "lion" being a colloquial term in Brazil for taxes."

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/05/11/1813251

Beyond Copyright — the Lookright

July 21st, 2006

After I get involved with the Free Software community, I started also to get interested on Copyright concept, laws, access to knowledge, among other things. The most visible effect to all that is: now I pay more attention to the very small letters in the back side of the DVD and CD cases, and also to the "patented" sign in some of the most stupid things ever: like the container where we throw away the glass.

I love music, therefore music is very present in my life. I download a lot of musics from the internet, I share music with my friends, and yes, I buy CDs, and now that I am living in Europe and there is nothing in Portuguese going on on the TV, I buy tons of music DVDs when I go to Brasil.

The last ones were Maria Rita – Segundo, which is a case with a music CD (not protected my DRM) and a DVD with the "making of" of the music CD production.

In the back side of the DVD case usually there are those very small letters saying things like: "Warning: the DVD is protected by law and authorized for home use only. Any unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, distribution, exporting, importing, dissemination, exhibition or public performance is prohibited by law."

I have to say that I think this is completly non-sense, but well, it is the "law" or the way the companies wants to control their rights over the content.

And when we think our "friends" from the music industry reached their limits, they go beyond: the Maria Rita’s CD I bought comes with a short, althought more restrictive note in the back side of the case: "WARNING: All rights reserved. The partial or integral reproduction of this DVD is expressly prohibited. The infringers are subjected to penalties provisioned by law"

This means, simply and clearly: I cannot play my own DVD! It would be funny, if it wasn’t tragic.

Ladies and gentlemans, let me introduce to you Lookright, by Warner.

Free as in “Mark Shuttleworth”??!?!?!?!?!?!

June 20th, 2006

During FISL, David "Novalis" Turner and Georg Greve showed me that I was completly wrong about Ubuntu and that it indeed contains proprietary software.

 Well, i checked whether I had the package they found in the CD, and since I was not using that package, I thought I was free (as in freedom).

 After that, I started to pay more attention to the Ubuntu Policies, what that restricted session means, etc.

 Today, when I received my really nice and new computer, I decided to try again Ubuntu, and then, after the installation completes, I removed the packages that has this description:

 Non-free Linux 2.6.15 modules on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/PIV

and

Restricted Linux modules on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/PIV

 Guess what???

 Bingo! The dependencies of those packages removed also the kernel. Who needs a kernel, after all?

So, I am not wondering whether there is an easy way to install Ubuntu without the proprietary package, or if the lies in the CD are not only about incuding non-free software, but also about not having even the option to delete them!!!

I am feeling free as in Mark Shuttleworth…whatever it means….

Help the largest Latin American Free Software Conference

March 23rd, 2006

On the next april, FISL will take place for the 7th time in Porto Alegre/RS Brasil. FISL has consolidated itself as the biggest and most important Free Software event in Latin America, one of the coolest event in the world, as said by Georg Greve and other people who have been to most of Free Software conferences around the world.

 It is an event that shows how to practice social responsability in its local community: every year FISL uses part of the subscription fee value to buy not perishable foods and donate it to local groups that fight against hunger in Brazil. Last year, FISL’s organisers donated more than 11,5 tons of food and 3 tons of seeds that could be used to plant and produce 3000 tons of food.

 Besides the solidarity numbers, FISL had more than 4.5 thousand atendees. 13,54% are women. A number that will hopefully increase, but even being small, is better than the number of other conferences I have attended. Last year more than 12000 different connections were received on the streaming servers, and there were 12 primary replicators.

 This will be the second year that FISL will transmit all its sessions by internet, using the Free Software TV, but there are limitations of bandwidth that may make it difficult to happen, or very limited. All the transmission is made using Free (as in freedom) encoders for audio and video, and there is no need for disk space: only bandwidth.

 So, if you or your organisation have good internet bandwidth available, please contact me (nanda at fsfe dot org) and let me put you in contact with the organisers in order to make this event available to as much people as we can.

Yes! We have bananas!

January 31st, 2006

Actually are not bananas exactly, but I am writing today to announce the new FSFLA’s website, I just thought the bananas would be more attractive. 🙂

If you’re curious, try to access: http://www.fsfla.org — I hope our DNS is already propagated to yours.

Thanks FSFE for providing the vserver, and Jonas, who was really patient with me 🙂

 

German things…

January 11th, 2006

I fortgot to blog about it few days ago, but the morning’s experience I had today made me remind this subject 🙂

Here in Hamburg, the metro (subway, s-bahn, u-bahn, whatever) really works. It is irritatingly in time, and all the station have plates with a minutes countdown. There’s no ticket control to get in the train, but if you “forget” to pay and someone ask you for the ticket, then you would pay much more.

It’s incredible, eveybody buy tickets!!! Including me 😀

I imagine this kind of system in the Sao Paulo’s metro, for instance….heheheh

But sometimes the train delays. That already happened with me twice, I guess. The reason: people jump in front of the train trying to kill themselves.

I thought it was a joke, but a couple of days ago I was in the metro coming to the FSFE’s office and when the train supposed to go straight to stop in the station, it got another rail and stopped in other place. Georg said “it is strange, the train always stops in the other side”. Well, when we were walking in the station, he saw the ambulance, few police people and said: “ah, someone jumped in front of the train, again”. With a weird naturalitty in his voice!!! I got stalled, and asked “WHAT????!!!” How could people decide to kill themselves jumping in front of the trains?? And worst: How can the others think that it is normal???

If you have been in Brazil, and saw an accident on the transit, for instance, you noticed lots of people standing around willing to see whether the person is bleeding, or lost a leg, or died. Here it doesn’t happen!!! Nobody stops to ask whether the criature is still alive or not!

Well, this morning I was again in the train, coming to the FSFE’s office again. The sound system start to announce something different, then I asked Georg: what happened? (Since I cannot — yet — understand german). And his answer: “Someone jumped in front of the train”.

Minutes later, more messages in the sound system. I asked again: “What happened now? One more?” And he: “No, they are just telling that they took of the corpse and the traffic is back to normal.”

And one more normal working day begins…

It doesn’t sound weird???