Brazil

Brazil--the Sinatra song speaks of holiday hope, escape, beauty, love, and their loss--

Brazil, where hearts were entertaining June
We stood beneath an amber moon
And softly murmured "Someday soon"
We kissed and clung together

Then, tomorrow was another day
The morning found me miles away
With still a million things to say
Now, when twilight dims the sky above
Recalling thrills of our love
There's one thing I'm certain of
Return I will to old Brazil

Then, tomorrow was another day
The morning found me miles away
With still a million things to say
Now, when twilight dims the sky above
Recalling thrills of our love
There's one thing that I'm certain of
Return I will to old Brazil
That old Brazil
Man, it's old in Brazil
Brazil, Brazil


And it was brilliantly used by Terry Gillian in his bleak 1985 satire, Brazil. The country remains a focus of hope and expectation, a sunny future, shadowed by its dark realities. But the current federal administration, Lula's, is changing things, and though the disparities of wealth and privilege remain stark and brutal (Brazil is, like the US, one of the more dramatically disparate countries in terms of wealth and privilege), things are very much improving. The government takes seriously the condition of its people and the importance of social responsibility.

I discovered this anew in my most recent trip to Brasilia, for meetings with the education ministry, and Porto Alegre, for fisl 9.0. Briefly, the meetings were immensely productive, and fisl was extraordinary. It is one thing to hear the strong rhetoric for Floss and another to see it in action (read about the KDE installations). The ministry, along with other federal and provincial governments, is dedicated to Floss and wants to move fast on it. OpenOffice.org is crucial there, as it is the best productivity suite on the planet, and that it is also free software--well that simply seals the deal. But the OpenOffice.org we are talking about is BrOffice.org, the Brazilian Portuguese version that is distributed by the BrOffice team. They had to rename it for trademark reasons, but it's the same thing that nearly a hundred million others use daily. And these facts raise some compelling points:

        •        Many Brazilians, including those in the Floss movement, as well as those in major corporations and government offices, are unaware of the identity of the two
        •        Support and training are sporadically available. Now, if someone or some public or private enterprise wants support for OOo, they can find it in several languages by going to our Support page; Sun (my employer) also provides for-fee professional support for OOo, along the same lines as for StarOffice.
        •        But the default understanding of the public and private enterprises in Brazil does not include support, training, services, and these are sorely wanted. Thus, we have the states of Paraná, the huge, quasi-federal office Serpro, the social security agency and many, many more which I learned about in the three-hour session dedicated to OOo and in personal discussions. (Indeed, I had so many of these that I regretfully could attend very few sessions.)

The ultimate point: we need to develop the support business in Brazil. Of course, Brazil is not alone; we need to do this elsewhere, too. But the need is urgent there and the market is open, and as I mentioned in my presentation late Saturday, Brazil really is the leader here and has the ability to join with India and South Africa and possibly China in proving the role and value of Floss in creating not only markets independent of colonial shadow but socially responsible.

But what about support? By support, I mean first and second level support, the sort that reassures regular endusers; and I also mean training. NO polity, no enterprise embraces Floss without minimizing liability. That means they want support and services and training contracts. It means building the ecosystem for OOo and doing so now.

BTW, if you have not looked at this, now is the time: http://www.hackerteen.com .

fisl9.0

It's hard not to be enthusiastic about fisl, or to expand the acronym, the 9th Fórum International Software Livre, held each year in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In part, my enthusiasm stems from the energy and commitment to free software shown by the government; and in part, from the warmth and friendship demonstrated by the Brazilians.

OOo will, as always, have a booth at fisl, and we will--a first--be holding workshops, demonstrating how to build extensions, and answering question about code, format, project, community. If the past is any measure of the future, I'm fairly sure the event will be memorable and fun.

But there are challenges. The BrOffice community is big and growing but integration between it and the international community needs to be stronger. I would love to know, for instance, some basic data, such as how many people download the application, or some basic information about who is using it. Of course, I am aware of the big players, such as major government offices. And am also acutely aware of the difficulty of obtaining solid information about the users of free software. But, the more and the better information that we possess, the more effective we can be in shaping the product, addressing needs, and so on. And the more the BrOffice community works with the international one, the easier it ultimately is to grow the developer community.

Brazil is by no means alone here: all the major regions suffer the same problems, to greater or lesser degrees, and they come down to a lack of sophisticated developers. Nor is OpenOffice.org at all unique; all major Foss projects are in the same boat. We are also taking similar actions to redress these lacks, but results do not come the next day or even the next month. Education, mentoring, outreach, community coordination, all take time to bear fruit, all are forms of capital investment, and all are worth it--from the perspective of the government, and from that of the project.

And in this regard, as I've witnessed in the last few days, Brazil is a real leader. Its government has powerfully realized the necessity not just of using Foss but of producing it. And it is to OOo's credit and honour that we are so deeply involved in the move to productive freedom.

LGM 2008

The Libre Graphics Meeting is to be held this year in Wroclaw, Poland, from 8-11 May. I cannot make it, but I did attend last year's and it was a great event. OOo doesn't really focus on graphics, but it can: there is no reason to limit the application to the supposedly dull office bucket. Graphical applications, moreover, can include works such as Scribus, as well Inkscape, Gimp, Krita, Blender, and with our own Draw gaining prominence and importance, it makes sense to form tighter liaisons with these and other free graphical projects. After all, we all want to give all users, everywhere, the power and freedom (and aren't they linked?) to create.

Help support LGM 2008. Make a donation.

fosdem 2008

I don't know how many attended fosdem 2008 but it had to be in the thousands. All the sessions were packed, every room filled, and the hallways, where the stands were, were jammed during the breaks. It was, without question, one of the best conferences I've been lucky to attend, and I'm glad that OpenOffice.org had such a strong presence there this year. Next year, am sure, we'll have an even stronger presence. Certainly, we'll have the audience for it, if this year was any measure.

The only sad thing: I never had time to actually attend any of the talks and sessions I wanted to go to. Instead, I met many I had wanted to meet up with and otherwise helped out Sophie G. and Leon M. at the stand. My thanks to them: They set up and manned the booth all day Saturday and, in Sophia's case, Sunday. We gave out hundreds of brochures Frank P. and Stella had created (and Jürgen had printed up) and probably over a hundred t-shirts. And we could have given away many times more that number, I am sure, as our DevRoom was in the AW building, and not the obvious main building, where the food was and Mozilla was.

Mozilla was celebrating its 10th, and I learned that Sophie had been working on it since its start. I hadn't known this. Here, I've been working with Sophie for something like 7 years (!) and turns out that she had already a long history with Mozilla--and no doubt other projects.

But the most interesting story at fosdem (that I heard) is probably Leon's, and it has little to do with Foss. Leon looks like a sailor, or so I believe--he has a the look and robust dishevelledness I associate with long-time seamen, and it turns out that he was, for many years, a navigator on a freighter. These were no small jaunts--his longest trip was 53 days, around the Cape of Good Hope. That's a very long time indeed to spend on a ship, not to touch land, not to eat fresh food, not to stop. There were more stories, and Leon told us some, but I wish he'd told us more. We were at Restobière, having a wonderful classic Belgian dinner and had tried what really was, as he had promised, the world's best beer (dark and rich and yet not sweet but complex, like a very fine wine), plus some remarkable lambic beers whose astringent yeastiness was amazingly good, and were discussing code, procedures, and the usual.

But how did Leon enter gain entry into OOo? No clear answer--it differs for all volunteers, anyway--but I think it had to do with his character--independent and fearless, confident in his ability to solve any problem, but by no means hostile to community. I asked him if he had, after 53 days, hated his shipmates. No, he said, not at all; the opposite. And that's a revelatory statement. For OOo and Foss, in general, require toleration and the ability to get along with those who may irk you because you believe that it's necessary, that otherwise, if you fight, if you let quarrels destroy the effort, the ship will founder, the project will succumb, and there are always sharks.

I'll try to post the fosdem talks we gave as soon as I can. They were good!

Where was FOSS at Davos?

The World Economic Forum is held at Davos. Historically, its relevance has been questionable, but this year, the focus was on collaboration, a topic close to FOSS. So I asked Brian Behlendorf, who attended, Where was FOSS at Davos? Here is his more or less unedited response, which Brian graciously allowed me to publish here; all rights, of course, remain his.

Where was FOSS at Davos? On one hand, in its most abstract form, it was everywhere - the theme of the conference this year was "the power of collaborative innovation", after all. And of the people I talked to, the idea that businesses would find it in their own self-interest to work jointly on projects with passionate individuals, the government, or other businesses, even their competitors, was relatively uncontroversial. Jimmy Wales's presence at this year's conference and last was also proof that this was a concept that went beyond software. Though, a couple of people were surprised to hear that Wikipedia was a non-profit - which suggests that further ideas about IP ownership and the role of non-profits isn't as well understood.

The more specific sessions at the conference dealing with collaboration - you can find links to them, often including video, at www.weforum.org - often were discussions less about collaborating with the open public and more about collaborating with business partners in a private setting; or with customers but in a still very controlled way. One example given by Mark Parker, CEO of Nike, was their collaboration with Apple: they have a set of running shoes that can communicate back with an iPod information about distance, speed, and calories burned, which then feeds a desktop app back at home and a web site where reportedly 40 million miles had been collectively burned. The runners can see each other's totals, compete for the most miles ran or calories burned, and message each other on the site. This, of course, is a long distance from the kind of collaboration we know about in the FOSS world... maybe I am damning with faint praise here, but it seems better than nothing.

But back to FOSS. As Davos is often best thought of as the Olympics of networking, finding a way to describe FOSS and its attributes crisply was important. Everyone had heard of Linux, 99% had heard of Apache, and of those I asked about 80% had heard of OpenOffice. That's the good news. On the downside: twice, I mentioned ODF vs. OOXML in conversations with people, and each time, there was a lack of awareness of the issue. I really don't want to embarrass them so I won't name names, but they were people who really should have known; one was a leader of a business that has been around for years and has serious document management and longevity issues, the other a government official who was charged with preserving his country's culture but sadly non-technical. In both cases, the initial response was along the lines of "this is a mess that you techies have created, I expect you to clean it up", as if it was simply a matter of defects in code that a company like Microsoft would be cleaning up quickly. If it turned out that valuable company data from 1993 were in a Word file format that couldn't be properly read by Office 2008, then they'd simply hire someone or a firm to dive in and repair it by hand. I believe I brought both of them around to understanding how it's not just a matter of bugfixing or outsourcing the problem, that it is a knowlege and institutional threat, and the role they need to play as informed customers in pressuring vendors to do the right thing. But, Microsoft's judo-move with OOXML of appearing to do the "right" thing that isn't actually right in practice has more power than I think you or I would wish were true.

Most of the time, though, Davos isn't a place to have difficult conversations about situations and events that appear to be beyond the field of the people in the conversation - it's often simply a place to meet and build bonds with people in your field and, more importantly, beyond; bonds that later can be used when a crisis hits or some need arises. I found myself preferring to discuss possibilities and potentials rather than what's wrong or looming worries. I know that sounds impossibly frou-frou, and I could blame the rarified air, or the overabundance of champagne. Instead, though, I think it's because this is for most people a one-week escape from the harsh realities of their daily business world, into a world where they can relate to others as people, to be stoked by new ideas. They'd much rather talk about the potential for Open Source software on the OLPC as a means to democratise technology; or Open Source software in disaster relief operations as a means to increase flexibility.

Perhaps it's my own failing of marketing, but I need to improve the way I talk about the ODF/OOXML debate so that it sounds less about conspiracy paranoia (no matter how well deserved) and speaks more about possibility, choice, freedom, economic opportunities, and growth. The Extremadura story is a beautiful story about free software, for example - especially when it's told in a way that shows how it could have never had a similar impact had they chosen to use proprietary software, even if "donated".

Deadline for OOoCon Extended

The deadline for OOoCon has been extended until 10 Feb. As John McCreesh (Marketing Lead) wrote,

"Last month we set a deadline of January 31st for the receipt of
proposals for hosting the OpenOffice.org Annual Conference 2008 - see
http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=announce&msgNo=345.

"In response to a number of requests from organising teams, we have
agreed to put back the deadline to midnight UTC February 10th. We will
aim to open the community voting process a few days later, and announce the winning bid on March 1st.

"We hope this will enable all teams to put forward their best possible
bid. Good luck and thanks to those working hard on their bids!"

OOoCon has gained importance each year. But it remains a definitively community event, a place where those who know each each other through mail lists can finally meet--or meet again. And it's also, of course, the place where developers can present on the work they are doing, will do and want to do, as well as the place where business people come to learn more about OOo--and to promote their own works. Last year, in Barcelona, OOoCon lasted one day longer than usual, and I feel it wasn't long enough (and not just because I wanted to stay longer in Barcelona). I am sure that this coming year will be even more intense and interesting, and be the place where we can see what IBM, Redflag Ubuntu, Google, and others have been doing.

Why MS Office for Mac 2008 fails to impress

To say that I was surprised to read Matt Asay's blog on CNet extolling Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 is an understatement. Asay likes MS Office for Mac's UI and integration and despite its downsides, like the fact that it uses OOXML, not ODF, and does not synchronize with his Blackberry (or much else, though I'd guess it does fine with Microsoft products, but that's just a guess), he believes that the "upgrade was worth the price."

Really? I guess when I think about an application I think, to be sure, about the pleasure of using it and whether it is easy to use. No one likes an application that obtrudes and prevents fluid thought (which is hard enough to get, anyway).

But I also think about how my work using it will affect others. Would my colleague, for instance, be able to read what I send? Would I be able to read what they send me? How long can I trust the format to last? Ie, will I (or others) be able to freely access it decades from now? And this raises the question: Why would I want to use something that implicitly is exclusive? Sure, I use a Macintosh, but the work I do on it that is public employs free software and open standards, and that's where MS Office for Mac fails. Okay, I confess I have not personally tried out MS Office for Mac 2008--I cannot justify buying it--but I am aware that MS Office hasn't really changed from earlier versions in a crucial way: It still doesn't play well with others and in fact, as Matt admits, effectively forces the user to dive into the MS universe and close the door after him. That isolationist attitude is predicated, to be sure, on file format, but also on the philosophy of interoperation that differentiates MS's logic of development from Foss' and in particular OpenOffice.org's.

Our philosophy is to work with others. We do not insist that our application must do everything. We do insist that it be open--use open source and open standards, so as to allow (and indeed encourage) effective interoperation of different applications, big and small. The result is that there is no real limit to OOo and the application ecosystem (on the desktop, on the Web) it centres. And there is a limit to what MS Office (and others of its ilk) can do.

But can OOo match the UI that Matt loves so much? Yes. Can it also have the level of integration (or interoperation) that he likes? Yes. Okay, when? Well, 3.0 is slated for the end of summer, and when released, it will be able to work with Mozilla's Lightning calendaring application--which integrates with Thunderbird, the email client. And as OOo already supports lots of extensions and will support even more as time goes on, the wealth of options and tools can only increase. And most are likely to be free.

Freedom here is not the price one pays for mediocre software. There is nothing mediocre about Mozilla, OpenOffice.org or so much other Foss. Freedom is rather the tool that underlies the working of superior software, and that includes making it as pleasurable to use as to develop.