Toskices randômicas

This post is for my non-Portuguese able friends

FISL 9.0 was by far the largest Free and Open Source conference ever. Officially, 7400 people participated in the 3-day conference which happens every year in Porto Alegre, Brazil. You have no idea what it is like, even if you’ve been here before. Luckily, it went back to the PUC university, close to downtown, with several options of good food and transportation.

It was my first conference really working – means attached to a company booth – but I skipped away many times The talks were all recorded and will be available online soon, although most of the content is in Portuguese. But as images are a universal language, here my pictures and here is the FISL 9.0 pool of everybody’s pictures.

So, start making plans. I hope to see you all there next year!

Stupid Wordpress is refusing to embed an object and I have no idea why. But you so need to check out this video...

” I have a lust for the Earth below
And Hell itself is my only foe,
‘Cause I’ve no fear of dying,
I’ll go when I’m good and ready…

Heaven can wait,
Heaven can wait,
Heaven can wait,
Heaven can wait til another day”
” Seven deadly sins
Seven ways to win
Seven bloody paths to hell
Seven downward slopes
Seven bloody hopes
Seven are your burning fires
Seven your desires….”

” Watching horror films the night before
Debating witches and folklores
The unknown troubles on your mind
Maybe your mind is playing tricks
You sense, and suddenly eyes fix
On dancing shadows from behind”
” Mark my words believe my soul lives on.
Don’t worry now that I have gone.
I’ve gone beyond to see the truth.

When you know that your time is close at hand.
Maybe then you’ll begin to understand,
Life down here is just a strange illusion…”
Amanhã eu conto como foi. Hoje só relembrar... “Scream for me São Pauloooooooooooo!”

I’ve been traveling a great deal for some time now. I’ve been to conferences in many places, with very different cultures. I enjoy observing, and learning how each community works. I also try to share my findings with others who have had the same opportunity.

I believe that, in the same way people, generations, and cultures evolve, the FOSS community evolves and changes. Considering how different Open Source is in different parts of the world, it seems like some places already gone through stages that others are going through now. That doesn’t mean all places did it the same way. And there’s no “static metric” or method that is “proved by scientists” – all of the observations and conclusions in this paper are based on my own meandering experiences.

Some places are more mature, others are in earlier stages

First stage The community that forms in this stage, which promotes and explains the concepts of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), will serve as the base for next stages. At this stage, the debate is mainly philosophic. Individual people or small groups, work to convince more people, through evangelism and promotion.

There are a lot of questions and comments like:

• But who pays the bill?

• If I open my source code, my competitor is going to copy everything and run me out of business?

• If it’s free, it must be crappy code!

These are the discussion in a fresh new community. This is the case even with those who have used Linux “since SLS/Slackware 2.0/Linux 0.9”. Some members in new communities act more like Dungeon Masters than evangelists.

They are warming up. India, China, and most Latin America countries are still growing, joining communities, but without significant and sustainable results, as of yet. The potential is huge, but it is not established. There are a lot of students who still don’t get it. They think that open source means they would just be working for free.

Second stage The next stage starts when sustainability becomes important. In the first stage, a few evangelizing companies were trying to convince more companies that the future of FOSS is wide open, that the development cycle is shorter and cheaper, and that the community is a great and valuable working force. The evangelizing companies try to explain how costs will go down, and how Return of Investment (ROI) will be rapid.

In the second stage, the other companies start to realize the message is true. And when that happens, more and more people are able to realize their dream of doing the work they love, developing or supporting open source. There are more investments, and there are more cases of success. More non-IT people are aware of what Linux is, that it is something on the computer. There are still problems, but there are more real actions.

I believe Brazil is at this stage. The corporate world is showing some interest. Asking for enthusiasm from this market in Brazil would be too much. The communities work together without the infinite bloody wars. The government’s actions show some maturity and planning. There are no more announcements of migrating the world in 80 days. A lot of serious, complex, professional work is required, plus investments, in terms of both time and money.

Third stage In the next phase, the numbers are impressive. There is a lot of investment, and lots of savings and innovation. There are a big number of enthusiastic open source developers. And there is a good amount and variety of development they are hired to do. People talk about the amount of business, estimates of growth in the market share, and the adoption level.

Europe, in general, looks to be at this stage. For example, France has reported that the government spent 200 million euros, on open source projects alone. Amazingly, the big and small companies have the same share in this investment. Firefox adoption passed 40% in Finland, followed by Germany.

Next stage? So, what’s after the third phase? For me, the fourth stage happens when the companies dedicated to producing and supporting open source are not just viable and profitable, but also generate companies to support them. In the US, some companies now specialize in supporting companies which want to open their projects. The support companies teach about: licensing, how to present the products in the market, how to interact with the community, and even how to create a community around those projects. This amazed me. After all, companies have always seemed to think of communities as a necessary evil, but now they are investing in having a good relationship with them!

Community Sustainability

You must contribute to be part of the community So, does that mean that the US has the most developed open source environment? I don’t think so. One of conferences I participated in there this year was the Open Source Business Conference. Everything on the schedule and in the talks was very buzzword compliance.

But what impressed me most was the fact that several talks, including the keynotes, conveyed this message:

“It is not good to just take your competitor’s code without contributing anything. That will kill your business.”

There were talks about open source business model, who gets to decide about open source licenses, why you should care about contributing code to the ecosystem. Wait a second…. It wasn’t clear why you should contribute code? Apparently not.

During another conference, OSCON, one of the biggest and more famous of the international conferences, the message was slightly different, but with the same objective:

“Products and services are being created based on open source, but they are not open themselves. There is this culture of just saying “We love FOSS” and feeling like all is good. But it doesn’t work like this. If you don’t contribute, the main source runs out of resources. When you become a parasite of your competitor, you will destroy your business.”

Communities must be run by…the community So, the very first stage is essential to sustainable growth. Some companies may even want to buy a community. And they can, but that is not a guarantee that the community is not going to go away. There are certain rules, which may change from community to community, but all of them have very similar dynamics: volunteers are free to work on whatever they want to, and the community is anarchist or has a very soft leadership, where all the volunteers have direct influence in the next steps of the project. If a company cannot accept those rules, buying a community is a waste of money.

So, what you think?

Versão em Português.

The bad: you lost a pair of pants recently bought
The good: you lost weight so they are way too loose
The best: all that in just a week and a half

Or I should find sometime to eat before I get sick. I soooooooooooo need vacations…

Or “Skill – I haz them”

This year is really weird, with so many changes in so many people’s life. I know several people moving out, changing jobs, making big changes. And today I just made another big change, the most difficult one.

See this overcute thing?

She has been my best friend for four years. I found Minimoe in a cats community on Orkut. She is sweet, gentle, needy, clumsy and beautiful. Even people who usually say they don’t like cats felt in love for her. She used to go see everyone entering the apartment, smelling and welcoming them. She only disliked one person, and she was right

But I’m traveling too much, and she is really stressed by being alone so long. When I came back from my last trip and she had lost over a kg, I knew that was it. I wasn’t been fair to her. So I decided to make something. So today she left with my mommy. And people who have pets know how hard is to separate from them. My mother said later she was just fine, complained about three times during the flight due some turbulence. But the best thing, they got along very nice and I know mommy is going to take care of her as she was her granddaughter. Their both happy, and I’m happy for them, I just really miss Minimoe. That fluffy funny lazy-eye thing.

Minha melhor amiga

Este começo de ano está bem interessante. Conheço muita gente mudando, de casa, de emprego, alguma coisa bem importante. Hoje eu também tive mais uma grande mudança, talvez a mais difícil até agora. Vê aquela coisa super fofa da foto ali em cima?

Esta tem sido minha melhor amiga há quatro anos. Eu encontrei a Minimoe numa comunidade de gatos no Orkut. Ela é doce, meiga, carente, atrapalhada e ainda por cima linda. Mesmo quem diz que não gosta de gatos fala que gosta só dela. Ela costuma ir receber todo mundo que chega no apartamento, cheirar e dar as boas vindas. Apenas uma vez ela não gostou de uma pessoa, e no fim ela tinha razão.

Mas com esta rotina doida, viajando demais, ela estava ficando muito estressada de ficar tanto tempo sozinha. Quando eu voltei da minha ultima viagem e a encontrei um quilo mais magra – para um gato, que tem 3,5kg, é muita coisa – eu sabia que tinha que fazer alguma coisa. Então hoje ela foi pra Floripa com minha mãe. E quem tem bichinhos de estimação sabe o quão difícil é se separar deles… Mammy falou que ela só reclamou umas três vezes durante o vôo, porque teve muita turbulência. Mas o melhor é que elas se deram superbem e eu sei que mammy vai cuidar dela como se fosse neta. Elas estão felizes, a Minimoe vai ter a atenção que gosta, eu estou feliz por elas, só vou sentir muita falta da pequenininha. Aquela coisinha vesga fofinha destrambelhada…

To start a new year, there is few things that make a woman happier than a new beautiful hair style. After several years fading from brighter red to dark red, I wanted to change a little bit more. But when you have a hair this red, there is not much left to do. I could go green, blue or pink, but that’s not me. So, what could I do with my beloved red tone 666 – very appropriated, don’t you think – to be a little different?

So, 4 hours and a lot of less money later, the results:

I’m really happy with it. And I’m not buying any haircolor products in USA anymore. The same brand almost ruined my hair a month ago. Same brand, but an horrible product.

Conforme prometido, relatos organizados e detalhados traduzidos do blog Catarsis(fotos aqui!):

“24C3: palestra de encerramento

Para romper um pouco a ordem lógica das coisas, e ser mais caótico (ainda que isto não seja meu estilo ), vou começar pelo final: a palestra de encerramento do 243C [24o. Chaos Communication Congress].

Assim como a abertura, foi apresentado por Tim Pritlove, embora ele tenha começado cedendo a palavra a um membro [coordenador] da equipe de gerenciamento de rede, que luzia um moicano loiro e usava calça com estampa de zebra. Este explicou todos os incidentes que haviam tido para a configuração da rede, que não era nada trivial para um evento como este.

Para começar, os próprios requisitos físicos e de cabeamento do edifício provocaram problemas entre as fibras mono e multimodo e a conexão ao exterior, e com isto tiveram que estabelecer uma rede de área metropolitana para poder conectar as várias partes do centro de convenções… Não me lembro todas as cifras nem pude anotá-las, mas acredito que estávamos conectados a 2Gbps e que tiveram uns 5 ou 6 mil endereços MAC diferentes, e pelo menos 60 switches. Esta parte foi divertida, quando mostraram uma foto de algumas fibras fixadas com fita isolante, e alguns episódios que me lembraram mais a Espanha que a Alemanha, como de abrir um switch que fazia um barulho estranho e encontrar um capacitor solto e ter que soldá-lo de volta, ou usar fibras que servem para várias dezenas de kilômetros para conectar algo separado por alguns metros.

Depois, também interveio um representante da “Hacker Ethics Hotline”, que está em funcionamento há poucas edições, e ele contou que esta foi uma edição bastante tranquila… Tiveram apenas três ligações, e uma delas foi mais ou menos assim: “vocês tem conteúdo ilegal em seus servidores” – “Não, não temos nenhum conteúdo ilegal” [- e desligaram o telefone].

Tim retornou a palestra para mostrar alguns números sobre o evento, como por exemplo:

• Algo em torno de 4000 participantes [pra ser mais exata 4013]


• O palestrante mais jovem tinha 17 anos [e viajou mais de 16 mil km]

[Tim] mencionou Sputnik e Open Beacon, um sistema de rastreamento através de RFID que começaram a usar ano passado e seguiram usando neste. Disse que todos os dados que se haviam registrado seriam disponibilizados na internet, para quem quiser estudá-los.

Também fez referência ao protesto organizado que aconteceu em frente ao centro de eventos, e em geral parabenizou pelo nível de consciência entre os participantes a respeito dos problemas que o mau uso da tecnología pode provocar nas nossas vidas: falta de privacidade, controle social, retenção de dados, fraudes em eleições eletrônicas…

[Depois, ele] leu uma mensagem de [Tom Twiddlebit,] um dos fundadores do CCC com Wau Holland, que disse estar acompanhando o congresso desde casa [através de streaming], e que estava muito feliz de ver como o magnífico nível técnico das palestras o fazia voltar a acompanhar a reivindicação social.

Em um tom mais de brincadeira, Tim mostrou como as páginas de alguns partidos políticos alemães supostamente informavam do evento (não sei se foi algo permanente, temporário ou simulado). Agradecendo o pessoal, disse que uma das principais regras para um evento como este é que cada um deixasse as coisas como gostaria de encontrar-las … e ilustrou com uma foto de um kiosque web do centro de eventos onde alguém tinha instalado Linux e o fundo de tela era o logo do 24C3

A respeito dos “danos contra a propriedade”, mostrou um papel impresso [que resultou neste aviso], suponho que um boletim de ocorrência ou uma multa, de alguém que havia sido surpreendido realizando testes de campo com a nova versão do TV-B-Gone no MediaMarket em frente ao lugar do evento… Houve aplausos e gritos de júbilo

Esta última parte teve um aparte sensacional, na qual Johannes Grenzfurthner voltou a enlouquecer com a música “Surfen Multimedia” do grupo Eurocats, saltando e vociferando pelo palco em um tipo de karaoke enlouquecido que terminou com a participação de todo o público.

O Congresso terminou em meio a um grande aplauso, depois da despedida e da recomendação de estudar e compartilhar os conhecimentos com os pares.

en
As I promised, more detailed and organized reports, from our partner blog Catarsis:(pictures here)

“24C3: closing ceremony

To break the logical order and to be more chaotic (although that is not my style ) I will start by the end: the Closing Event of 24C3.

As the Opening Event, it was presented by Tim Pritlove, although he started calling a member from the network team [coordinator], a guy with a blond Mohawk and zebra pants. He explained all the incidents involved in setting up the network, which was anything but trivial in a conference like this.

To start, the physical requirements and the cable structure in the building caused problems between the mono and multimode fiber inside and the outside network, so to fix it they needed to establish a metropolitan area network, in order to connect the different areas in the convention center. I don’t remember all the numbers and I couldn’t take notes, but I believe we were connected at 2Gbps and there was 5 to 6 thousand different MAC address, and about 60 switches. There was some jokes at this point, as they showed a picture taken of the fibers fixed with a piece of silver tape, and some other episodes that reminded me more of Spain than Germany, like to have to open a switch because it was making weird noises and to find a loosing capacitor rolling around, so they needed to sold it back again; or to use optical fiber with capacity for several miles, to connect some few meters.

After that, there was the “Hacker Ethics Hotline”, going for some editions now, and he told that this conference had very few incidents. They had just three calls, and one of them was: “You have illegal content in your server” – “No we don’t” [and hung up].

Tim continued the presentation, and showed some numbers about the conference, like:

• About 4000 attendees [it was 4013, to be exactly]


• The younger speaker was 17 years old [and traveled more than 16000 km to go there.]

He mention Sputnik and Open Beacon, a RFID tracking system started to be used last year and continued on this year. He said that all the data collected will be published online, to those who want to make any analysis.

He also talked about the protest they did in front of the convention center, and congratulated the awareness of the attendees about the misusages of technology and what that may represent for us: lack of privacy, social control, data retention, frauds in voting machines…

He read a message from Tom Twiddlebit, one of the funders of CCC together with Wau Holland, where Tom said he was watching the congress through streaming, and he was happy to see the quality of the talks, and how that was becoming mixed with activism.

Back to joking, Tim showed some politicians webpages supposedly to be promoting the conference (I don’t know if it was something permanent, temporary or fake). Congratulating the audience, he said that one of the main rules for a conference like that is that everybody leave things like they would like to find it… and he showed the concept with web-kiosk in the conference center where people had installed Linux and the background was the 24C3 logo

About the “damages against property”, he showed a paper [which probably resulted in this sign], I believe it was a police record, of someone who had been caught testing the new version of TV-B-Gone in the MediaMarkt, in the shopping in front of the conference… There was applauses and enthusiastic cheering.

This last part had a great intermission, where Johannes Grenzfurthner came back to go nuts with the music “Surfen Multimedia” from Eurocats, jumping and screaming on the stage in some kind of crazy karaoke which ended been followed by the crowd.

The Congress closed with a huge applaused, after the ending slide and the recommendation of studying and informing your peers.”

• Learn French – now people will be able to complain about my writing in four languages!


• Find a new place, with a parking lot and close to my catsitter


• Buy a dish washer machine


• Do another singing course module

To resolve:

• Kung fu or regular gym? I still have those f**n’ 10kg to loose…
• a Asus EeePC or a Macbook?