How free software is fueling a new kind of patriotism.
The autonomous region of Extremadura, in the bucolic southwest of Spain, is all hills, grapes, oaks, and olive groves. Centuries of industrial progress have breezed right by this place. Today it's an ecotourist bird sanctuary dotted with timeless farming villages. In the long siesta hours, dogs practically amble after cats.
But this quaint haven has suddenly become a bastion of Tux the Penguin. Extremadura has gone whole hog for free software: ¡Software libre para la libertad! Its government has minted some 80,000 CDs to marinate the populace in Linux. Social workers carry the latest open source code to remote schools, municipal offices, and city-funded ISPs. Thanks to Juan Carlos Rodréguez Ibarra, the left-wing academic who became regional president and has dominated local politics for the past 20 years, the Global Project for the Development of the Information Society aims to give every resident access to the knowledge gathered by humanity throughout history.
Ibarra's ambition is born of desperation. Extremadura suffers chronic brain drain to Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, and hubs throughout South America. This trend is centuries old - the conquistadores Cortez and Pizarro were both from Extremadura. It's a pretty area, but there has never been much to do here. Unemployment is a staggering 22 percent.
As a business, it makes no sense to wire Extremadura's scattered hamlets. If the locals weren't given Net access by state fiat, they'd never manage to pay for it. They can't afford fancy brand-name software, either. So they have two choices: sit on their hands and watch the information revolution pass them by, or boot up a new kind of digital socialism.
Luis Casas Luengo, a sometime Eurocrat and expert in technology transfer, kindly demos the product for me: a local version of Debian GNU/Linux, translated into Spanish and renamed LinEx. Technically, there's nothing wild or woolly here. LinEx comes with what most folks really need from a computer: word processor, graphics processor, spreadsheet, emailer, browser, chat client, MP3 player, CD burner.
The features may be mundane, but they add up to something quite new: a patriotic regional operating system. The emailer's logo is a stork, Extremadura's most beloved bird. The word processor is named after a famous local poet. The desktop is crammed with hallowed symbols of the homeland. Extremaduran schoolkids could stand up and pledge allegiance to this thing.
Free software has always been free for the sake of technologists, providing open range for code wranglers and server farmers. Now Extremadura is claiming it for the campesinos. Here, open source isn't about the process of collaborative development or objections to intellectual property. It's about power to the people. The LinEx stork is a direct connection to the global economy.
This deeply rooted regional approach could prove a more nurturing environment for Tux than either the EU, with its stifling bureaucracy, or the US, where lawyers for SCO are eager to sue the daylights out of anyone who dares to propagate the penguin. Right now, most of the action is in government, where officials are beginning to wake up to the advantages of open standards and malleable code - and not having to pay Americans for any of it. India is releasing Linux variations in local dialects from Assamese to Telugu. China, Japan, and South Korea are collaborating on their own OS. South Africa recently approved an open source strategy, and similar things are going on in Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Peru, and Ukraine.
These initiatives, as dramatic as they are, directly benefit only functionaries and tax collectors. Those who, like Extremadura's Ibarra, view open source as force for social liberation have their eyes on Brazil, which is now run by Luiz Inécio Lula da Silva, the former union leader turned president of the world's fourth largest democracy. Lula is the new darling of the global left. In Extremadura, he's considered the vanguard of social progress.
Brazil hosted the recent Fourth International Forum on Free Software, held in the World Social Forum's stronghold of Porto Alegre. There, jazzy pop star Gilberto Gil, now Brazil's minister of culture, promised to "tropicalize digitalization," presumably a reference to bridging the developed and developing worlds. If Extremadura is the harbinger, those tropicalized digits will be globally connected, fiercely patriotic, and free as sunshine.
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