Between April 17 and April 19 it was held in Porto Alegre/Brazil, the Forum Internacional de Software Livre (FISL). FISL happens every year, since 2000, and this year it achieved new record of attendants: 7,4 thousands. The event counted with important names of free/open source software, as John Maddog Hall, and big companies that invest and use free software as a differential: Intel, Google, Sun, Yahoo Brasil, among many others.
21 countries and all Brazil's states were represented there. The RiSE company , in cooperation with CESAR and CIn/UFPE, was represented too with Yguaratã Cavalcanti. Yguaratã presented the initial solution for bug reports duplication problem, which is part of his master thesis. The complete paper can be found in FISL proceedings.
The event was characterized by the diversity of themes presented in the talks, such us: governance, adaptation of free software, digital inclusion, mini courses, innovation guided by free/open souce software etc. Furthermore, 24% o the attendants were composed by students and 63% by professionals or IT employers. These numbers also demonstrate the importance that free/open source softwares are holding by companies: companies that provide IT solutions based on this market, or companies that use or intend to use free software based solutions.
The event leave us the conviction that business based on this market is here to stay for long, and if IT companies intend to keep playing they need to learn how to copy with free/open source software market/business. And it is also a good choice for startups.
2 comments:
Yguarata, my first impression is the number of attendants in this conference.
I can believe it. I have seen big conferences such as ECOOP and ICSE but this numbers are incredible. It is an important recognition of maturity in the field.
Yeah! This is the official numbers from FISL. They hope to get 9.000 attendants next year. And i hope to be there too. :D It is an amazing event.
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