Track:   Public Sector Open Source

Abstract: Open source is, in its most basic form, a way of licensing software. But it did capture the minds of developers all around by being more then that, by bringing together notions of community, of common good and goodwill. But to make it really a success, there was also need to reach others beside developers: it needed to reach companies, governments, lawmakers, and even artists, musicians and common people. This talk will discuss some of the success in bringing open source to the Brazilian community, a bit of the history, and some of the challenges. Seen from the perspectives of the Java developer community, this talk will also discuss the influence that community building and community related activities had on the development of a open source strategy that reached the whole country.