The Revolution Will Be GPL'd

On the GLUG email list, one of the Guyanese Penguins pointed the group at an article by David Sugar - someone I know from the FLOS Caribbean conference of 2003 in Trinidad and Tobago.

'Viva Software Libre!' talks about 'Latin America's free software revolution challenges U.S. corporate domination', which is very much true in description of what is happening throughout Latin America through Free Software and Open Source. And he mixes it in with the Banana Wars. Of course, not many people know about where the phrase Banana republic came from. And it's sort of disturbing that a clothing chain gets a capital 'r' for Republic in the Wikipedia.

It's a good read, and covers a lot of territory for those new to Free Software. The parallel between the United Fruit Company and the present way that WIPO is allowing gross alterations in copyright and patent law. But it is not an end in and of itself. It's a beginning, and while it was written with an assuming tone it's not far from the truth. I cannot make David's article better - it is extremely good - all I can do is build on it in a Free Software/Open Source fashion.

It's a shame it's not in Spanish, actually. And it's also a shame that non-Spanish speaking countries aren't mentioned as much... it's almost as though people don't realize that the English, French and Dutch speaking areas of this region exist. But then again, most people learn geography from CNN. But part of that problem is that people aren't doing as much in the region, or aren't writing about it as much.

Maybe the modern Banana Republics are the ones that aren't in the article. And maybe that's the tragedy - the tragedy of those without voices and the tragedy of those who for some reason do not wish to speak.

It's a bothersome thing in the region. Where cultures and languages divide, so do the perceptions of the world outside of the region. Being in the first English speaking country I have been for months, I am amazed at many things. Panama and Costa Rica had better selections of English books in farmacias than I've found in bookstores in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. Internet access in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Panama is much more dependable and have greater bandwidth for the cost in any of the English speaking countries I have found in the region. How odd that the English speaking countries are marginalized by the same language that theoretically should allow them to be among the first adopters... but it's that same language which binds then to the United States and it's 'wag the dog' approach to 'intellectual property'.

Who would have thought that speaking the same language could be a handicap? Sometimes the hand you hold is the hand that holds you down.