Fórum Internacional Software Livre

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FISL logo

Fórum Internacional Software Livre (FISL) (International Free Software Forum) is an event sponsored by Associação Software Livre (Free Software Association), a Brazilian NGO that, among other objectives, seeks the promotion and adoption of free software. It takes place every year in Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande Do Sul, the most southern state of Brazil.

The event is meant as a "get-together" of hackers, students, researchers, social movements for freedom of information, entrepreneurs, Information Technology (IT) enterprises, governments, and other interested people.

[edit] Event history

On 30 July 1999, a group of hackers, public servants, professors, students and members of the academic community, members of user groups and other interested people, joined efforts to start the PSL-RS (Free Software Project of Rio Grande do Sul).

The project's goals were:

To set up a network of labs in companies and universities designated to the study of Linux and other free software;
To build a consortium to publish books and manuals about Free Software, Free Programming languages and such;
To massively promote free software.

After lots of difficulties, and delays, the first FISL happened from 04-05 May/2000 in the Noble Hall of UFRGS (Rio Grande do Sul' Federal University). 2,120 people attended the event, which had also the first WSL (Free Software Workshop) with 19 works presented during the event.

Among others, the first FISL had the presence of Richard Stallman, writer of the "GNU Manifesto" and Founder of the Free Software Foundation.

As the event grew, more (knowledgeable) people started to hear about FISL.

And as a result of the word-spreading, more people came to Porto Alegre to attend the Forum.

[edit] Speakers

Among others, founders and important members of great Free Software projects had spoken in 2002 FISL:

Ralf Nolden: Maintainer of KDE's Kdevelop IDE
Jon "maddog" Hall: Executive Director of Linux International;
Larry Wall: Creator of the Perl programming language;
Peter Salus: Author of "A Quarter Century of Unix" and "The Daemon, The Gnu and The Penguin"
Rik van Riel: Linux kernel Developer
Timothy Ney: GNOME Foundation Executive Director