Brazil, the country John Perry Barlow calls "the most emotionally healthy culture on the planet", has a new love: Linux!. If you can read Portuguese or don't mind having Babelfish in your ear, you can follow what's going on at the SoftwareLivre.org site. As the BBC article linked to above states, "...it is in Brazil that the system has found its most enthusiastic support. The government's top technology official wants to create what he calls a 'continent of open source.'...It seems almost romantic to insist that a choice of operating systems really brings a heightened sense of freedom - the sort of techno-utopian idea that academics have debated for years. That conviction is spreading across countries and continents where technology in just about any guise seems the best hope for surviving the hard knocks of the global economy."

Keep a close watch on what happens in Brazil. SoftwareLivre in Brazil is already enjoying great success with their International Forum: 'Nosso projeto é organizador do "Fórum Internacional de Software Livre" que acontece anualmente em Porto Alegre, desde o ano 2000. De 05 à 07 de junho realizamos o nosso último FISL [2003] com a presença de mais de 4.000 pessoas.'