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<title>Mexico is conquered by FLOSS LG #95</title>
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<SMALL>...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I></SMALL>
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<BIG><BIG><STRONG><FONT COLOR="maroon">Mexico is conquered by FLOSS</FONT></STRONG></BIG></BIG>
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<STRONG>By <A HREF="../authors/boue.html">Felipe Barousse Boue</A></STRONG>
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<P ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE=4><FONT COLOR="#ffffff">G A C E T A
D E L I N U X</FONT></FONT> <FONT SIZE=2>...<I>Making
Linux just a little more fun!</I></FONT>
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<P ALIGN=CENTER><STRONG><FONT SIZE=5><FONT COLOR="#800000">Veracruz,
México is conquered by FLOSS</FONT></FONT></STRONG><BR><STRONG>By:
<A HREF="mailto:editor@gacetadelinux.com">La Gaceta de Linux</A></STRONG>
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<P>During the past week (17-19 Sept, 2003) an international crowd of free/libre and Open
Source Software experts gathered at the Mexican port of Veracruz
during the celebration of the third edition of the <A HREF="http://congreso.gulev.org.mx/">GULEV
Linux Congress</A>. (GULEV = Veracruz LUG)</P>
<P>Names such as Bruce Momjian from the <A HREF="http://www.postgresql.org/">PostgreSQL</A>
project, Miguel de Icaza from <A HREF="http://www.ximian.com/">Novell/Ximian</A>,
Felipe Barousse from <A HREF="http://www.piensa.com/">Piensa
Technologies</A>, Bdale Garbee from <A HREF="http://www.debian.org/">Debian</A>,
Gunnar Wolf a <A HREF="http://www.gwolf.cx/"><SPAN LANG="en-US">leading
Mexican software engineer</SPAN></A> and contributor to Debian and
many many more <A HREF="http://congreso.gulev.org.mx/invitado.php">top
stars</A> of the worldwide FLOSS community gave conferences,
tutorials and personal chat sessions during the three day event in
Veracruz.</P>
<P>Weather was warn,<SPAN LANG="en-US"> attendees </SPAN>were excited
and you could even look in everyone's faces the joy of being able to
share experiences, ideas and learn more about the new libre
technologies.
</P>
<P>I could tell that most of the<SPAN LANG="en-US"> attendees </SPAN>were
actually students and young programmers -in the twenties or early
thirties-<SPAN LANG="en-US"> although </SPAN>you could see in each
session a couple of business people and even some... lets say;
seniors, interested in Linux when they stood up to ask a question or
express a comment or idea. I was glad to see this mix in the various
audiences.</P>
<P>In this third year of the GULEV Congress, the scenario was nothing
less than the <A HREF="http://www.wtcveracruz.com.mx/Page_English.htm">World
Trade Center in Veracruz, México</A>... What other place could
Linux, free software and open source ask for to host an event like
this ? The place was indeed superb.</P>
<P>The first year the Congress was held at a University's premises,
the second year at the ball rooms in a hotel within the city. The
main organizers of the event, Miguel Angel López and Lucy
Guzmán Mijangos made a great job in making this year's show
run smoothly, making everyone feel satisfied with the Congress'
programme and returning home with an enhanced sensation that the
FLOSS movement in Mexico is really growing up, getting mature and
ready to compete with any other technologies out there. “We
need to improve a lot more...” said Miguel Angel, I couldn't
agree more, there is always room to improve an event like this, but I
can also tell that we have come a long way since the first time, two
years ago.</P>
<P>Some of the anecdotes about conferences and topics I have and that
you could hear people commenting while on the hallways just after a
conference and while waiting for the next are:</P>
<P>Bruce Momjian, who came with his son Mathew gave a session about
Mastering PostgreSQL administration. The room was full and everyone
attentive to all tips, hints and recipes that Bruce had to say. On a
fun side of the Congress, I had a chance to briefly chat with Mathew
who said he really likes “...<SPAN LANG="en-US"> traveling </SPAN>with
dad and liked<SPAN LANG="en-US"> Mexican </SPAN>food a lot... yummy!”
he said.</P>
<P>The second Bruce's conference was a bit more in the visionary side
of PostgreSQL and what to<SPAN LANG="en-US"> expecting </SPAN>the
next versions.</P>
<P>Larry Wall was expected to be in Veracruz with all of us,
unfortunately he got ill and couldn't make it. We hope that by the
time you are reading this, he is well up again.</P>
<P>Miguel de Icaza spoke about Mono and how it<SPAN LANG="en-US">
accelerated </SPAN>the productivity for software<SPAN LANG="en-US">
development </SPAN>in Linux. He is clearly concerned in providing the
most powerful tools and<SPAN LANG="en-US"> technologies </SPAN>to
Linux programmers as to keep and enhance their competitiveness while
developing software.</P>
<P>Bdale Garbee on the other hand spoke about where is Debian
standing now; meanwhile the well known technology research engineer
Francisco de Urquijo Niembro gave a lecture regarding the current
status of Mexico in relation to the ongoing digital revolution. “Open
and Free technologies are the<SPAN LANG="en-US"> future..... we </SPAN>will
have open specifications and standards in cars, home building, and
everything else....” he said.</P>
<P>Felipe Barousse conference was about the Zope Corporation's Zope
framework and how he has been using it to develop powerful business
applications which are already being used by large companies; he
concluded: “Zope is very <SPAN LANG="en-US">inexpensive</SPAN>,
great,powerful, easy to use and extremely scalable.... in short an
ideal platform for web based business applications.”</P>
<P>Federico Mena Quintero participation was about the concepts and
ideas used for programming applications in GTK+ where Drag and Drop
features are required.
</P>
<P>During his conference, Fernando Romo talked about the concepts of
constructing application's logic within the data base itself rather
than leaving all logic at the application level. A nice collection of
suggestions and experiences where discussed in Fernando's conference.</P>
<P>On another hand of topics, Gunnar Wolf talked about Object
Oriented Perl.</P>
<P>There were many more topics addressed in Veracruz, actually 53
conferences took place with themes ranging from building clusters, to
designing and installing a WiFi networks, to programming in Perl and
Python.
</P>
<P>More than 500 confirmed persons went to Veracruz just to
participate in this great FLOSS show in Mexico. A great touch to the
event was that there was free WiFi internet connectivity in all
conference rooms and during all conference times.</P>
<P>At the end of the event, the following day, there was a small trip
to the prehispanic ruins site called the “Tajin”, about a
4 hours drive from Veracruz.<SPAN LANG="en-US"> Although </SPAN>I was
supposed to get a phone call and or note advising me of the meeting
point and time to leave, somehow I never got that note so I missed
the excursion which I really regret since I bet it for sure was fun
to be in the bus with all my fellow speakers..... maybe next time,
now I have a great excuse for going next year.
</P>
<P>I really expect next year's congress to be even better and to see
it grow in many more aspects as it has been doing during these<SPAN LANG="en-US">
three editions. </SPAN>I can't wait to my 2004 trip to Veracruz.</P>
<P>In the mean time what we can say is that the port of Veracruz,
México was indeed conquered by the penguins and by FLOSS
enthusiasts just as it was taken by the conquistadores many centuries
ago.</P>
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Copyright © 2003, Felipe Barousse Boue.
Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
Published in Issue 95 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, October 2003
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