The European Journal for the Informatics Proffesional, Upgrade, and the Journal of the Association of Technical Computing, Novática, have been published in its latest issue of June, an article about the Morfeo Community.

The authors, Andrés Leonardo Martínez Ortiz and Cristina Breña Breña, wrote a review through the Morfeo Community history since its beginning in 2004 until today. In the article titled Morfeo Community: Open Source Strategies for Open Innovation can be appreciated the different evolutionary stages and is explained how, step by step, a project created by Telefónica I+D, the Polytecnic of Madrid University and the Rey Juan Carlos University has become a community with more than 80 members. It also provides an explanatory view about how a community of free software is organized under its own experience and briefly recounts some of their projects on the rise.

This latest publication is a special issue about free software for companies where you can find, a part from the Morfeo ones, other outstanding articles. For example, the article written by  Jesús M. González-Brahona, Teófilo Romera Otero and Björn Lundell, Libre Software and the Corporate World. The authors attempt to give the keys to find the best benefits to using open source technology and how business and professionals can make the most output. The same way, Applying Open Source Software Principles in Product Lines,  Frank van der Linden, explains his research to reduce the develop problems and increase the quality of the global software. With the articles Built and Sustain a Community with Practice: Method Applied to Floss Projects and Community Management in Open Source Projects, spoke about the creation and the revitalization of communities. These are just a few examples of what it is offered in the last edition.

Open Source Software is an increasing technology and it is used in all over the world. Spain along with Brazil, France or Germany, are in the ranking of the countries where there are more level of development and progress. However, unfortunately, for a lot of companies the open source software is still a great unknown.

From Morfeo Community we encourage you to meddle in the interesting reading of all the articles in this issue. The English version, you can get it in digital way in the journal Upgrade [1] and the Spanish version of the magazine is offered in Novática Magazine [2]. About this one, Morfeo will distribut some copies for those who tell us. If you want one you have to write a letter to crisbb(@) tid.es (limited copies).

We hope that you enjoy the reading.

[1] http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2009/3/upgrade-vol-X-3.pdf (English)
[2] http://www.ati.es/novatica/ (Spanish)

During next week, since Monday 14th to Thursday 17th September, it is going to take place the I Education, Software and Free Knowledge Congress, COSECOL, in the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic).

As the university rector said, Dr. Franklin García Fermín, this congress allows to evaluate the importance of the free software in the society through education, research and development, and also it lets people know the free applications which are world heritage.

Although the event is specifically aimed at Dominicans society to make people aware of the open source software use, the participation on the event is open to all the audience no matter their providence. Likewise, the speakers of the event, who are form different nationalities, will show the adevences and development that are happening in each country thanks to free software. Experts on this tecnology such as Alexandro Colorado, OpenOffice.org Spanish, Dru Lavigne, chairwoman of the Certification Group BSD Inc. or Mario Albuja Sáenz, National Informatics Assistant Secretary of the Belgian government, will be at the event.

The topics that it is going to be spoken during this 4 days, will be a wide range of social nature. It is raised subjects such as rights and fairness in the democratic construction of knowledge, production and consumption of knowledge in the frontier of the digital world or the ethical and political dimensions of education in free software. All with the aim of agreeing on a bill to pass in Congress to establish clear rules and regulations for the use of free software.

Hopefully this conference it will be the first of many future editions.

More information: www.cosecol.org

The Office Morfeo Brazil has been in the II International Congress of Free Software and Electronic Government, which took place between 26 and 28 August in Brasilia. The event reached a considerable scale in which obtain more than two thousand registered and with the participation of some important agents in the Global Software Free scenario, particularly the American continent. Morfeo took the opportunity for promoting the work that it is doing and developing the follows activities:
- Presentation of the Project within the “Meeting of opinion formers and free enterprising”, during 27th, in the field of the OpenBusiness Day, throught a speech by Matín Olivera, member of the Morfeo Board Cono Sur and chairman of SOLAR (Argentina);
- Executive meeting with Mr. Jose Carlos Cusnir, Softex Consultant (Brazilian Software Excellence) to indicate to Softex the  projects related with Morfeo  in the area of the “mobility”. The next meeting will be 29th September in São Paulo;
- Individual meetings with members of the Morfeo Project  Brazil “board” that they were in the event, to evaluate the idea of implement the university competition. The idea was welcomed, but  the consensus must be coordinated by an aide to the academic area. Availability will be consulted Professor Sergio Amadeu to undertake this coordination;
- Collection of forms and direct contacts with the first names of companies that will compose the portfolio of Brazilian companies working with free software. The compilation of this material will be supplemented with further information that are going to sent by board members and other participants of the event that have shown interest in collaborating.

Everything is almost ready for the start of the II International Congress of Free Software and Electronic government 2009, that will take place 26, 27 and 28 of August in Brasilia, Brazil.

The conference seeks to stimulate debate on policy and management of open source technologies in government, administration, business, international organizations and in community in general.

Therefore, in different panels and discussions that will take place there, the role of free software communities will be highlighted by presenting their collaborative models, licensing and experience. In the same way, explaining the ITC infrastructure, technologies of development, tools, and hardware aspects of robotics and mobility made with open source software. The role of applications for supporting government operations, education or industry will be also analyzed. All these issues and some others are the main axes of this second edition which is supported by the good reviews received in the first congress.

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During the days in Latin America, we had the chance to meet new entities and corporations, within the scope of the Cono Sur and Brazil Morfeo Offices and in general, throughout Latin America.

There are a lot of people, organizations and initiatives that we had the pleasure to know. We had the chance to chat and discuss different points of views about the possibilities offered by open technology and ways to collaborate. Therefore, we decided to dedicate a series of entries in our blog to share contacts of these organizations. In brief, the presentations of all the contact that we made will begin running in the Morfeo community’s blog to promote the strengthening of the community, which now spans two continents dimension.

If you went to some of the events in Argentina and Brazil and believe that the series should refer to any other organization or initiative, please let us know.

In the same way, we select the set of organizations and the most significant initiatives that belongs to the European community to spread, under the same scheme of entry, on the Red Oficinas’ Morfeo[1].

This initiative will aim to make a list of institutions, projects, products, etc. that serves as a reference to the demand and supply of OSS technology.

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