Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Web Has Severe Amnesia Problems, But We Still Remember How Gilberto Gil Promoted Free Software in Brazil

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 07, 2024

Grunge flag of Brazil state

We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin

In the relatively distant past, a newspaper that's a day old may be close to the bin or already inside the bin. A newspaper more than a week old would be out of sight and maybe in a landfill (or paper recycling centre) already. Information didn't last very long, even if it was available through some physical archives in a remote building somewhere (possibly in another country).

The Internet Archive changed a lot of how the Web works. Not only did articles in news sites remain available (quickly accessible, too) as long as sites remained online and respective articles in the "catalogue"; after those sites perished the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine could - or would - keep several copies.

About 17 years ago lots of footage was taken to document the rise of Free software by speaking to movers and shakers (The Digital Tipping Point by Christian Einfeldt*). That was around the time Microsoft infiltrated Novell in an effort to undermine the movement though/from the inside, helped by moles like Miguel de Icaza. The footage included one of my favourite musicians, who was a huge fan of free culture, even in his capacity as culture minister or "minister of counterculture" in Brazil (back then welcoming and receptive of Free software, too).

An associate wondered: "Weren't there some old articles from around 2008 or so about the Brazilian culture minister Gilberto Gil and open standards?"

Statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro

It's almost impossible to find these now.

Internet Archive and Wayback Machine to the rescue [1, 2].

"Stuff sure disappears from the net," the associate added, "and the few new articles about him don't say a word about copyright and culture or even open source or open standards."

Many years have passed and many things worsened in society and in the world. But GNU/Linux undoubtedly got bigger.

In Brazil, Linux was growing a lot in recent years, whether in "Android form" up until 2020 or GNU/Linux ("freedom form") until this year.

The Digital Tipping Point (DTP) is years behind us now.

_____________

* This was liberated for all. The licence is CC-SA. "The DTP crew has shot over 350 hours of footage of leading politicians, CEOs, and software developers from all over the world, and is now releasing this footage to the Internet Archive community under a Creative Commons Attribute-ShareAlike license."

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