The International Free Software Forum (FISL) is a technology event that takes place in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, since 2000. The FISL stands out for being a space of convergence between various sectors of society, creating a mean of communication between users and developers of technology at individual and institutional level.

The FISL is a debate space for great happenings in technology and culture, such as the launch of the Creative Commons Project in Brazil, and also the 2nd International Conference about GPLv3. Agreements and international cooperation, besides inumerous partnerships, were stablished or initiated during the International Free Software Forum.

Since it's firts edition, in 2000, the FISL has presented a growth in participant public, being today an event that counts with the participation of over 5000 people.

Lecturers
A great number of people have lectured in the FISL. The FISL puts creators of technology in contact with their users, what makes it an unique event in the area in Brazil. Among the lecturers that have been in our event, we stand out:

- Richard Stallman, idealizer of the Free Software and founder of the Free Software Foundation;

- Larry Wall, creator of the Perl programming language;

- Wietse Venema, creator of Postfix;

- Ian Murdock, creator of Debian GNU/Linux;

- Eric S. Raymond, president of honour of the Open Source Iniciative;

- Harald Velte, keeper of the Netfilter (Linux kernell firewall);

- Eric Allman, creator of Sendmail;

- Scott Collins, from Slashdot.org;

- Keith Packard, x.org;

- Bdale Garbee, Chief Technology Officer of Linux at HP;

- Miguel de Icaza, creator of Gnome;

- Lawrence Lessig, creator of Creative Commons;

- Gilberto Gil, minister of Culture from Brazil;

- John Maddog Hall, President of Linux International;

- Ramus Ledorf, creator of PHP language;

- Marcelo Tossatti, developer of Kernel Linux.

Participants
In it's last edition, there were present at FISL 5.363 people fro m19 countries. All brazilian states were represented. Among the enrolled participantes, 60% were technology professionals and about 38% were students.
Our public includes entrepreneurs, technical professionals, directors and technics from the governmental area, researchers and students.

The event
FISL is organized ain different types of activities and spaces, among which we stand out:

- Academic Workshop: space for university students to present their work and interact with other groups from different universities from all over Brazil and also to the technology community. This activity is realized in cooperation with the Brazilian Computing Society (Sociedade Brasileira de Computação - SBC).

- Lectures: FISL has an average 200 lectures in themes divided into several areas, like: development, database, system administration, digital inclusion, education and free culture.

- Mini-classes: classes realized by specialists in various subjects, with approximately 4 hour duration.

- Business Show: space for small and medium companies and institutions to show their projects and product, realized transactions and stablish relationships.

- User Groups Spaces: groups of technology users have granted space to show their own projects and interact with companies and other groups.

- Programming Arena: a challenge for developers that compete to solve software bugs and to create new software.

- Criei Tive Como Festival: a festivel for promoting free culture and Creative Commons - a project that proposes an alternative to the traditional Copyright for cultural works in various formats.

- Free Software TV: gives people opportunity to participate in our event remotely, watching the lectures and keeping up with what happens at FISL. In the last edition of the event, the TV registered acess from 22.165 different origins (IPs).

Midia
In the last edition of the Internation Free Software Forum, our press assessory elaborated 126 releases, besides external coverage, totalizing 273 news coverages in the following communication vehicles:

Newspapers: Jornal Zero Hora (Porto Alegre), Correio do Povo (Porto Alegre), Jornal do Comércio (national circulation), Jornal O Sul (Porto Alegre), Folha de São Paulo (São Paulo), O Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo), Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), among others.
Magazines: Info Exame, Linux Magazine Brasil, PC Master, A Rede.
Websites: Terra Tecnologia, Baguete Diário, Info Online, JB Online,Br-Linux, IDG Now!

Sponsors
 The FISL has always attracted interest from universities, entities and private and public companies. Some of our sponsors, since 2000:

Universities and entities

FEEVALE
FENAINFO
FINEP
PUCRS
SBC
SENAC
SEPRORGS
UCS
UERGS
UFPE
UFPEL
UFRGS
ULBRA
UNISC
UNISINOS
UNIVATES

Private Sector

COBRA TECNOLOGIA
CONECTIVA
CYCLADES
GOOGLE
HP
IBM
KROMA
LOCAWEB
PLUG-IN
PRODESK
PROPUS
SUN
TELIUM
UOL
UNISYS
4LINUX

Public Sector

BANCO DO BRASIL
CASA BRASIL
CAIXA ECONÔMICA FEDERAL
CELEPAR
CORREIOS
DATAPREV
ELETRONORTE
INST. NAC. DE TECNOLOGIA DA INFORMAÇÃO
MINISTÉRIO DA CIÊNCIA E DA TECNOLOGIA
MINISTÉRIO DA EDUCAÇÃO
MIN. DO PLANEJAMENTO ORÇAMENTO E GESTÃO
MINISTÉRIO DA SAÚDE
PREFEITURA DE PORTO ALEGRE
PROCEMPA
PROCERGS
SERPRO

Organization

The International Free Software Forum started to be organized in 2000 by the Empresa de Processamento de Dados do Rio Grande do Sul (Procergs), in cooperation with the technology community from Rio Grande do Sul. With time, the center of organization of FISL moved out of government reach, starting to be carried by the community, through the Associação Software Livre.Org.
Expose your brand to the international community, stablishig contacts and creating new possibilities of business for your company.

Contact our team and be part of FISL9.0.

e-mail: captacao2008 AT softwarelivre DOT org
Associação Software Livre.Org - Caixa Postal n° 443 - CEP: 90.001-970 - Porto Alegre/RS
Fone/Fax: + 55 (51) 3228-0181