By Mark Hinkle
Ryan Bagueros, sent me a note a few weeks back about North-by-South his open source development firm.
North-by-South is a network of open source developers from all over the Americas. We work with companies to ramp up any software project–starting from scratch or helping with your existing website or application, specializing in open source solutions and rapid timetables. We manage geographically-distributed development with programmers from near-by Latin America, where an incredible free software movement is being shaped by a new generation of open source developers.
His company has gives San Francisco companies professional project management locally while the code is written in San Palou Brazil. Even the Indian outsourcers are moving their operations to central and south america as costs in their country are rising.
There’s an incredible free software movement happening in Latin America. Led by Brazil, who is migrating all of its public systems and state-owned IT firms to open source software, many more Latin American governments are introducing similar decrees (Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and more). Out of this movement is an entire generation of open source programmers
who exhibit all the best qualities of free software developers: passion for code, meticulous attention to detail, etc.
Ryan has worked with a core group of about 30 Latin American programmers for 10+ years. He decided to form a developers network that would allow Latin American programmers to work on projects from the San Francisco Bay Area. For them, they’re making more money than they ever could locally.
NorthbySouth is also doing some good work to support the San Francisco developer community as the founders of the San Francisco Community Colocation project that helps non-profits collectively purchase data center services.
Ryan also adds:
We believe strongly that the Latin American model of open source adoption is something that
can be replicated all over the globe and already that’s starting to happen in South Africa, India, parts of Europe and more