There are free solutions that are: robust, mature and of high quality. The use of Free Software provides independent technology while promoting the development of an Information and Communication Technology Industry with the ability to direct its business towards lending its services. It provides greater assurance to some of its clients, who are the ones that control the technology that they use and not the other way around, for instance when the core of your Information system is placed in the hands of privative products; you don´t really know what is being done or how it is being done, and various screens appear which contain viruses and produce security breaches.

We are not exposing any unknown truth with these claims. Studies and objective facts are increasingly supporting them. More and more, there are Free Solutions available that are being used and consolidated, which proves that they offer advantages and new possibilities.

Nevertheless, although these solutions are known, there are still a lot of areas in which this freedom has not been attained, and that continue being exclusive to privative products and most importantly, they can be more expensive and come with the label of a large transnational company.

We can envision, on the one hand, small and medium sized companies that offer professional services based on the integration of free technology, and on the other hand, large transnational companies within the sector, that keep imposing their privative solutions in certain spaces, those spaces that are surely more economically attractive.

Our analysis would be wrong if we believed that only the technical scientific criteria are the ones that will outweigh the others. The scientific criteria are fundamental, without any doubt, but they are not the only valid criteria. In gvSIG we maintain that Science Economy and Politics are related disciplines among themselves and that they cannot be completely understood if we consider them separately.

We do not want certain spaces to be inaccessible to those who are not part of the binominal: Transnational –Solutions privative. We want to create scenarios where all of the options can really be evaluated, in such a way that those that require professional solutions can opt for the solutions considered being the best according to the analysis performed.

To achieve this objective we need to continue working, we need to continue dismantling myths such as those that identify exclusively collaboration and voluntarism. Free software is based on a collaboration model, perhaps because of its characteristic of offering the sharing of knowledge, in which there are a wide and diverse amount of companies who have the capacity to offer professional quality services that meet the existing needs.

We should continue building and consolidating an image of quality and professionalism linked to free solutions and continue fighting against misunderstandings. Why do we fool ourselves, in these spaces where there are large projects, in which you continue hearing the topic that Free Software is not quality software and that there are not any companies that support and maintain this Free Software.

Stereotype #1: Free Software is not quality Software.

Regarding quality, there are two types of Software: Good Software and Bad Software. Both can be found in free and privative software, with a small distinction: in the case of Free Software the quality can be detected and adjusted according to the user’s needs, due to its open and free nature.

Stereotype #2: There are no companies that support Free Software.

There are many companies who support free software but with a different type of business model based on offering professional services where all of the investments are allocated towards generating wealth; not in a model where selling the product is the main component of the business thereby converting part of the investment into an expense.

There are many companies that offer these services in the Geomatic sector, it we want proof we do not need to consult the numerous lists of associated companies or those collaborating in the gvSIG Association.

These are misunderstandings, but are still accepted in certain spaces where the governing guidelines are very different than those that demonstrate technical and scientific rigor.

These are spaces with large projects, with great economic opportunities where the ones who monopolize these spaces will do whatever is in their power not to share them.

These areas until now have been inaccessible to those who advocate a new model of solidarity and collaboration for those who are not resigned to accept reality as if it were an unmovable entity that cannot be changed.

No, this is not the reality that we will accept if we believe that solidarity, collaboration and ethics are also in the professional field. These are new spaces that we want to conquer for the free solutions and which is the slogan for the seventh edition of the gvSIG conference: conquering new areas.

gvSIG Team