FSFLA (Free Software Foundation Latin America) was created in 2005 and on July 14/20 they had their first meeting during the 5th Free Software National Congress in Caracas, Venezuela. This meeting brought together the board members, Adres Castelblanco (Colombia), Octavio Rossell (Venezuela), Alexandre Oliva (Brasil), Quiliro Ordóñez (Ecuador) and Oscar Valenzuela (chile), as well as the president of FSF Richard Stallman and the observers Esteban Saavedra (Bolivia) and Daniel Yucra(Perú).

During the meeting each member presented an update about the progress of Free Software(FS) in their country, considering activies in the governments, in the industry, in companies and in the society as well as events related to FS.

At the end of the meeting FSFLA released the Caracas Declaration. An historic document and very important for the progress of free software in the region. Is an open letter calling for international and community cooperation between the Latin America countries to promote Free Software in the region through the education and respect for the rights and freedoms to use, study, modify and distribute FS.

Some quotes:

On local communities and Free Software:

We invite Latin American communities and their members to disseminate all their activities and overall their success cases, for knowledge of all local achievements at an international level will serve to exemplify with facts the benefits of Freedom, encouraging other communities to imitate them.

On Free Software and Latin American States

All that states produce in terms of Software is citizens’ property and thus a public good, that must be vailable to the people, respecting the essential Freedoms of Free Software. Furthermore, these public goods must keep their function of serving citizens and must be published under terms that promote the interests of the nations and of society. We summon governments to publish software they develop and use, under licenses that not only respect, but also defend and promote the appropriate values for all its users, that is, Free Software and Copyleft licenses, that make the freedoms inseparable from the software.

Governments of Latin America: promote a culture of respect for Software Freedom, breaking the social inertia that induces governments and people to give up their freedoms, enabling them to generate a society that is freer, more equitable and just.

On Education and Free Software:

We issue a call for the promotion, among students, of values towards society, fomenting in them the cooperation and the will to share with their neighbor through the use of Free Software, since the use of Proprietary Software turns sharing and collaboration into a crime, and restricts the Freedom to learn by not permitting access to the knowledge about how the Software is built.