Latinoware strives to continually accomplish its mission of integrating initiatives in development and migration to open source software in the countries of Latin America. In this new edition of the conference, we have intensified the exchange of experiences among the several cases of success with potential for replication, both in development as business models capable of generating employment and income.

Ernesto Kruger, president of the Equatorian Software Association (AESOFT) and founder of Kruger Corp – company with presence in Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina and Panamá -, who decided to transform the products developed by his company into open source software, is one of these cases.

Check out the interview given to our team:

Latinoware: Ernesto, Ecuador has a history and a calling of fighting for freedom. Do you feel that, in some way, this is related to the growing adoption of open source software in your country?

Ernesto Kruger: Ecuador was the first country in the Americas to declare independence from Spain, its nature has always been one of freedom. This culture of freedom really helped promote the adoption of open source software in the country. And the incentive from the national government, through our president, made it even easier. Companies started to adapt without any doubts, even more when the biggest buyer is the government.

LW: Could you tell us a little about ASLE?

EK: Please allow me to clarify one point. I am the president of AESOFT, the Ecuatorian Software Association, with 16 years on the market and many members who use and work with open source software. We cooperate with our sister-association, ASLE (Open Source Software Association of Ecuador) and we strive for the common good of software in Ecuador.

LW: As a businessperson, you must live with systems developed in proprietary software . Tell us a little about this experience.

EK: In my case, I'd always worked with proprietary software . Because we are developers, we started to work with open source software IDEs, like Eclipse, and also with open source code languages with remarkable success. This allowed us to further explore our products with these tools. So, for example, we had an Internet platform software which we marketed under a license model, but because of our support to the open source software sector we decided to release it in this format, making it the first open source web platform developed in Ecuador.

LW: At Latinoware, you will be launching this open source platform, called Jarimba. Coulkd you give a little preview of your presentation?

EK: Certainly. The forum seems very interesting and it will be a pleasure to launch our product at Latinoware. Our presentation reflects our experience in migrating from a proprietary model to ab open source model, by releasing the Jarimba platform. In this way, we allow the platform to grow, gain more life. This is another way of showing solidarity and, at the same time, doing business with our platform.

Have you developed, or do you know anyone who has developed other successful business models with Open Source Software? Latinoware would like to hear about them and enable presentations on more models, Like Ernesto's, capable of building business with solidarity, respecting freedom of knowledge. If you have, or know of any examples you would like to see exhibited at Latinoware, send an e-mail to grade@latinoware.org