Jon Hall

Several years ago the Raspberry Pi was released to the world. Unfortunately the computer that costs 35 USD in most countries often retails for 150 USD in Brazil due to shipping, insurance and customs duties. In an attempt to correct this, the Raspberry Pi Foundation was brought to Brazil and two years was spent in an attempt to license and manufacture RPis in Brazil. While ten systems were eventually produced, the request was denied. After that another design was located, and another path was followed. Three years later the "Labrador" was created and is now ready for large scale manufacture. More flexible than the Raspberry Pi Model 3, faster, with more RAM and more flexibility, the Labrador will run current releases of Debian. As the project progressed, it became a core component of the Brazilian Internet of Things (IoT) program along with a small sensor computer (the "Pulga", Portuguese for "Flea") and a soon-to-be developed small server/router system, the Bankar. The project also morphed from being "just create a less expensive "RPi" to stimulating design and manufacturing of high quality "Open" computer systems in Latin America. An NGO is being formed called "Caninos Loucos" ("Crazy Canines") and sophisticated plans for creating a completely Open Computing system with no binary blobs is in the works.

2019 is an interesting year. It is the fiftieth anniversary of Unix, the Internet, Woodstock, the LGBTQ movement in the USA, and Linus' birthday. 1994 was the year that V1.0 of the Linux kernel was released, the Linux/Alpha project started, and Beowulf High Performance Computers were invented. 1999 (twenty years ago) the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) was started, and the Linux Professional Institute was formed. Many of these projects had a fundamental change to computing, and this talk will discuss what some of those changes were and why they are important even today.