The eyeOS Community Programming Contest 2009 was announced some weeks ago, and we can already say that it wont be the last one. We want to thank everybody who has inscribed already, talked about it on blogs, twitter and forums.

The inscription perdiod is about to end at July 1st, and we would not like anyone to end outside because of this. So if you’re doubting on starting to work on the eyeOS Toolkit, there isn’t a better moment than now. Inscription is totally free and we want to encourage anyone that may be interested in inscribing.

As we announced, the time to submit the developed apps will start on August 1st and will end on August 25th.

Finally, we have already been answering doubts on different places, but there is a question which has been repeated by some different people and we would like to explain: it’s OK to use third party add-ons (libraries, scripts, applets…) as long as all the sources are included in the package, and the uncompressed resulting app is not larger than 100KB.

You can read the bases here and inscribe yourself in this simple form.

The 10th International Free Software Forum in Porto Alegre, Brasil ended today, and we have been there explaining eyeOS, and why Cloud Computing can be both a really good and a really bad thing. It’s now time to look back and write some lines about how it has been. The only word we can find to describe it is unbelievable. We know that comparisons are never fair, but FISL is totally outside the orbit. More than 7.200 people have assisted to the more than 300 talks this year. And everything has been perfecty organized by volunteers. From the CEO to every talk coordinator, they were volunteers and Free Software activists. Before continue reading this, please take 2 minutes to buy your tickets to Porto Alegre for this dates next year.

The first “thank you!” of this post comes for Marcelo d’Elia Branco, CEO of FISL and the Free Software leader in Brasil. He invited us, and it’s the second time eyeOS is on Brasil this year (first was on January for the Campus Party Brasil) because of him. The second one comes for Priscila and Tobias for supporting us so so much in everything inside FISL and being the best Porto Alegre guides out there. When something worries you in FISL just look for Priscila and be sure she can fix it.

The third thank is a bit special. Is for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Brasil. As Free Software activists, we thank him for coming to FISL, that was amazing and it’s not always possible to have the president of a country where a Free Software event is being held getting directly involucrated with it. And he didn’t came alone, but with some ministers and people from his government. But as the eyeOS people, we thank him for being in a private reception where people from Redhat, FSF, Linux International, Java, Openoffice, Debian and we from eyeOS’ were with him and had the oppotunity to meet him to talk about Freedom, Free Software and the different projects visions.

About our speech, we must say that after being talking in different places about eyeOS and Cloud Computing for more than three years now, this was the first time that the theatre had a buffer overflow and was not just totally full, but there was some people outside trying to hear the speech, even being three more great talks on the same time in FISL. That was incredible. Thanks to all of you for coming, and to Enrique Verdes for introducing the eyeOS talk and helping us a lot with portuguese.

Finally, about the videos we’ve being publishing this days, we have seen Stallman explaining us that he does not believes on the “cloud computing” term but the concept is acceptable when you control the server and the software is Free. Marcelo just after Richard told us that he sees eyeOS as the alternative to cloud services, and Maddog left us amazed after explaining that he’s thinking on eyeOS for his new projects. We have also talked to great people such as Juan Tomás, former president of Hispalinux, even not having a video yet.

But there is still one last video, and this is really special, since it’s from someone who’s not directly related in Free Software but he’s in Freedom in Internet. When we hear about him is usually because he’s sued by giant companies from different countris, while he keeps defending Freedom in Internet (some people call this just piracy). He’s Peter Sunde, founder of The Pirate Bay, but what’s more important, one of the nicest enterpeneurs you can find out there. Not because what he did, but because after doing what he has done (Bit torrent means +-80% of the whole Internet traffic and Pirate Bay has +-50% of that, so make your numbers), he considers himself as someone totally normal, doing something totally normal. This is what he told us about eyeOS:

Thanks a lot. Muito obrigado! (and see all you again in FISL 11 if not before).

Jon “Maddog” Hall is the president of Linux International and one of the best known programmers on Linux. He’s starting now new projects with thin clients and cloud computing and he has been talking with us about those, and his vision on eyeOS:

This video has been recorded in FISL 10, the Free Software International Forum, this year dedicated to the Freedom in Internet.
Thanks, Jon!

Both Richard Stallman, GNU founder and Free Software Fundation president, and Marcelo d’Elia Branco, Free Software leader in Brasil are two examples of leaders working hard for Free Software to succeed.

Today we talked with them about Software as a Service, Cloud Computing and the eyeOS Project. It’s great to see how two of the most important people on Free Software are worried about Cloud Computing as big companies are trying to present. This, and Marcelo’s comments on eyeOS must encourage every eyeOS member to continue fighting.

Cloud Computing will be one of the most important topics for next year. It will be a long fight where we’ll be defending eyeOS, the Free Software alternative to those services where the user needs to send the data to third parties, and there will be amazing new projects competing directly with almost any eyeOS application. But for sure we’ll be there with one of the most solid products. And together, we’ll build the Free Software reference on Cloud Computing desktops and apps, where the user can host eyeOS on his own server easily.

The FISL (Fórum Internacional de Software Livre) is celebrating its 10th edition this year in Porto Alegre, Brasil, with more than 7100 people coming to this edition , and dedicating this edition to Freedom in Internet as main topic around Free, Open Source software and philosophy. Richard Stallman, founder of GNU, and Peter Sunde, founder of ThePirateBay are two examples of leaders being here to explain their point of views of Freedom in Free Software and Internet, which sometimes is clearly attacked.

The eyeOS Project is also here and we’ll be talking about Freedom, Free Software and Cloud Computing today. It’s a great opportunity to stop for a moment and see what’s going on in the Cloud Computing market. Every day new Cloud services are appearing, most of them with complicated EULA’s and TOS’ that we must accept in order to use them. One of the few ways of fixing this is with Free Software, having the control over both the software and the data which is inside. We’re exactly there, creating the Free Software Cloud Computing desktop as an alternative to dozens of “free” services where the only price to pay is our data.

For those of you being here, you’re invited to our presentation today at 11am. See you there!

We’re really happy to announce today, almost two years after the first release of eyeOS 1.0 (that included the first release of the Toolkit), the Graphical User Interface Builder for eyeOS: eyeDesigner.

eyeDesigner 0.9 can be donwloaded here and can be installed in eyeOS 1.8.5.1 (released yesterday) and higher.

eyeDesigner is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported – which can be read here – and is free, Open Source, for everyone who wants to use it for non commercial purposes. The source is also opened and will be soon included in the eyeOS SVN server.

You can also use eyeDesigner from the Free eyeOS Server.

SourceForge opened again the Community Choice Awards 2009, being this the second year to allow any project, not only those hosted under their platform. And one more time, we want to be there!

For those new in eyeOS, we have been finalists for Best Project in 2007 and Most Likely to Change the World in 2008. Being there is always thanks to the eyeOS community who voted for eyeOS in the awards. And ending May 29th, this year is your turn again to put eyeOS in the finalists list (it takes 2 minutes)!

You can nominate eyeOS following this link:

As Lars started in the eyeOS Forums, we’re nominating eyeOS as Best Project and Most Likely to Change the Way you do Everything.

Thanks!