About Project Cauã

Project Cauã was first conceived in 2007 by Jon "maddog" Hall in an effort to promote more efficient computing following the thin client/server model. He started speaking about this topic at various Free Software technical conferences around the world.

In 2009 Douglas Conrad, of OpenS Tecnologia in Florianopolis, Brazil, recognized Project Cauã's usefulness in Brazil and together started planning an implementation, first in Brazil, then throughout the rest of Latin America.

The vision of Project Cauã is to:

• reduce the amount of electricity used by present and future desktop computers
• reduce the amount of landfill and hazardous components used by computer systems
• make end user computing easier and more efficient
• provide better services for various vertical markets by more complete integration of computer technologies
• create a free-of-charge wireless mesh bubble over large sections of urban areas (80% of Latin Americans live in an Urban environment)
• bring better security to computer users
• bring Internet connectivity to the Digitally Disadvantaged
• create and implement an open model of telephony/communication
• create between one and two million high-tech jobs in Brazil, with another one or two million high-tech jobs in the rest of Latin America
• have a lot of these jobs for the typically "hard to employ" (for example, single parents and the physically handicapped)
• create freely licensable hardware designs for manufacture inside of Latin America, employing thousands more people
• triple or quadruple the number of FOSS developers in the world

do all of this in a capitalistic, sustainable way, with little or no money coming from government

Other goals may be added to the vision later.