Tag Archives: freedom

July 20, 2012

Kitchener / Waterloo Software Freedom Day 2012

Software Freedom Day is only a few short months away. In the past 4 years The Working Centre has held Software Freedom Day 3 times, once in 2008, 2009 and last year in 2011. Kwartzlab held SFD in 2010. Paul Nijjar and I are hoping to hold another Software Freedom Day for the Kitchener / Waterloo region this year, but we need your help! What do we need?

  1. Presenters: People willing to give a talk on a particular piece of “free as in speech” software, the concept in general, or a related topic, such as how free document formats affect our daily lives.
  2. Support staff: People who know free software, who know Linux and other “free software” platforms, and can help people with individual questions, do installations, and show others on a 1 to 1 basis how to use free software alternatives to commercial software.
  3. Design and marketing crew: We need people to help make posters for the event, come up with creative ideas to help get the word out about the event and about free software/free culture.
  4. Planning staff: People willing to burn lots of CDs and DVDs, help organize speakers, help put up posters to market the event, to come up with other ideas to make Software Freedom Day appealing to a wide audience.
  5. You: Maybe you have an idea for Software Freedom Day.

In discussions with Paul we decided that if we’re going to hold Software Freedom Day 1 week later than the event is officially scheduled this year. Instead of September 15, 2012, we’re going to hold the event Saturday, September 22, 2012. We decided this date because of other popular events in the region on September 15th. A week earlier is just after students go back to school, so a later date makes lots of sense.

If you’re interested in helping out please Contact us using the form below.

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March 29, 2012

Days of Linux – Reason #2 Why I Like Linux – Openness

Rights Management error message

Rights Management error message

Reason #2 why I like Linux is more of a “why I dislike closed systems.” The “Rights Management” error in the image on the left is from a Microsoft Word document I tried opening in LibreOffice. Sadly when I copied the document over to a USB key I couldn’t even open it on a Windows machine using Microsoft Word 2007.

The open nature of Linux and open source software means that stuff like this rarely happens. Quite some time ago I remember reading about a hospital unable to access their medical data because it was being held hostage by a company that developed the hospital’s proprietary software system and data formats.

You don’t have to be a fan of free software, or open source software, to be a fan of open data formats, but open source software is a good introduction to openness. It’s also a great introduction to sharing and playing nicely together, something we seem to have forgotten in this competitive age.

Being open also means being open to change. And here free and open source software also excels. A great example is the story of how The Working Centre’s community Computer Recycling Project developed their point of sale. It began with the eCommerce suite OSCommerce. Because OSCommerce is an open source project the centre was able to hire a programmer to build on top of the eCommerce suite a simpler to use Point-Of-Sale system tailored better than a closed source POS could be. But the story doesn’t end there. The project already had a programmer on staff who helped spec the project and made modifications when the contract for the original programmer was finished. Even I, with my limited programming knowledge, was able to fix some bugs (which I couldn’t do with closed source software). And for the past year the project has had a new volunteer, Todd, who has been doing an amazing job squashing a tonne of bugs and moving it more towards something we wouldn’t be embarrassed to release, after all it’s also about contributing back.

 

 

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