Last Saturday, I gave a talk at York GNU/Linux Users Group about Free Software. This was the first time I’d ever really gotten up in front of a room full of people in quite a while, and the first time I’d ever had a real point to make about Free Software. Preparing the presentation was useful, as it forced me to really think about the key messages of free software. I opened with a bold slide, that said ‘Free Software is software that respects our freedom. Free Software is an ethical choice asserting your right to learn share knowledge with others’ – the audience was largely made up of users of free software, but also largely made of users who think of the system as ‘Linux’ and that the software they’re using is ‘Open Source’. The messages of ethics and freedom seemed to go over well, and at the end people had some useful questions and discussions of the ethics of using free software continued for hours afterwards.
I am also now on Planet Advocacy thanks to Jono – stop on by, we’re always awesome.