Free Software & Digital Rights Noosphere

Tommorow, January 19th, I will renew my membership at Free Software Foundation Europe. Its been exactly a year since I joined FSFE and the Fellowship. This year (2010) many actions took place for the deepening of Free Software by public institutions and people in Greece:

March 11th: The Association of Greek Users and Friends of Free Software (later baptized as GNU Greece by Richard M. Stallman) became an official associate organization of FSFE. This co-operation didn’t remain as a mutual brand advertisement but it was alive and kicking.

March 28th: GNU Greece participated in the Document Freedom Day Campaign and made a Public Intervention sending an official letter to official institutions of Greece asking for the adoption of Open Document Format in Greek Public Services.

April 14th: GNU Greece announced that Richard M. Stallman accepted a speech invitation in Thessaloniki. The speech took place at the Science Center & Technology Museum of Thessaloniki, Noesis, and it was a great success.

June 30rd: GNU Greece inspired by the Bolzano LUG – FSFE action, made a Public Intervention – Complaint for a Competition by the Public Power Corporation of Greece which was not taking into account the possibility of Free Software. Unfortunately due to summer mood, there was a lack of coordination, so, this didn’t came out as a common initiative of FSFE and GNU Greece.

October 13th: GNU Greece joined the PDFreaders FSFE Campaign and personally I made a lot of submissions about Greek public institutions that advertise non-free PDF readers. This was fun because after that, in November local elections were held and I didn’t sent any letter. But when I looked back to see if there was any “debugging” I was amazed because 4 of the 15 institutions that were reported, did created links or added banners to PDFreaders Campaign website.

Some friends, but also the support of the campaign by Richard M. Stallman (see fsf-community-team mailing list) encouraged me to send the letters to the remaining organizations.

This is what I’m going to do. After what we experienced at GNU Greece, including the answer of one Greek MEP (a woman) to the March 28th Public Intervetion, I believe that yes, we, the advocates of Free Software, the FSF, the FSFE, the GNU Greece, we have a voice.

>Few weeks ago, Dimitris Kalamarás, the first editor in chief of the greek edition of LinuxFormat came in contact with me, informing me that the longest standing linux magazine in Greece would close. I can say that these were not good news. I absolutely understand this move, in the bad financial situation that exists at the market today. Is very sad that the crisis that started with high yield bonds of private equity banks affects every possible aspect of our lives including greek LinuxFormat.

Fortunately, computer press in Greece, does not give up so easily. Compupress, the publisher that held the LinuxFormat edition license until now, decided to edit a new magazine called LinuxInside, an action that brought me in mind an oldest successful magazine switch the same publisher did, that of Pixel to PCmaster. The reason Dimitris contacted me was to recruit me for writing articles for the new magazine. I accepted without hesitation, because of my former good chemistry on the cooperation that I had with Dimitris. Thanks to him I have printed evidence of my personal but also collective work on the promotion of Free Software in Thessaloniki. It was the publishing of the articles about the building of the first and the second GNU/Linux Lab in Thessaloniki that gave me strength to continue when many people were speculating on my back, ready to blame me, motivated by jealousy because of their nothingness. That time I said to my self, “yes, there are good people out there who can judge well and they will promote the good work from wherever is done”.

Until now the GNU/Linux press in Greece has gone through many adventures. Starting with Di.L.i.Ma. and going on until recently with LinuxFormat I hope that LinuxInside will be the Ithaca of this troubled journey. My congratulations to Dimitris and Compupress for not giving up! My best wishes for a good start to LinuxInside!