Ciarán’s free software notes

Next Thursday, March 16th, in Belfast is the "FOSS Means Business" conference.

The desire for a free software event came from industry associations in Northern Ireland. Their secondary focus is to encourage "all-island" commercial iniatives. That secondary focus is of great interest to the public sector in Northern Ireland.

This event struck me as a good use of my time for three reasons:

1. Interest from both the commercial/private and government/public sector meant that this event was going to be high-profile
2. Specifically it would reach out to a lot of people that I can’t easily reach on my own
3. I could contribute something that the event was lacking: the sustainability angle

Sustainability is about raising awareness about what made all this free software come into existence and what must be done to make sure it continues to flourish. This aspect of the free software message can easily be left out when event organisers are accustomed to taking a view which narrowly focusses on supporting an existing business model, or an existing technology.

As well as telling a big audience about something of value, I wanted the event to tell them about how to hang onto that value. This is why Richard Stallman is giving the closing keynote. He’ll be adapting his speech to suit the business audience, and he’ll be incorporating a dicussion about the GPLv3, but at the core he’ll be talking about the struggle that made this software exist, and the current and near-future threats that have to be guarded against. These include software patents, and DRM.

I’ll have a quick speaking slot myself, in which I’ll explain how FSFE’s Fellowship program contributes to the sustainability I’m talking about – and I’ll ask people to join.

Free software was not initially political, but it has been made political by those whose business models are threatened by the shift from user-dependency and disablement to user-freedom. …and as Stallman says: you can leave politics alone, but politics won’t leave you alone.

(If you’re coming to FOSS Means Business, there is no charge, and registration is not mandatory, but to give the organisers a rough idea of how many chairs and coffees and how much food is needed, it would be useful if you added your name to the Attendees wiki page.)