Last day of FISL in Brazil
It’s the fourth and last day of FISL here in Brazil and I’ve had a great time. For me, the best part is the many people I’ve met and the discussions generated when more than four thousand free software supporters are in one city for four days. There are seven presentations happening simultaneously all day every day, but I’ve only attended four.
I gave a presentation on software patents. It went ok but a lot of people have told me they liked it. I guess software patents is an interesting subject here, which is good learn because there is very little discussion on the topic. In Europe, fighting software patents is a major topic, but in Latin America, many free software supporters are still wondering if they need to be fought and if they can be fought.
It’s good to meet the people behind FSF Latin America. I’d met half of them before, but this time we got to spend more time together.
IFSO is hosting two talks by Federico Heinz in Dublin on April 29th, so it was nice to meet with him for the first time. I asked IFSO to arrange the event based on a second hand recommendation that Federico is a great speaker. Now I can give a first hand recommendation.
The best of the presentations I attended was Richard Stallman’s presentation on the goals of GPLv3. I recorded most of that presentation and the Q&A with my digital camera, so I’ll go into detail on that in another entry when I get that online.
I’ve also gotten a rare opportunity to spend time with Georg Greve. He’s the president of FSFE, so it might seem strange that we use time in Brazil to talk to each other but we actually only see eachother maybe three times a year. FSFE is a very spread out group.