Lots of love from out of Hack42
“I Love Free Software Day” is a nice and positive campaign of FSFE to thank the people that enable Free Software on Valentines day. With many gatherings it is also a good opportunity to get together. In the Netherlands there was a workshop in The Hague and we had a meeting in Arnhem at hackerspace Hack42.
The meeting started with a tour for those that haven’t visisted the hackerspace before. Especially because Hack42 only recently moved to this location. Then we could start for real. First an introduction round while enjoying slices of pizza. Everybody told about their personal experiences with Free Software and about the software and people that deserve a thank you.
In this way we learned about different software: web browsers Waterfox and Firefox, browser addon Vimium, desktop environment KDE, music program Audacity, text editor Vim (in memoriam Bram Moolenaar), photo importer Rapid Photo Downloader, smartphone operating systems CalyxOS and UBports, smartphone installer OpenAndroidInstaller, catalog software Omeka, compiler Free Pascal, personal cloud environment Nextcloud, document editor LibreOffice and home automation software Home Assistant. This was an inspiring and insightful round. Remarkable was that for almost everybody Firefox was one of the first Free Software applications.
Writing of thank you’s started mostly with email and chat because most projects and developers lack a postal address. But after some research more and more handwritten I Love Free Software Day postcards ended up on the table, ready to send. It was great to see the collaboration by supporting each others cards with a signature. While were at it we also noticed some thank you’s online on social media. The animated harts by Fedora really stood out.
It was a great evening that really brought the community together. I’m proud of the enthousiasm and kind words. Hopefully the sent thank you’s have a great impact.
I’m already looking forward to a love-filled meeting next year.