Argh Me Hearties, It's All About Freedom and Software.

With my new role as President of Linux Users of Victoria, I attended the two Richard Stallman talks this week at the University of Melbourne and RMIT distributing leaflets for LUV and Software Freedom Day, both attended by around four hundred people each. In the former presentation, Stallman discussed the core principles in the free software movement and in the second presentation he discussed more the role of copyrights in history and why their current misuse is damaging. In both presentations Stallman was very persuasive, arguing in a manner not unlike Benjamin Franklin - that is you surrender a freedom for convenience, you'll end up with neither. Essentially he is arguing that software is not just about functionality, but also has a moral component and the rights which are allocated to software comes with serious long-term effects. Stallman also gave a very good argument on why Linux, whilst capturing the public imagination, is really GNU Linux, that is, the Linux kernel plus the GNU utilities (one could also refer to Android Linux and GNU Hurd).

Yesterday was Softare Freedom Day which was hosted at the State Library in Melbourne. With the usual combination of distributions, local organisations, commercial groups and a great collection of talks and events. Yes, IT's favourite federal member of parliament, Senator Kate Lundy, was there as well. I was particularly taken by the gaming area and received a thorough introduction to Glest, a very attractive Age of Empires-like game which I had hitherto completely missed. Finally, to end a very strange week, today is Talk Like A Pirate Day, which perhaps not so strangely, does have a strong crossover with the free software movement. Maybe it's something about "piracy"?