[Fsuk-manchester] Fwd: Sep 27th will be GNU's 25th anniversary

[Dave Page]

It'd be great for FSUK Manchester to organise something based around
Free Software. Perhaps a series of talks, events, film screenings etc.
Ideas I've had, incorporating Free Culture events:

1) Take over (part of) the Central Library computer room using LiveCDs
of GNU/Linux and other free software as a practical demonstration, and
handing out the CDs to attendees. I'm not sure what the best LiveCD
would be to use - perhaps something like Gobuntu or gNewSense,
preferably one which has more than just software, such as video and text
files.

2) Film screenings, such as Revolution OS or Good Copyright, Bad
Copyright

3) Some kind of nightclub event where the music is all freely-licensed -
I suspect that if we could promise punters, we could take over FAB for a
night.

4) Talks about Free Software and how and why it's important and how
people can get involved.

I'll suggest these events on fsfe-uk as well, but I suspect Manchester's
one of the few places with a sufficiently geographically dense group of
free software enthusiasts to get a coherent set of events organised.

Dave
-- 
Dave Page <address@hidden>
Jabber: address@hidden
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> [Fsfe-uk] Sep 27th will be GNU's 25th anniversary
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> Date: 
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> Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:48:31 +0000
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> Sep 27th will be the 25th anniversary of the initial announcement of GNU:
> http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial-announcement.html
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> The 15th and 20th anniversaries were marked by RMS publishing an essay:
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/15-years-of-free-software.html
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/use-free-software.html
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> But there should really be more fuss for the quarter-century anniversary.
>
> Ignoring limits such as time and effort, I've got a few ideas:
> * Compile a book on the history of GNU and software freedom (focussing on
>   1983 to 1998)
> * Compile info for July to start pitching to the tech magazines to make the
>   GNU anniversary their cover story for September
> * A general free software event (we actually haven't done this before - not
>   with multiple speakers at least)
> * An awareness campaign, with a booklet, press releases, and letters to
>   software companies asking them to sign something (anti-swpat?)
>
> And I'd be interested to hear other ideas.  Sean Daly suggested to me a set
> of 10 minute videos explaining individual issues such as DRM, swpat, etc.
>
> I was reminded by this anniversary by Bruce Perens' 10 look back at the Open
> Source marketing campaign:
> http://perens.com/works/articles/State8Feb2008/
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> 1998, unfortunately, turn into the start of a "let's stop talking about
> freedom" era.  So maybe we should use GNU's 25th birthday to start a "Time
> to talk about Free Software again" era.
>
> Ideas sought (ignoring limits of time and money - not that I have an unsaid
> solution to those limits, but we do have 7 months to work on this).
>
>
> -- 
> Ciarán O'Riordan (+32 477 36 44 19) \ Support Free Software and GNU/Linux
> http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \     Join FSFE's Fellowship:
> http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \      http://www.fsfe.org
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