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:
- Interest from both the commercial/private and government/public
sector meant that this event was going to be high-profile
- Specifically it would reach out to a lot of people that I can't
easily reach on my own
- 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.)
