SFD – Success in Sydney!

Wow, what a day! The Sydney SFD team had an amazing day, with three teams of four handing out close to 600 cds in the Sydney CBD (in three very different locations), and the installfest attracted a few newbies, a few geeks, and a few geeks who were newbies to the community, which was awesome! Welcome aboard dudes! We had over 20 people from SLUG turn up to help out, and the day was really a lot of fun for everyone. The cd’s found an interesting audience, and in some cases got to some really open-minded people really interested not only in “free” stuff but in “freedom” stuff and software that is “socially responsible” as Jeff put it. We had mums and dads, kids, young adults and even older people interested. There was some fun hardware at the installfest, and some talks given. Also Andrea from CSIRO came along to video the entire day, and the people involved, so as soon as she is able to get that out we’ll have an Aussie video for the day! The plan is to take the photos and video from around Australia and make a big post-event press article to celebrate the Aussie SFD effort and success! I’ve already heard from the Melbourne and Townsville teams who also had great days. I’m looking forward to seeing everyones photos!

The really important thing about handing out Free Software is the wonderful and inspiring conversations you can have. The ability to translate to someone outside the community about the values we all hold dear, regardless of our FS of preference. I had amazing discussions today, talking about freedom, and opportunities, about our community and about why it matters. I think Sydney did this really well, and the pamphlets we handed out really gave the people somewhere to get info, and a feeling of participation.

We gave out pamphlets with Janet’s What does Software Mean to You information, which is completely awesome, easy to understand as well as relavant to the average person, rock on Janet! Then we had a list of URLs on the other side with links to SLUG, Distrowatch, LA, and loads more useful information, including the very well written FLOSS Concept Booklet on wikipedia.

Many thanks to the Software Freedom International team, particularly Matt and Henrik who got us enough foo to give out around Australia and support us to rock out! Many thanks to all the SLUGgers for making our local event awesome! Many thanks to all the teams around Australia, I’m looking forward to hearing how everyone went! Lastly, many thanks to Linux Australia for being so supportive in making this a success! LA agreed to a bunch of things (obviously with my pestering 😉 including to cover the public liability insurance for all the teams in Australia, to fund some tshirts and postage of foo to teams, to fund some of the team expensives (on request), and for helping pimp the day! Rock on Australia!

Happy Software Freedom Day everyone!

SFD – TOMORROW!

Software Freedom Day is upon us! Rock! We should hopefully be on Hack tonight about it, and all the teams are kicking ass. Check out what is happening in your town 🙂

Sydney is all set to go, we are handing out CDs in the city, whilte also running an installfest, demos and talks at UTS. All the details are on the Sydney webpage and on the SLUG website. We’ll be having balloons, tshirts, stickers and more! Yay team!

SFD media coverage!

Yay! Just to be clear I said the first “Linux Australia” SFD, not the first Aussie one, last year both Canberra and Melbourne did something for SFD, but this year is the first one LA is involved and is a first national SFD!

Queen of the Land with Lord of the Sea

Today I met someone who taught me a lot. She is a homeless woman in Glebe, and has been living on the streets for about 7 years. As I walked past she asked for a $1 as she is living on the streets because of domestic violence. This struck me and I asked if she’d had dinner (this was about 7pm) and invited her to eat as I hadn’t yet either. We ended up talking for sometime. She was really into the idea of computers, and had a computer she had found but couldn’t sell as it was locked (windows login) and her sister wouldn’t buy it unless she could use it, so I gave her an Ubuntu CD, and she was stoked!

Anyway, she is an Aboriginal woman from the Griffith area who was taken from her mother as a baby and brought up by foster parents in Sydney. For those unaware of this practise, it was the policy in Australia in those days to take young Aboriginals from their natural mothers for a “better” life, a disturbing and destructive practise that obviously still has victims dealing with the consequences today. At any rate she felt she had a good upbringing as the foster parents treated her well, and hated her natural mother. She is 34.

She had a partner who apparently still stalks her and beats her up. She can’t get into refuges for women, as they prioritise for women with children, and she can’t get a restraining order against him as she is homeless. So she can’t get assistance or protection against someone who decides to hurt her for whatever reason. I had not thought of this loophole in the system, and it disturbed me greatly. Many homeless people in Australia don’t receive any government benefits as they don’t have an address to collect them from, another loophole.

She told me about her aspiration to write a book about the Queen of the Land and the King of the Sea, bringing a traditional Aboriginal story to print. She draws and told me how she had been given $10 for her birthday by a sister, and had spent $9.98 on a huge set of textas on sale at the store. Before she left, after eating maybe 1/4 of her meal (“That is a HUGE amount of food for me sister!”) she made me promise to come find her again when she writes her book to see it. I thought she meant to buy it but no, she just wanted me to see she could do it. She had a brother hanging around by that stage and had to go, she gave me a massive hug and thankyou before leaving and immediately giving the brother the leftover food, ancouraging him to eat it. At any rate, it has really made me think about yet another perspective, and set of social issues that it is easy to discuss over coffee with friends, but not easy to understand from the inside.

What was amazing was when she relaxed a bit and made or listened to a joke, her face lit up with this inner light, and she was so hopeful. She had a beautiful face, but then she would bring the walls up again, and have fear, pain and uncertainty etched on her face.

Trademarks and Linux

So there has been another flare-up of the trademarking the word Linux in Australia idea. LA are getting some very mis-informed hate mail about how it is wrong to trademark the word Linux because it is wrong to charge for the use of the word Linux. I want to clarify something from my perspective:

  • Do I think it is wrong for Linux Australia to trademark the word Linux? No. We are in dangerous times, and we need to ensure that the trademark is owned by a non-profit community organisation with a community elected committee to avoid a company trademarking the name and the either forcing people to pay for the name, or disallowing them to use it, which they would be well within their rights to do. Imagine we were not allowed to _use_ the word Linux because someone completely outside the community owned the trademark! SLUG for one would become TUFKASLUG (The Usergroup Formerly Known As SLUG).
  • Do I think it is wrong to charge to use the word Linux? Yes. Life is hard enough for Linux companies in Australia without extra costs and I am personally not interested in charging for the use of the Linux name by companies. If LA owns the trademark then the community has the ability to stop someone using the word inappropriately, such as calling a company “Linux World” when they only sell proprietary systems or not allowing others to use the word at all. Having said that I can understand the LMI needing to charge to sublicence the Linux trademark, as they need funds to survive and to protect the name if is challenged, and thus if anyone _wants_ to sublicence the name and pay for it, rock on, you are supporting another worthy Linux project, however if you don’t want to pay for it and are using it appropriately then I personally feel this should be ok.

The confusion seems to be that people think owning a trademark is synonymous with charging for the use of it. This is not true. Owning a trademark in our case is as a protective measure and to retain credibility for the word.