Submissions/Free software for users

This is an open submission for Wikimania 2010.

Title of the submission: Free Software for Users

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation): Workshop

Author of the submission: Francisco Treviño

E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences): luzazul

Country of origin: México

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.): aircinema

Personal homepage or blog: http://sites.google.com/site/zerofrancisco/

30-word contribution & benefits statement

Is about freedom, and human rights too!, computer systems are just a great tool to trigger all this energy, its connections and possibilities. We'll explore the power of free software hands-on.

Abstract (please use no less than 300 words to describe your proposal): Free software is another way to deal with any computer related application, work, project and more. The difference is that with this proposal your freedom and other fundamental rights are safe and secure. But also, it's about the free culture movement and it's implications. Just to give a few tags and put ourselves in context we can mention free software foundation, gnu project, gnu+ linux operative systems like, Debian, Ubuntu, and many more. We'll give a tour on the working space that's been offered by some free software platforms and explore it's capabilities. To avoid problems and time consuming installation issues, given the fact of time availability, we'll use live cd/dvd/usb from some of the free software distributions. Depending on the workshop participants interests, we are going to work briefly on specific applications and minimal configuration of the system. The overall goal of this workshop is to show the formal capability of any free software system as a formal supportive platform to proper collaborative work. There's plenty of options regarding the platform to use, ranging from sugarlabs and the one laptop per child project to Debian and other GNU + linux distributions. The idea is to have a look and overview on some, or at least one, of the available platforms in the free software universe, to sense it's power and to think about the possibilities that it offers. Obviously we'll try and make some examples about specific software and it's use and applicability. Multimedia, graphics, audio, video, office, programming, web browsing, web apps, security, are just some of the rays on the amazingly wide gamma of applicability. It's not only the fact of paying less money for the full featured system, is about freedom, not about gratuity. To feed curiosity in the finding another way to make things work the way you want. What's the impact of your own actions?, what are you contributing to?, do you agree with the way things work?, do you collaborate or just consume? In scientific terms, this a dynamical system, always a work in progress, never ended or perfect, because it's same vitality keeps it alive. In a sense, like the wiki, the group makes us strong and flexible. Because we contribute, construct and create, but at the same time our shared critical eye keeps the whole system integral, healthy and dynamic. With our shared delight for doubt, in order to keep things clear and fit.

Track (People and Community/Knowledge and Collaboration/Infrastructure): bring your laptop, we'll need a projector too.

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted? yes

Slides or further information (optional): yes, about to come.

Interested attendees

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