[Fellowship Zurich] report from the last fellowship meeting/ wiki page ?

Benjamin Morant morant at fsfeurope.org
Do Jul 24 14:33:30 UTC 2008


Hi all !
Here is my report about our last meeting. What do you think about that ?
Would you agree to put my report on FSFE's wiki ?
Don't forget to see my blog with an article about the meeting ! Enjoy !
https://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/morant/geek_free_and_funny

see you !

Ben


The First Fellowship meeting in Zürich was a chance for everyone to get
to know each other. It took place in FSFE's Zürich Office on the 18^th
of July, around some peanuts, crisps, beers and other drinks.

Everybody there was very motivated and discussed about ways to
contribute to spread free software..

Many people were there because they were searching for increased Free
Software Activism on the political side.

We discussed about the equation free = free as a beer. It's clear that
we can't promote advertising based on that. The way to use Free Software
implies training costs because you change your work environment and the
habits you had with proprietary software. These training costs are
hidden by the “free as a beer” concept. It also misses the point of
freedom. We must rather promote the “free as a speech” concept:
community, freedom and reliability of open standards with the time. We
spoke about how free software allows you to control your system and the
negative effects of monopolies on the economical side.

We decided to get in touch with other organizations in Switzerland which
also promote Free Software because we noticed that the IT-specialised
press here doesn't speak much about Free Software. We though about
getting in touch with the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” to show their readers
that an alternative exists to proprietary software.

We agreed that the FSFE can be the handling point on the political
tracks and we decided to open the next fellowship meeting in Zürich to
non-fellows. There is a possibility to do this meeting on the 14^th of
August with the local Ubuntu group, which is now changing into a general
free software discussion group.






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