[hackerspaces] Software Freedom Day - 20th edition

[Jurgen Gaeremyn]

Heya all,

Hackerspaces in my experience have been about a lot of things 
(friendship, technology, society, sharing knowledge, ...). I firmly 
believe that a sustainable hackerspace should hide in its little bubble, 
but needs to interact with society. A lot of us are convinced that the 
four freedoms of Free, Libre and Open Source have bettered society in 
many ways. We also see walled gardens popping up more and more eating 
away our freedoms.

A few years ago, we had SFD on hundreds of locations all over the world. 
The last few years, COVID has eaten all these activities...

Today I would like to challenge you all to celebrate Software Freedom 
Day in September. I'll elaborate on the Why and the How down here (just 
my opinions - not dogma)...


    Why?

 1. Technical people already use (FL)OSS more than they are often aware
    of. I'm thinking of free tools, but certainly also free libraries
    that other technology is built on. Often liberal licenses like MIT
    end up becoming invisible (but that's the choice of the licensor so
    who am I to discuss it)?
 2. Given that more and more applications nowadays have a cloud
    component, it will become increasingly important to educate a wider
    audience of the choices and tradeoffs they make. Where the typical
    hacker congresses (CCC & the likes) will focus on unveiling hidden
    connections and how they (inter)act, Software Freedom Day will be
    less technical but can also touch the same conclusions.
 3. It's a great opportunity to get in touch with other like minded
    groups in your area (I'm thinking LUG's, JUGs, Python groups,
    OpenStreetmap groups, Repair cafés, ...) to team up and build a
    network around your physical area. You might be surprised what's
    already out there.


    How?

Meh... I'd say: KISS. Whatever you like to do. Just a few ideas...

  * Workshops on how to use free software
  * Talks, debates, ... on how to switch to NextCloud, OpenStreetmap,
    LibreOffice, Inkscape, ...
  * Linux Install Party
  * How to set up a Pi-hole in your home.
  * Online streaming of a rant or tutorial
  * Barbecue with free software and affordable beers
  * Organize a little layman's CTF (Juice shop) and own the hacker cliché
  * ...

You could have a look at the Software Freedom Wiki 
<https://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/StartGuide> to get some 
inspiration. If you register your event 
<https://www.softwarefreedomday.org/cgi-bin/register.py>, it will appear 
on the website too, and we'll be promoting it a bit more actively 
through other social media channels. We're also reaching out to sponsors 
in the open source community and will be handing out prizes to teams who 
are exceptional on a specific field (e.g. MuseScore will be giving a 
year subscription to their online platform that complements their FOSS 
software). If you have any questions (or want to help organize the 
global event), don't hesitate to pop in to our Matrix channel 
<https://matrix.to/#/#SoftwareFreedomDay:matrix.org>!

Full disclosure, I'm part of the team organizing Software Freedom Day 
globally and would like to spark a new fire to the event (I'm not paid 
or professionally connected in any way though).

Hope to hear from you all!
Greetings,
Jurgen

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