Episode: 815
Title: HPR0815: Software Freedom Day Dundee 2011
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0815/hpr0815.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 02:56:54

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ken Fumman and I'm just Mr Train
here at Oddcamp 11
but that's no reason not to do an interview
and we've got one of our own Chris Finley
and he's here to talk to us about
Software Freedom Day and Dundee
What is Software Freedom Day?
Software Freedom Day for us is a chance to introduce free software to people
that don't normally come along to these events like Oddcamp and things like that
and also necessarily know what free software is
and so we try to introduce them to that in an easy manner
with some light introduction talks through a morning
and not just to do with Linux itself
but to do Windows free software
alternatives to a proprietary software that are free, things like that
and what would make somebody come to that event if they're not going to go to Oddcamp?
It's a million local event
so people locally will come around to a local event
The event's Software Freedom Day is not a single one event in our own location
it's held worldwide
and lots of different people do different things for it
even if it's just passing out CDs or doing a series of talks like we've been doing
and it happens every year on this 17th of September this year
That's Saturday's the month
Where's it going to be held and Dundee?
We're holding it at the Hanema Clear Centre
and above the student Abertace Students Union on Bell Street
so your target audience, I guess, would be students for the main general community in Dundee?
Preferably our target would be the general community
It happens to be, last year it was arranged at the same day as Open House Day
which some places open up their own buildings for the public to come in and have a look around
which quite time coincides quite nicely
so you get a lot of people coming in who wouldn't normally have come in
and they've not actually come in for software freedom day
but they walk in the door as a few people around
and we introduce it to them and they're very receptive
Excellent, I was in a taxi last night as you do
The taxi driver just couldn't get his head around
the fact that people would write software for no cost and give it to the community
How do you, people are so ingrained in paying for software
and how do you convince them that this is good?
How do you get the whole concept of software freedom across to them?
One thing we tried to do is make sure that they realized that
although the software, people have a very big stigma that
there's nothing in this life comes for free
and they're right enough, it doesn't come for free
and free software doesn't mean free either
The cost of free software is getting involved in the community
and giving back to the community
The moral obligation that's there, that's the cost we have
So we tried to introduce them and say that this software here
we can talk to people about it if you need help with it
help support from it, there's people around the communities around
that will help more than happy to help you
do these things
whether it be business or professional use
We're also introducing the actually already use free software
you know things like Mozilla Firefox
a lot of people picking up open office now as an alternative to
some of the proprietary ones
I suppose you have different hooks for different how far down people are
on a particular software track
Of course, yeah definitely
I mean you're going to deal with people in a business
want software for different reasons than someone who's sitting at home
doing the software
I mean one of the things we try to do is
address all those different areas whichever level
I mean training has always been an issue for businesses
and they always worry that the cost of swapping to an open office
that the training is the big cost
and they're worried about that
although there's no licensing cost
but what we found is open office
looking lower like the older version of office
makes it a lot easier
because the new version confuses them
and they don't have to retrain it anyway
as far as persuading them that it is okay
and it's good software
we show them at live and action
we've got demos, live demos running all day
with different open office, Firefox, and different music,
media inputs
we also do a virtualization
on which to teach for businesses
that virtualization is something they can do
very good
and what sort of people come in during the day?
we've had a lot of different people coming in during the day
including people from all age groups
from 13, 14
to all the way up to 70, 80, 90
all very receptive to it
actually found a lot of the older crowd
found it easier to understand what we were talking about
because they didn't have the pre-cursor of using
the pre-conception of how
you have to pay for it
and the pre-conception of how
something should already work
people transitioning from
say macOS or windows
already have a pre-idear of how
they manage to achieve what they want to achieve
and when you introduce something like
the Linux desktop
but it'll be no more KDE or that
they find out
where's this button?
why's this button now here?
and we kind of try and say
look here we'll show you how it is
it's just easy to use
it just takes a little bit of time
to do not learn the risks
of becoming the support person
for somebody if
yes definitely yes
and sports very big key
and that is part of it
and I think we do get people
coming back to us time and time again
looking for questions
and support
and the best thing to do is to try
and give them some support
in a way that they learn themselves
so instead of directly showing
somebody exactly what they need to do
to do something
you kind of lead them through it
and actually get them to do
they actually fix it
and they find they learn better
that way
and can then teach
someone else to do that
yeah a lot of
a lot of education
involved
very much more than just
handling a CD
so what would you advise if somebody
is living somewhere
and felt that they wanted to do
something for self
or a freaking day?
I think if
it's anybody could do
something for self
and be it
there's a great CD called
the Open CD
it has like open office
it's got, I think, Firefox
and the floor
are really good
open source applications
all in one CD
both for Windows
and for Linux
and you can easily
burn a copy of that
burn a few copies of that
home
go out, hand it out to people
in the street
tell about it
promote it that way
people are a bit
suspect of
especially self-burned
CDs and viruses
and all the rest
you'd be surprisingly
no, I don't think
they are
in a really sad
and a really sad
it's quite
important people
you hand somebody something
it's free, great
and it's quite
you'd think they'd
be more suspect
but I think the general
people don't
have this whole
idea of security
they don't realise
as much
there are as
problems with these
it can be problems
in these things
and they're quite
respected
I mean there was a good
story or well-back
in a school in America
where a kid was doing
exactly that
he was handing out
CDs
during the school
and he got
the teacher pulled him
aside, took him to the
headmaster's office
and tried to get him
suspended from school
so he was selling CD
they said
I'm not selling them
they're free
it's illegal
which of course
wasn't true
it was all open-source
software to perfectly
redistribute
but that's an
education thing I guess
yes
and just because the teachers
doesn't mean they can't
learn
but one thing I always
want to make sure
with people
understand is that there is
a big community
behind it
and a big community
of people
willing to help
willing to spend a lot
of time
ensuring people what to do
another good thing
we do as well
if you're
into open-source
software
in season
and handout
magazines
drop them off
and places
we'll obviously handle that
sometimes
fought
passing
the
advice people to go to if they're interested. If you find it, find it more information
to suffer freedom days, be at the suffer of freedom days site which is sufferofreedomday.org.
Don't worry, they'll obviously we're at a train station here waiting for a train so the
link will be in the show notes for this episode.
We've been planning the event for quite a while now, for the last two or three months we've already started planning.
This year we have, I think, up to possibly 13 talks planned this year.
It's starting, as I say, initially starting on the what is sufferofreedomday and myself
doing a talk on what is Android when it's coming from and what it's about.
And then we move further into more technical talks as the evening goes on which things like
the last year we had how to hack voice over IP and how the security issues with protocol for that.
This is a bit technical, but we had things in my open street map as well and we've even had
talks on Blender for doing our own 3D software and I work really well.
Yeah, excellent. Well, thanks very much for the talk and look forward to hearing more about
the event after the show, feel free to send us over some talks for syndicate Thursday.
Okay, thank you very much Chris.
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