Software Freedom Day 2010 in Baguio City
Saturday, September 18, 2010. Students from Baguio City and its neighboring provinces, members of the educational community and industry professionals converged at the University of Baguio to celebrate Software Freedom Day (SFD), an annual worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
SFD advocates the use and contribution to Free Software and the Open Source Initiative as an alternative to proprietary software.
What’s On the Menu?
The 2010 SFD celebration boasted an array of keynote FOSS speeches from advocates and industry professionals that shared their views, experiences and projects that contribute to the growth and awareness of FOSS. Interesting things to note include:
- The advocacy for open and transparent governance and leveraging the use of social media in the Philippine government. This leads to the empowerment of the online Filipino to take an active role in participating to an extent on government affairs by way of free speech. It is good to know that there are emerging initiatives like these on the government space – with significant support from people like Cong. Teddy Casino.
- The growing attention and inclusion of FOSS into the Philippine educational system. Mrs. Ellen Halover, UB School of IT Dean, talked about the efforts of institutions like the University of Baguio to integrate free software in its infrastucture as well as in its curriculum. There are also initiatives by the CICT like the iSchool project.
Afternoon sessions continued with technical and business track parallel discussions from various guest speakers on FOSS projects. Fields covered include tools for Enterprise Management (OpenERP), Office and Productivity (OpenOffice, Freemind), Telephony (OpenBTS, Embedded Asterisk), Software Development (LAMP, PHP, Git), Graphic Design (Gimp) and other interesting projects.
Of course any FOSS celebration will not be complete without swags for the attendees and elite swags for those who felt creatively geeky and participated in the Graphic Design (Gimp) and Programming (PHP) competition.
It Grows From Here
It is amazing to note that the local community’s initiative to get involved in the advocacy of FOSS is growing exponentially through events like SFD specially here in Northern Luzon. It creates an awareness of what else is out there, that there are alternatives to the status quo.
Of course, awareness is only the start. As the driving force behind software freedom is the community, it is of course in its empowerment and actions that will keep it alive. The philosophy of software freedom does indeed reflect the nature of humanity’s affinity for natural freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of choice and freedom of mind.
For more information on SFD, visit the Philippine Software Freedom Day website.
Tags: Baguio City, FOSS, SFD, Software Freedom Day 2010
18.Sep.10 
Advocacy, Events 
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