Club Linux Coffs Harbour

Below is the press release I sent out to the usual suspects this afternoon. If you think I may have missed somebody, let me know at the email address below.

Contact: Matthew Davidson
Phone: 02 6658 1607
Email: mjd@almatech.net.au
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SOFTWARE FREEDOM DAY AT PARK BEACH BOWLING CLUB

For the third year in a row, Coffs Harbour will be celebrating Software
Freedom Day, this year as one of around three hundred locations
worldwide. On Saturday, September 15th at Park Beach Bowling Club, there
will be a day of presentations and demonstrations to promote free software.

Free software (sometimes called "open source" software) is software that
you can freely, use, copy, modify, improve, and share. Free software can
usually be acquired at or near zero cost, but you can also sell free
software. The word "free" in "free software" refers to the fact that
once you have a copy of the software you can do anything you like with
it. The opposite of free software, non-free or "proprietary" software,
even when it is given away at zero cost, is distributed under terms
which heavily restrict what you can do with it; from preventing you from
sharing the software with others, to making it impossible to fix if it
doesn't work the way you want it to, and a host of other restrictions.

Free software is the foundation of most of the Internet, and is in
increasing use everywhere from Fortune 500 companies to the home.
Software freedom makes it easier to collaborate on software development
and reuse existing solutions to problems, enabling the creation of
technically superior software at a lower cost than would otherwise be
possible. Examples of free software include the many variants of the
GNU/Linux operating system, the OpenOffice.org office productivity
suite, and the Firefox web browser.

With computer technology increasingly involved in everything we do,
software freedom is becoming a major social issue. We need to be able to
trust electronic voting and banking systems. We need to be confident
that the information we are saving today will still be readable in ten
or twenty years time. We need to be able to know that our computers
aren't spying on us. Our children should not be told that sharing is
wrong, or that there are limits to what they are allowed to learn about
their computers.

Software Freedom Day kicks off at 10am, Saturday September 15th, at Park
Beach Bowling Club. Presentations in the morning will be devoted to
software for home and general purpose use, with the afternoon covering
topics of particular relevance to business and organisational use. There
will also be plenty of demonstration computers on hand to encourage
people to explore free software throughout the day. If past events are
anything to go by, this will be a fun and informative day for everyone
from "newbies" to "nerds".

If you would like to get involved in Software Freedom Day, go to
http://www.clublinux.org/sfd. You can also contact us by phone at 02
6658 1607, or email Matthew at mjd@almatech.net.au. If you are involved
in an organisation that might be interested in free software, we can
also provide someone to present a brief talk on the subject.

Software Freedom Day 2007 Coffs Harbour is sponsored by Club Linux Coffs
Harbour (http://www.clublinux.org.au), the Coffs Ex-Services Computer
Club (http://computerclub.cex.com.au), and the Park Beach Bowling Club
(http://www.pbbc.com.au). You can learn more about Software Freedom Day
at http://softwarefreedomday.org and about the free software movement at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy.

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