Free Software Festival to Fight Piracy and Teach Public About Open Source Alternatives.

This Saturday, April 26th the Latin American Free Software Festival (FLISoL in Spanish) will be in full swing and everyone is invited to attend and receive free software for their computers. In this case “free” means exactly what we all know it to be and there’s no trick to it. The software being provided is created using open source code. Free open source software (OSS) is usually built and maintained by a network of volunteer programmers. OSS software is a great solution if you don’t want to pay a lot of money for software or don’t support illegal pirated programs.

Software piracy is a rampant problem in Costa Rica, Latin America and most of the developing world. Part of the problem is that most people don’t have the means to pay the expensive license fees. Even the Costa Rican government has agreed it is unable to pay the high cost of software licenses. Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica’s Vice President commented last year that “If the Government legalized all its software licenses, we would have no funds left to build public housing or finance public education.” According to the International Alliance for Intellectual Property, software corporations lose over $27 million from piracy in Costa Rica.

Linux-based operating systems and the well known OpenOffice package with Microsoft Word and Excel equivalents are part of the software CD’s being given away at the event. To be able to install the free operating system you need to at least have 128 Mb of RAM, and Intel or AMD processor of 550 MHz, a 3 GB hard disk and a CD disk drive.

If you want to have your software installed on your machine by one of the resident experts at the festival you need to sign up here to schedule your appointment. Don’t forget to bring your mouse, keyboard, monitor and any peripherals you use such as a webcam to make sure everything is set up for you.

The OSS movement started many years ago and was an integral part of the birth of the Internet in 1969. Over the years, the commercial aspect of software became so overbearing that the open source counter movement started. More recently this movement has gained momentum again as an alternative to expensive and sometimes faulty or bulky software developed by companies like Microsoft.

The FLISol festival is part of a regional event being celebrated in over 200 Latin American cities from Mexico all the way to Argentina. The Festival will be held at the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) School of Electrical Engineering Building. The event will start at 9 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. and you can get there by going 400 meters North from Muñoz y Nanne in San Pedro.

Come and do your part to fight piracy… and save a few bucks while you’re at it.

Pros and Cons of Open Source Software

Open Source Software has lower costs of marketing and development costs and has produced many reliable, high quality software programs quickly and inexpensively. Overall, it offers the potential for a more flexible technology and quicker innovation time. It is said to be more reliable since it usually has thousands of independent programmers testing and fixing bugs of the software.

On the negative side, some have indicated that OSS lacks stringent system testing and documentation. In terms of security, open source may allow hackers to know about the weaknesses or loopholes of the software more easily than closed-source software. Most people have been wary of adopting open source software because they usually lack formal support and training and they are still viewed as the rebels of the software industry but this view is quickly changing.

FLISol Costa Rica Event Schedule

* 09:30 a.m. Demo: Graphical Interfaces & Compiz Fusion - Sergio Morales and Carlos Jenkins

* 10:00 a.m. Demo: Entertainment & Virtualization in GNU/Linux - Carlos Jenkins and Kevin Moraga

* 10:30 a.m. Demo: VoIP, instant messaging and video conferencing systems - Anthony Cascante and Edgar Guadamuz

* 11:00 a.m. Forum: Changing from Private-Label to Open Source software: options and implications - Jorge Contreras, ‘Red de Software Libre y Código Abierto de Nicaragua’)

* 12:00 m.d. Forum: Basic use of Ubuntu & Debian - Marcelo Magallón, Herson Esquivel and Sergio Morales.

* 1:30 p.m. Demo: Free music applications: interactive music, algorithmic music composition and sound synthesizers - Grupo Oscilador

* 2:00 p.m. Forum: Free Software: an alternative to social organizations - Carolina Flores

* 3:00 p.m. Demo: Free applications for GNU/Linux & Windows - Andrés Meseguer and Sergio Morales

* 3:30 p.m. Demo: LiveDVD Project Sibu-Ubuntu - Comunidad Sibu

* 4:00 p.m. Forum: (repeat) Basic use of Ubuntu y Debian - Marcelo Magallón, Herson Esquivel and Sergio Morales.

For more information about Open Source Programs see: opensourcewindows.org

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Filed under: Technology on April 24th, 2008