How one Melburnian spent Software Freedom Day

By Sam Varghese
Monday, 21 September 2009 06:16

Opinion and Analysis

For most people in Melbourne, Saturday, September 19, was just another day for trying to recover from the excesses of the previous night, knocking back from work, lazing, and reading the newspapers on the web.
But for computer science student Minh Van Nguyen, it was a wee bit different. A full-time user of free and open source software for the last three years, he was up bright and early and off to the Chadstone shopping centre in Melbourne's south-east to spread the message of free software.

Saturday, September 19, was observed around the world as Software Freedom Day, a day on which there is "a global, grassroots effort to tell people about the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software."

This was Nguyen's second effort as a volunteer. "My first time was during the 2008 celebration, in which I gave a talk on free and open source software in science education. I definitely look forward to volunteering to help out in any way I can during next year's SFD," he told iTWire.

This year he had volunteered to speak about Python, in particular how Python could be used as a way to introduce people to computer programming.

"Teaching beginners how to program a computer can be easy or it can be difficult," Nguyen said. "In my talk, I chose Python as the language to introduce the audience to programming because Python allows me to get my message across much more quickly than if I had used other programming languages such as C, C++, or Java." (The talk is here and his notes are here.)

The Melbourne celebrations were organised under the auspices of the Linux Users of Victoria, a Linux user group.

"During this year's SFD, we had 10 speakers delivering a total of 11 half-hour talks in two parallel talk sessions. These talks were spread across two spacious lecture rooms. There was also a parallel series of four practical workshop sessions in an adjacent computer lab," Nguyen said.

"Apart from speaking about Python, I also manned the LUV booth to spread the word about installing and using Linux, including ways to try out what Linux has to offer before actually installing a Linux distribution."

Other user groups such as the Melbourne PC User Group, the Melbourne PHP Users Group and the Apple Users' Society of Melbourne had their separate booths at the venue.

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