To Be a Good Ancestor
House on Red Corner · 2006-11-18
Last night, I attended FactFest2006 on the campus of Farmingdale State University, in Long Island, NY. I was there to be a presenter for Kubuntu, however with the small attendance for the first time festival, my presentation was cancelled, along with several others - you got to admit having four speakers simultaneously in separate rooms is quite ambitious. Instead, they squeezed all of us together to form a panel discussion about the future of Open Source Software. We offered many vastly insightful comments and the audience was highly participatory. Part of the time up there, I felt significantly underqualified to discuss any of the stuff on the palate - but that could just have been my own insecurities firing up.
[photo — not archived by Wayback]
The Keynote speaker was John Perry Barlow who was one of the founders of the EFF. He spoke quite naturally and easily to us and I felt as if we were getting the hand down from the grizzled old-timer on the porch without any of that “back in my day, we had to walk…” business. It was highly enlightening to listen to his report. Hopefully it spurs more people into action, even if that action is only to write a check to the EFF. There are some very important issues which are being contested in several venues - many of which directly affect individual freedom and privacy, as well as the rights to create and innovate.
Tags: Ubuntu