The capital city of Kerala witnessed two important functionaries of the Free Software Foundation during the month of June 2007. They were Prof Eben Moglen, an Architect of the GNU General Public License and Georg Greve, President of Free Software Foundation Europe. Georg Greve conducted an enlightening seminar on the benefits of Free Software at a function organized under the auspices of the FSF College of Engineering Chapter.

Georg was kind enough to offer his presentation under GNU Free Do*****entation License(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html ) and I am attaching it with this writeup for your reference and for distribution under GFDL.

The talk was mainly centered around how Free Software can empower our lives. He gave a brief introduction on what is Free Software, how it evolved, the naming conventions etc. Normally people mistake 'Free' for zero costs but the 'Free' in the 'Free Software' really means freedom. Ofcourse Free Software could come free of cost too. The freedom aspect gives you unlimited freedom over the software - to use, to study, to modify, to copy, to distribute and even to sell.

Free software also has a big empowering role in that it gives the control over the systems to the end users. Any software that does not allow this effectively controls the digitial culture of humankind. It was stressed that free software makes sense in a democratic perspective as it gives the ultimate control to the people who use the software than to the people who created the software.

These days Free Software is also emerging as a new business model worldwide. Some of the advantages pointed out included - predictable lifetime, control over support, control over modifications, avoidance of vendor locking, complete ownership of software. Additionally it was emphasized that free software strategies help local economies extensively. A software bought from the International market and supported by International companies is not going to help the local economy in any way. However a Free Software customized and supported by local companies help turn the local economic engine and also prevent capital outflows from the system.

In the concluding discussion he exhorted the audience to try out careers in open source and to emerge as leaders in the Open Source Market.

The two aspects that I found very appealing was the possibility of low cost solutions for developing countries if they use Open Source Solutions and the theory about the boost to the local economy and the local IT capabilities if governments and corporations move to Free Software Solutions. It was very inspiring to see a very young fellow like Georg Greve leading a prominent international organization like FSF Europe and speaking with such passion about a new world of Open Source.

Presentation: How Free Software can empower your life by Georg Greve