[GPSCC-chat] Free Software at the Peace Fair

[Cameron L. Spitzer]

I've had a table at the San José Peace and Justice Center's Holiday 
Peace Fair <http://www.sanjosepeace.org/article.php/20101108154316816> a 
few times since 2003, distributing "Free Software"*.
Yesterday was the best.  Drew, Brian, Susan, and Drew's Giant Penguin 
joined me.  We showed off Puppylinux 
<http://puppylinux.org/main/Manual-English.htm> running Firefox 
<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/security/> on Susan's twelve year 
old laptop, Ubuntustudio 
<http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ubuntustudio> playing the 
Peace Center's videos on my two year old laptop, and Ubuntu 
<http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/our-philosophy> on Drew's 
netbook.

They gave us the best table, in the lobby across from registration.  The 
Peace Fair is for holiday shopping, and our pitch is "this is a stocking 
stuffer for the person who takes care of your PC."  We handed out 
roughly twenty Puppies and a dozen Ubuntus.  And an aptosid 
<http://aptosid.com/>.

The vibe was way up since last time.  Thanks to Ubuntu's and Android's 
success, and Oracle's recent attachment to Openoffice.org and MySQL, 
people who pay attention to business or technology news know open source 
software is competing well against the trade secret stuff.  So we aren't 
starting from zero in public outreach and awareness any more.  But the 
business news never tells you /*why*/, so there's a kernel of curiosity 
with progressives now.  With that out of the way, it's easier to make 
the social justice connection.  All the folks I spoke with got it with 
little or no explaining.

Everything worked.  We installed Puppylinux on the old laptop the night 
before, and had no idea how complete it was.  I think the folks who try 
it out will be impressed.  Puppy comes with its own "lightweight" word 
processor, web browser, and spreadsheet, but it's also got three-click 
installers for Firefox, Openoffice, Komposer <http://kompozer.net/>, and 
a lot of other stuff.  Komposer is for authoring web sites.

Puppy and Ubuntustudio connected to the wifi in the building 
automatically.  I didn't take the time to troubleshoot Drew's network, 
we were too busy talking to people, eating, and shopping.

-- 
/Cameron in San José/

*Richard Stallman capitalizes "Free Software 
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/>" that way.  It's to distinguish it from 
Proprietary, Patented, and Trade Secret Software that's Distributed 
Without Charge But You Don't Get Any Rights.



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