What’s all this then?
Manchester Free Software was formed in response to a growing apparent need for a group based in the Manchester area that focuses on free software and GNU/Linux primarily, but also on issues such as Digital Restrictions Management and other issues which infringe on the freedoms of computer users. Anybody is welcome to the meetings, but you will be particularly interested in the meetings if you are interested in the activities of the Free Software Foundation, GNU Project, League for Programming Freedom and the GNU/Linux operating system.
The group meets monthly. See the meetings page for more information. There is also a mailing list to discuss the issues that affect free software.
What about other groups in the local area?
Manchester has a healthy tradition of groups based on free software technologies, but these groups suffer from a tendency to focus on mixing free software with proprietary software, or even proprietary operating systems, such as Mac OS X. Worse still, many of the groups are suffering from a strong bias against groups like the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation.
We anticipate that this group can happily co-exist with the others. Both the BSD and Linux user groups have many members in common, and we hope many of them will want to belong to our group as well.
Potential questions and answers
Isn’t this just an attempt to fork $GROUP_NAME?
No, this is an attempt to create a subset of people who are interested in free software issues, and to give those people a place to exist and discuss freely, without the hassle of people who refuse to discuss anything they see as ‘political’.
What is GNU/Linux? What is Free Software?
When we speak of GNU/Linux, we speak of a combination of the GNU Operating System, and the Linux kernel. Other people refer to this simply as `Linux’, however we believe this to be unhelpful, as it doesn’t provide the casual observer, or new user any insight into the GNU Project, and by association, the Free Software Foundation. It is not meant to be preachy, but rather serve as a reminder for many of the issues that are still outstanding for users of a free operating system.
Free software is software that gives you freedom. To use and write free software is to make a contribution to a community that values your freedom. We want to provide a local community for the free software movement.
DRM, proprietary software, increasing attacks on software freedom, proprietary media formats, the lack of a free software player for Macromedia Flash and the creation of a free software operating system are important, and that as users of computers, these are all issues we cannot ignore and are important to our community.
Moreover, a 22-year-old organization with thousands of members and thousands of copyrights on free software programs, who just ran a global commenting process for the license used by 65%+ of free and open source software developers is at least relevant, and a large contribution.
Got a question? Please contact us.