Chris Nicol died last year and in August, we launched a free and open source software prize in his honour. Erika was at the launch, which was a real ‘family’ event.
I don’t think anyone has had a moment to share how the APC Chris Nicol FOSS Prize launch in Mexico City went.
Adolfo can fill in the full names, but first the writer from La Jornada spoke a bit philosophically about the world of trade and information, and how information production, and all production, is being done in the name of trade rather than with the true objective in mind, ie- software for profit and not for the user, info in magazines for selling the magazines and not for a communication purpose. I was translating for the english-speaking apc women so didn’t take notes but it was a provocative presentation.
Then Max spoke about "Software libre: resistencia contra la barbarie", a really brief overview of why foss is so important… he said he’d send his paper so that we could reproduce it but it starts out this way..
Where would we be if every time we said "I love you" we had to pay royalties? What would happen if every word was patented? What would happen if we could patentall forms of live, every idea, every thought? What would we do if to be able to teach kids how to add two plus two we had to pay a tax? If ideas, music, love, mathematics were all patented would intelligence disappear? …….
Then Adolfo shared a bit about who Chris was, and what he meant to APC, based on the informatino from the website. Finally, Karen launched the prize! Natasha said a toast.
Afterwards, we had wine and mexican "antojitos"…. quite a feast actually!
I think we ended up having more than thirty-five people – Laneta folks, karen’s family, people from the foss community in Mexico (including, says adolfo, mexico’s first hacker) two venezuelans very active in the debian community who I met at the book fair at Know how, apc women and know how participants…. apparently several people stayed on talking at Laneta til past midnight (or was it past 2 am!).
Who can post photos??