I am participating in the EyesWeb Week in Genoa this week. This morning Nicola Bernardini held a lecture about Free Software. I have heard him talk on this topic several times before, but as I have now some more experience on participating in a Free Software project (i.e. Jamoma), I got more out of his ideas.

Some main points from the talk:

  • Use Free Software!
  • Freeware and shareware may have nothing to do with Free Software.
  • Open source is an ambiguous term.
  • Use Free Software, not free software, since the free is not referring to the price, but to the rights of the user (and author). Capitalise the F and S to make this distinction.
  • Release early and often. This is important to build a community and get feedback.
  • Core point: to build and maintain a community is critical. This is also what I have seen from a couple of projects I have been participating in. The Jamoma project is working the best by far because we have managed to establish a good working environment.
  • Some examples of brilliant Free Software: Octave, R, Audacity, Ardour.
  • The SOb plugins did not succeed because they were too difficult to use.

Some links to related things: