Software Freedom Day (SFD) is an annual grass roots effort to celebrate and educate the public on the benefits of using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Software Freedom Day was established in 2004 and was first observed on August 28, 2004 when over 70 teams participated.
Since that time it has grown in popularity as more than 300 teams from over 60 countries celebrated on the second SFD, held on September 10, 2005. The primary sponsor for 2005-2006 was Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux. From 2006 onwards, it has been decided the Software Freedom Day to be held on the third Saturday of every September: The 2008 event takes place on September 20 and will be celebrated in 65 countries across the globe.
SFD will be celebrated in Benin City this year at Edo College. SFD stems from the pioneering activities of the Free Software Foundation (FSF); a non-profit company founded by an American, Richard Stallman in 1985 to support the free software movement that promotes the universal freedom to distribute and modify computer software without restriction. The laws governing the development, use and distribution of software programs developed for the free software movement is often referred to as ‘copyleft’ which is the direct opposite of ‘copyright’; these laws are packaged as General Public Licence or GPL
From its founding until the mid-1990s, the Free Software Foundation employed software developers to write free software. From the mid-1990s, FSF’s employees and volunteers mostly worked on legal and structural issues for the free software movement and the free software community. Free and Open Source Software is non-proprietary - meaning it is available for others to share, build upon, change, and redistribute either in its modified or unmodified form. The source code is transparent and allows rights to users which would otherwise be prohibited by copyright as is typically seen with Windows and Mac software. Since the source code is transparent with FOSS, bugs or security flaws can quickly be discovered and corrected. In a proprietary system, the software is closed and typically you are reliant on the software vendor that security glitches will be fixed.
A common analogy used to describe proprietary software and open source software is to imaging purchasing a car; you want to drive the car but should the car develop some fault you would at least expect to be able to open the bonnet of your own car and inspect the engine to see whether you can fix the problem yourself or take whatever action you deem necessary whether it is to take the car to your nearest mechanic or back to the manufacturer, you have the freedom to choose; this is what you get with FOSS, the freedom to look at the software’s source code (engine) and not only fix any problems that may exist but to enhance the software if you have the necessary skills to do so without any copyright law recriminations.
Imagine then buying a car where you cannot open the bonnet to inspect the engine, if the car develops any kind of problem you must take it back to the manufacturer as only they have the tool to open the bonnet to your car and you, the owner of the car cannot; that sounds wrong right? Yet this is the situation most computer software users find themselves in with software from proprietary vendors. More significantly if all you ever do is drive the car and never gain access to the engine of your car you are deprived of any opportunity to gain knowledge about the inner workings of your car in order to do routine maintenance, thus leaving you totally dependent upon the car manufacturer for any solutions to car problems.
FOSS provides such user benefits in software as increased control, enhanced security, free or reduced cost and higher quality due to constant peer review of the code. Some excellent examples of open source software include Mozilla Firefox internet browser, Ubuntu Linux operating system, OpenOffice, a software suite similar to Microsoft Office, GIMP image editing software and the list goes on and on from there. While FOSS is typically developed to run on Linux and other UNIX platforms a lot of FOSS software including the aforementioned Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice has versions for Windows. The OpenDisc project (originally started as the OpenCD project) offers a selection of high quality open source software for Microsoft Windows users. The aims of the project are to provide a free alternative to costly software, with equal or often better quality equivalents to proprietary, shareware or freeware software for Microsoft Windows and to educate users on using Linux as an operating system for home, business and educational use.
As a result of Richard Stallman’s philosophy and pioneering work in creating some of the early free software (called GNU software) a plethora of organisations and collaborative software development projects have emerged embracing Stallman’s philosophy and fulfilling (in most part) his advocacy on the free use, enhancement and distribution of software to promote knowledge acquisition and transfer for everyone; it is a philosophy greatly needed for the future development of ICT in emerging countries like Nigeria. The emergence and success of Linux and FOSS plus the recent growth of collaborative and open content generation (e.g. Wikipedia), the emergence learning managing platforms e.g. Moodle for e-learning and the increasing availability of free and open learning content, and there are even Linux OS distributions that are education focused such as Edubuntu. These software projects are direct and indirect results of the original efforts of Stallman and the FSF.
Some readers of this article may wonder what is the relevance of involving young pupils in secondary schools in the Software Freedom Day celebrations as many of the issues raised in this article seem to apply to more experienced computer software users or software developers; however, the phrase ‘catch them young’ springs to mind and it is in their early years that our young ones can more easily acquire the fundamental ICT skills and mindset that allows them to be skilled ICT users and inspired to create software and applications that will make the much needed impact in the country’s ICT development, in fact, ICT development awareness should start at kindergarten. We need our young pupils to be familiar with using word processors, spreadsheets, presentation software, graphics design software and computer programming languages by way or open source and proprietary software.
Considering Nigeria’s dependence on foreign expertise for so many of its needs across various industry sectors, we must wean ourselves off reliance on others for our ICT development especially as FOSS is freely available to use and learn from. The Software Freedom Day events are therefore important in educating and inspiring our young learners in secondary schools and other interested people and organs like government.
If you are new to open source, Software Freedom Day celebrates a philosophical movement which values collaboration, community and transparency. It benefits the public good and ensures basic human freedoms are strengthened by technology. To learn more, you can attend the Software Freedom Day celebrations to be held at Edo College Benin City. Students from the college and other colleges, members of the Edo College Old Boys Association (ECOBA) and Dignitaries will be participating in the event.
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