XI Festival GNU/Linux

Tuesday, November 23, was the XI Festival GNU/Linux at the National University of Colombia. Richard Stallman, fundator of the GNU Project, was the special guest to the event. A friend mine, Diego Paz, and I decided to travel from Popayán to Bogotá to assist that festival and meet Richard. It was a very long travel, almost 12 hours in a bus, I was very exhausted.

In Bogotá, we met people from GNU/Linux Users Group of the Distrital University (GLUD). Before, we have talked with they by IRC and in the II South West Congress of Free Software, but this time we meet much more members of this LUG. It was great to meet GLUD. I talked with Camilo Uribe, who is working with me in the adaption of the PyGTK Tutorial to GTK#. We had the opportunity to plan a lot of things about the project, we also talked about Mono and its community around Colombia.

The day of the event

During morning, it was a meeting between Lucho Garzón, Mayor of Bogotá, Gustavo Petro, congressman of Colombia and Richard Stallman. Unfortunately I couldn't be in the meeting. The meeting was for talk about the project for a Free Software Law in Colombia, and the adoption of Free Software in the Bogotá administration. People whom was there say it was a very productive meeting, I hope so.

In the noon, we went to get lunch with Richard Stallman and various members of the Free Software Community of Colombia. I had the opportunity to talk with some of them.

In the afternoon, we went to the León de Greiff auditory at the National University of Colombia. The event began with various speeches about Free Software. There was also some stands from various companies such as: Novell, IBM, AMD, and others. There was also some LUGs stands. I was in charge of the Debian Colombia stand. We show a very beautiful laptop with Debian installed. We also sold Debian shirts and buttons.

At five in the afternoon, it began the Richard Stallman speech. It was his classic speech about Free Software and the GNU Project. He also made a lot of jokes about the emacs church. The impression that Stallman gave me was that he is a very rádical man, and it seems that he is too close only to his ideas and dont accept any different of that. He was the pioneer of the Free Software Movement, but he doesn't represent it right now.

At night it was the second Debeta in a bar called "Buhos". That night was just great! I met even more people from Colombia related with Free Software. I wasn't noted before, but one of those members was Miguel Cabrera, who also is working on the adaption of the GTK# tutorial. Camilo, Miguel and I seated to drink some beers and talk about Mono in Colombia. Then we think in the idea of create a community of Mono developers in Colombia. We decided that if we can complete the GTK# Tutorial, and we prove to our self that we can work, then we must create the community. We talk with Alejandro Forero who is working for Novell, and he say that he will do anything he can for support us.

Here are some links to pictures:

http://fotografias.gsol.ws/thumbnails.php?album=4
http://pwp.etb.net.co/davidc1/debeta/index.html

Sunday I was in back here in Popayán. I am so exited about that trip, and I want to work very hard in my Mono Projects....