Software Freedom Day 2007 at FAST-NU Karachi

The world celebrated the Software Freedom Day 2007 on Saturday, 15th September, 2007. We had 90+ countries and over 330 groups covering the free software world in the form of various presentations and exciting activities.

We, in Pakistan, weren’t really quiet and we had 3 groups from Pakistan who celebrated the Software Freedom Day. I was able to get a seat in the Software Freedom Day celebrated at FAST-NU Karachi City Campus. We had a lot of fun there. Initially it was quiet and somewhat boring (I was alone with no friends) but as the day progressed, I was enjoying myself amongst the audience who filled in the whole seating area.

The speakers were from reputable organizations such as NCR, IBM, Avanza Solutions etc and most of them were FAST-NU graduates with cutting edge Linux and Open Source skills. three out of the four speakers were around their mid twenties so no one felt we are listening to uncles.

My favorite was Talha Tariq (ex-FASTIAN), from NCR. He was a nice and confident young man who was so good at explaining the concepts that it easily proved how well he understood all those things he was talking about. I wish to talk to him and listen to him more. He showcased some damn cool open source applications and it really did expand my horizons for open source technologies. I really loved his slogan “Theres no reason why you should not use Linux” which was true IMO. He got the audience jumping for some eye candy via Compiz

Then there was Shahjahan Lariq, another FAST-NU graduate, who now works at IBM. He was pretty different from the rest of the speakers as he was dressed in a casual way and his style was that of the coolest man on the planet. But without a doubt, his unique style did make me feel I’m having a good time. He talked about how Linux is a big player in the market despite being free and what that ‘free’ actually meant.

One of the guys I was personally looking forward to was Ayaz Ahmed Khan, from Avanza Solutions. He is also an ex-FASTIAN and I loved his style too. The topic he was talking about was mainly the licenses in the open source world, specifically, he talked a lot of GPL (General Public License). It was a nice refresher to have.

There was another guy Mohammad Ali Shah from Avanza Solutions. He was working under the eBanking Department at Avanza Solutions. I really didn’t gather much from his presentation but his idea was to promote Linux of today, an operating system which is just as easy to use as any other operating system.

It was interesting to note that almost all the speakers talked about and used Ubuntu and Windows while delivering presentations. This shows that Ubuntu has almost taken over as the OS of choice when it comes to desktop Linux.

All in all, the event was good and there were some prizes to be given away after each session. The prizes were cool: a WebCAM, a 1 GB USB Stick and Audionic Speakers (good ones). We were all given CDs consisting of a Linux distribution Live CD and an Open CD which contained lots of useful open source applications which were ready to run on Windows OS.

I hope to see such events taking place in the future as well.

Happy Software Freedom Day 🙂


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