Ceata's Coliberator conference, taking place in the Romanian capital Bucharest this weekend, could help revive the country's free software community. Ceata, a free software advocy group, is bringing together 25 speakers, including Member of the European Parliament Amelia Andersdotter and Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe.
Says FSFE President Gerloff: "It's the first time that Romania has a proper national free software conference since 2009. They're expecting over a hundred participants." Gerloff hopes the conference can help put some pressure on the government to tackle discrimination of free and open source software in IT procurement. "IT procurement is a mess, here as well as in other EU countries."
Coliberator 2013 will be the first of a series of national free software conferences, promises Ceata in its announcement. That would make the conference a potential successor to eLiberatica. That conference took place in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Last year Agora, a Romanian publishing firm involved in eLiberatica organised an open source conference, also aiming to reunite and strengthen the country's free and open source software movement.
The cost of freedom
In the conference announcement, Tiberiu Turbureanu, Ceata's founder writes: "If you value freedom and love technology, come and join us at the conference."
"Coliberator will celebrate digital freedom, presenting the public both successful free (as in freedom) projects and newly liberated projects. The conference is community driven, doesn't require registration and participation is free. Coliberator gathers free software activists, developers and users, free culture authors and free hardware visionaries."
MEP Andersdotter is scheduled to talk about the challenges that society has to overcome on the way to adopting digital freedom. FSFE's Gerloff, will offer ideas on how to build a free information society.
The event takes place at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the University of Bucharest.
More information:
Conference website:
Ceata
Ceata conference announcement