Software Freedom Day

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is an annual worldwide celebration of Free Software Foundation. SFD is a public education effort with the aim of increasing awareness of Free Software and its virtues, and encouraging its use.

Software Freedom Day (SFD) @Villupuram

One of the wonderful event “SOFTWARE FREEDOM DAY” was held at Villupuram on 14.10.2018 at Nithyanandha Matric Higher Secondary School. Nearly 200 members were participated.College students,School students,Working professionals,common public were participated in SFD,It was organized by Villupuram Glug(VGLUG).The main objective of this event is create awareness among the general public about Free software, privacy, alternatives of proprietary software, viruses etc.

The following stalls were place on SFD,

Philosophy
Various Linux Distributions
4D coloring and Robotics
Android on privacy
Blender
Internet Of Things
Virus and its attacks
Data visualization
Wikipedia & OSM
Self Hosting
Mozilla
Alternatives to proprietary

Philosophy

Philosophy is one of the main moto of this event,It was taken by Khaleel from Villupuram Glug. He was sharing What is Free Software? and four freedoms of Free software,Main objectives FOSS and what is the different between free software and proprietary software.

Linux Distributions

This stall was handled by Mr.Duraiyarasan(UCEV Glug),He is also Volunteer Villupuram Glug.In this stall, we displayed nearly 7 linux distros in this event. This clearly proves that lots and lots of choices we can utilise in free software. And we distribute the distros to the common people for free.

Blender

It is a 3D animation tool.It was taken by Vijayalakshmi, one of the volunteers of VGLUG. she designed 3D objects and people also amazed to see that 3D object and animated videos which was done using Blender.

Wikipedia & OSM

If we want something to know, we obviously get the answer with the help of Wikipedia. Yes, it is a major central info repository. It is available in many languages. That’s why people love it and easy to access it and another important stall included is that OSM(Open Street Map) s a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. Rather than the map itself, the data generated by the project is considered its primary output,both the session was taken Mr.Ganesh(Free Software Hardware Moment of India) and Mr.Srinivasan(UCEV Glug) they are explain clearly about the wikipedia and OSM.

Android on privacy

This stall was took by Mr.Manimaran from Villupuram Glug, and he was sharing knowledge about privacy and gave live demos using android mobiles. It was really amazed the people that how proprietary software get our data from us.

Internet Of Things

This stall was handled by Mr.Ravivarman, CEO of Dream India Innovation. He was sharing knowledge about Internet Of Things and he gave some demos using Arduino board and raspberry pi. Especially College Students and School buds were very interested on this stall to learn this technology.

Mozilla

Mozilla is a free software community,The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards,this stall was taken by three members Mr.Adam,Mr.Barani and Mr.Selva makilan they are volunteers of Mozilla as well as Villupuram Glug,they took the wonderfull talk about the Mozilla and how to contribute to mozilla,finally they are sharing the Mozilla batchs and sticker with participants.

Alternative to proprietary

Alternatives means something better than one or same as one,Based on Linux many of software gives alternatives to Proprietary software,This stall mainly contain libre office,The best available alternative to Microsoft Office is LibreOffice and OpenOffice. Both are open source projects, community driven, cross platform, easy to use and intuitive. They are also compatible with Microsoft Office in terms of file formats. This Stall was handled by Mrs.Sowndarya Volunteer of Villupuram Glug,she was talked about alternative and how to use the libreoffice.

Self Hosting

Self-hosting is the use of a computer program as part of the toolchain or operating system that produces new versions of that same program,this stall was handled by Mr.Ragul Kanth Volunteer of FSHM as well as Villupuram Glug,He was shared the basic knowledge abut self hosting to participant.