The group has been formed to promote the use of Free Software in the communities of Ontario and to support individuals who wish to use or create Free Software. The goals are similar to those of the Free Software Foundation.
We plan to meet at 9:00pm Eastern Time on the 24th of every month, so that the meeting falls on a different weekday from month to month. Sometimes we meet in person at various locations, but usually we meet in a voice chat using Mumble on the Group:LibrePlanet_Brasil server. Thanks for hosting, Brasil!
09 December 2014 - GTALUG + LibrePlanet Ontario, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre at Ryerson University, 245 Church Street, Room 203 (second floor)
20 October 2014 - LibrePlanet Ontario, The Fox & Firkin, Yonge/Eglinton
22 September 2014 - LibrePlanet Ontario, 7pm at Timothy's Coffee, Yonge/Eglinton
13 September 2014 - Afternoon Tea with LibrePlanet-Ontario, TorontoCrypto and Ubuntu Canada, 3pm to 6pm, Alio Lounge, 108 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
14 July 2010 - Toronto Free Software group, 5:30pm at the Linux Caffe, 326 Harbord St
We need some money to put into the Gandi account for a domain name and for the server itself. $15.30 USD buys us about a month of server time. More money, more CPU, RAM, bandwidth we can afford!
Discontinued due to lack of interest and effectiveness; a central resource is not as effective as giving workshops and training sessions to others on how to build their own resource
Software Freedom Day 2015
Strategy
This is a draft strategy -- feel free to edit!
We have three main areas of focus:
Education/Activism/Advocacy
Community
Services/Support
In all that we do, we need to consider how we are unique from:
National/Global groups (e.g. FSF, CLUECAN, etc.) -- our focus is more local
Other local groups (e.g. GTALUG, local language/project groups, etc.) -- our focus is on software freedom
Education/Activism/Advocacy
Education can be...
Community-focused, inward-facing -- educating ourselves and our community;
There are many people open to the message of software freedom (e.g. developers, people who are already familiar with the open source movement but maybe haven't yet heard about the free software movement, etc.) who need to hear it.
There is much to learn about software freedom for those people already familiar with the movement (e.g. licensing, making a living, privacy/encryption, finding hardware that respects your freedom, etc.)
Public-facing, more outward-facing activism -- educating the public, educating institutions (universities, governments), etc.
Ideas
Street team!
Presentations at other meetups/ally groups:
Licensing and practical implications of it on work or hobby projects
Why GPL or AGPL for your next project at work
How we used GPL/AGPL on some code and things went well
Why licensing matters for software
Why free documentation matters
Why free software needs free tools
Resources (links) on our website
easy to access for new members
good starting point to important essays, useful software, practical tutorials, licensing tools, etc.
Activism around big proprietary software launches, e.g. presenting the case for software freedom at an Apple/Samsung launch
Privacy / Surveillance issues
Open Data, e.g. City of Toronto, Province of Ontario?
Op. Ed. pieces / letters to the editor to newspapers on current affairs related to software freedom
Community
Monthly meeting / social
Mailing list
Visit ally group meetups to have a presence and find like-minded people who might be interested in joining LibrePlanet
Booth at conferences, e.g. FSOSS, DrupalCamp, PyCon Canada, etc.
Hackathons using open data and free software serivce APIs/protocols
Partner with ally groups (e.g. local OpenStreetMap or open data groups) and organize hackathons
Mentorship from those with more experience in a project to newcomers
Local teams (e.g. Toronto Team, Kitchener/Waterloo team, Ottawa team, etc.)
Enable and equip campus groups (e.g. University of Toronto, University of Waterloo)
If we can enable them with our own materials (mailing list, website, services, resources, etc.), they can focus on getting local club status, having a local presence on campus, and campus-specific issues
Free software tools for university life (e.g. LibreOffice, buying hardware that respects your freedom for residence, etc.)
GNU/Linux tutors/mentors, e.g. for computer science students
Google Summer of Code / Libre Code mentorship/support
Advocacy within the university
Use of freedom-friendly open standards in courses (e.g. being able to submit assignments in open formats)
Resisting proprietary software requirements in courses
Services/Support
Server with hosted free software services for members:
Jabber accounts
Email
pump.io / GNU Social
Mirror of free-software-only Linux distros like Trisquel or gNewSense
ownCloud? (would require a lot of storage space, but could provide support for calendars, file sharing, etc., could use storage quotas, encryption is also possible)
tt-rss: RSS reader?
basic git hosting (with Gitorious or Gitlab or straight SSH)?
web hosting?
The idea would not be to devote a ton of time and resources to become a hosting provider, but to offer libre network services to members which might not otherwise be accessible to non-sysadmins.
Roadmap
Phase 0: Bootstrapping / Build a Working Prototype
Begin regular monthly meetings
Sketch strategy for the group moving forward
Build up some basic materials (website, mailing list, business cards or postcards, etc.) to use for recruitment
Phase 1: Recruitment
After Phase 0, we could use the recruitment materials and strategy/plans for the group to build up the membership
by visiting ally group events looking for like-minded people
by reaching out to University of Toronto contacts for a campus group
by preparing to have a presence at conferences with like-minded people
Phase 2: Expansion / Implementation of Other Features
After phase 1, depending on numbers, strengths, and interest of the membership, we could start pulling other activities off the strategy "wishlist" and begin to implement them.
Different members would ideally take the lead of difference projects, e.g. Blaise could take a lead on campus groups, etc.
Phase 3: Other Regional Teams
If we can get this working with the Toronto team/chapter, and we can find people interested in other regions (e.g. KW, Ottawa, London), we can equip them to implement similar ideas in their cities
This could happen sooner or later, depending on when we can recruit members from these regions to lead local teams/chapters
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom.
We defend the rights of all software users. (Read more)