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May 2018: Photos from Brazil and Argentina

lundi 2 juillet 2018 à 19:20

Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman (RMS) went on a 12-city visit to Brazil and Argentina this past May and June. The trip took him…

…to the Federal Institute of São Paulo, in Araraquara, São Paulo, Brazil, where, on May 14^th, he gave his speech "A Free Digital Society."¹ The event was well attended, with universities and schools from neighboring cities having organized to shuttle their students to it by bus.

IFSP Professor José Rodolfo Beluzo, who had organized the visit, said the talk was "highly praised and helped people to reflect on the freedom of information." "It also helped us begin to reflect on the freedom of information in our school," he added.

…to Campus Party, which this year was held in Salvador de Bahia, Bahia. On May 17^th, he gave his free software speech¹ on the main (Feel the Future) stage, to about 420 attendees…

…and on to Argentina, starting in Misiones Posadas, where, on May 19^th, in the Sala de Prosa of the Parque del Conocimiento, he gave his speech "Software libre en la ética y la práctica"¹ to an audience of about 400 people, including government officials in telecommunications and legislators from Misiones.

…to San Miguel de Tucumán, in Tucumán, and then on to Mendoza, where he spoke at the Facultad Regional Mendoza de la Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. He again gave his free software speech,¹ to a diverse audience of over a thousand people.

Adrián Sierra, the UTN's secretary of student affairs, who invited RMS, was pleased with the outcome, saying that, before RMS's visit, the issue of software freedom had been an "optional" one, and that, after his visit, it was clear to university authorities that using free software was about guaranteeing freedom, sovereignty and was a moral duty for an educational institution. He added, "All the IT labs provide the option of running GNU/Linux and the Centro de Copiado Autogestionado of the Centro de Estudiantes runs and develops free software exclusively."

Before the speech started, the UTN, which forms half of Argentina's engineers, granted RMS the title of honorary professor, its highest distinction.

…to the Centro Cultural Teatrino de la Trapalanda, in Río Cuarto, Córdoba, where he gave his speech "Sociedad digital libre,"¹ on May 26^th. RMS drove home the point:

Any school level should teach only free software, because a school's social mission is to educate citizens of a society that is capable, strong, independent, caring, and free. Because to teach a proprietary program is a way of implanting dependence in the future. It's like teaching to smoke tobacco.

…to the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, where, on May 28^th, he spoke at the Instituto Universitario de la Policía Federal (IUPFA), giving his speech "Software libre: Soberanía e independencia tecnológica."

…and, on May 30^th, at the Centro Cultural de la Cooperación Floreal Gorini, where people came to hear him give his speech "Copyright vs. Comunidad."¹

…to La Plata, Buenos Aires, where he spoke at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNP), on May 31^st.

He finished with speeches in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, on June 2^nd, and then, back in Brazil, in Pato Branco, Paraná, on June 4^th and, finally, in São Paulo, on June 6^th. Much work remains to be done; however, the trip did much to increase the public's awareness of the importance of computer-user freedom. Commenting on the situation in Brazil, Alexandre Oliva, founding member of Free Software Foundation Latin America and the 2017 winner of the FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software concluded,

Last decade, free software had a lot of exposure and support in Brazilian governments, from federal to municipal. This declined significantly in the present decade: as the government tides turned, the movement lost many influential positions and even activists who moved on. Those of us who remained need to prepare the next generation of activists, focusing on the young. They might seem lost to anti-social networks, mobile phone cells and idIoT surveillance devices, but these are all additional reasons to inform them and urge them to join the resistance. Having RMS around to draw their attention to these issues is invaluable!

We hope you will join the movement!

Thank you to everyone who made all these trips possible! A special thanks to Alexandre for, among other things, making the Araraquara and São Paulo speeches possible, and to Javier Barcena for all his help on the Argentinian side.

Please fill out our contact form, so that we can inform you about future events in and around Araraquara, Misiones Posadas, Tucumán, Mendoza, Río Cuarto, Buenos Aires and La Plata, Mar del Plata, Pato Branco, and São Paulo, all of which RMS visited on this trip.

Please see www.fsf.org/events for a full list of all of RMS's confirmed engagements,
and contact rms-assist@gnu.org if you'd like him to come speak.

^{1. The recording will soon be posted on our audio-video archive.↩}