Group:Manchester

Manchester Free Software (MFS)

Purpose

The purpose of Manchester Free Software is to promote the Free Software philosophy.

About

There are other Free Software related groups in Manchester but MFS is the only one that focuses on the Free Software philosophy. We are not FSF Manchester although we share much of the FSF philosophy. One example of disagreement is that we regard Debian GNU/Linux as a good Free Software choice whereas FSF officially do not[1].

Anybody is welcome to the meetings, but you will be particularly interested if you are into such things as Free Software Foundation, GNU Project including GNU/Linux, League for Programming Freedom, Free as in freedom BSDs like FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Open Rights Group, Mozilla project, OSS Watch, Hackspace Foundation, mySociety, anti-Digital Restrictions Management, OpenStreetMap, Free Our Data, The Libel Reform Campaign, data.gov.uk, Open Data Manchester, Mozilla Drumbeat.

Mailing List

You can join the mailing list at fsuk-manchester mailing list. This is where we discuss free software issues, events and news.

Group Meetings

Group meetings are on the third Tuesday of the month at 19:00. We normally have a talk with questions and then continue discussions informally at a nearby pub. These meetings are currently held at Madlab. Details are in the Group Meetings table and are posted to the fsuk-manchester mailing list beforehand.

Events

In addition to the group meetings, MFS organises and helps out with special events in order to promote the Free Software philosophy. If you have an event you would like us help out with, or that we might be interested in, please get in contact with the team at fsuk-manchester-team@nongnu.org. We wish to attend a broad range of events.

Past

• Chorlton's Big Green Festival 2011 - Saturday, 16th April 2011 - Chorlton's Big Green Festival
• GNOME 3.0 Launch Party - Sunday, 10th April 2011. 14:00-17:00. - GNOME 3.0
• Ucubed - Saturday, 2nd of April 2011. 10:00-17:00. An event to encourage community involvement in Ubuntu and Debian based distributions using the freedom given by free software.
• Ubuntu beginners workshop: the system and the philosophy 11.02 - Saturday, 19th February 2011 - Importantly this will be about the system and the philosophy.
• Manchester Anarchist Bookfair 2010 - Saturday, 2nd October 2010 - Manchester Anarchist Bookfair site
• Software Freedom Day (SFD) 2010 in Manchester - Saturday, September 18th, 2010 - http://softwarefreedomday.org/
• U³ - Ubuntu and Upstream UnWorkshop Day - Saturday, August 28, 2010 from 11:00 AM - 9:00 PM
• Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" Jam in Manchester - Ubuntu Jams
• Chorlton's Big Green Festival 2010 - Chorlton's Big Green Festival
• Logo Competition - details and entries for our logo competition, 2009.
• Software Freedom Day 2009 in Manchester - plans for our Software Freedom Day 2009 event
• Free The Library 2008 - our planned Software Freedom Day event
• Showcase 08
• Euro Elections 2009 - Manchester Free Software petitions the candidates

Projects

Projects that Manchester Free Software is involved in.

FAQ

Questions that we get asked and the answers are in the FAQ.

You Can Help

Find out what needs to be done to keep the group running.

Team

Contact the MFS Team at fsuk-manchester-team@nongnu.org.

Information for Team members.

Speakers

We’re always looking for new speakers. If you have suggestions for speakers, or would like to speak yourself, please go on to the Speakers page for more information.

Publicity

When publicising meetings or events we inform various online communities.

A general list of places to publicise Manchester Free Software.

A list of materials to use when publicising Manchester Free Software.

Merchandise

We have a selection of books, badges and stickers for sale, kindly donated by the Free Software Foundation. Proceeds go to both the FSF and Manchester Free Software.

History

Manchester Free Software was formed in response to the growing need for a group based in the Manchester area that focuses on Free Software and GNU/Linux primarily, but also on issues such as Digital Restrictions Management and other issues which infringe on the freedoms of computer users.

What about other groups in the local area?

Manchester has a healthy tradition of groups based on free software technologies, but these groups suffer from a tendency to focus on mixing free software with proprietary software, or even proprietary operating systems, such as Mac OS X. Worse still, many of the groups are suffering from a strong bias against groups like the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation.

We anticipate that this group can happily co-exist with the others. Both the BSD and LUG groups have many members in common, and we hope many of them will want to belong to our group as well.

Free Software related groups

• Perl User Groups, Manchester
• GNU/Linux User Groups, Manchester
• Free Software User Groups, Manchester
• PHP User Groups, Manchester
• Hurd User Groups, Manchester
• NW Ruby Users Group

See also - Manchester Co-working

"issue" is not in the list (interest, location, project, school) of allowed values for the "Organized around" property.