Group: Manchester

Manchester Free Software (MFS)

This is the wiki of Manchester Free Software (MFS). 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 do not[1].

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.

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

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.

Meetings

Group meetings occur on the third Tuesday of the month at 19:00. Details are posted on the web site, on this wiki in the Group Meetings table and to the fsuk-manchester mailing list prior.

Administrative meetings happen on the second Monday of the month. The time and location will be stated in the agenda for the next meeting which is on this wiki in the Administrative Meetings table and will be posted on the web site and to the fsuk-manchester mailing list.

See the Meetings page for more details.

Events

Past

• 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.
• SFD 2009 - 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

A list of projects that Manchester Free Software is involved in.

FAQ

Questions that we get asked and the answers.

You Can Help

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

The instructions for setting up a LTSP cluster.

Team

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.

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

See also - Manchester Co-working

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