Big Crowds Gather to Learn About Software Freedom From the Man Who Started GNU/Linux in 1983
Back in 2009 some people tried to cancel the keynote speaker at GUADEC. He's the "G" in GUADEC and GNOME. They only needed to pay for his travel. He didn't ask to be paid for his talk and when he used the word "virgin" he referred to either a male or a female who never before used a particular text editor. It was a satirical remark that had nothing to do with genders. But some people couldn't bear his message about Software Freedom; they'd latch onto anything to make up a phony scandal.
Back then, roughly a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, events attracted many people and some talks were attended by many hundreds in the audience alone. This is Gran Canaria Desktop Summit in 2009:
We're getting close to that in Italy, where a whole room full of face masks gathered at short notice to listen to the "father" of GNU/Linux.
Yesterday we explained that recognition of GNU (in GNU/Linux) improved in recent years. "Great success in talk at Politechnoco di Milano" was reported to us by GNU's founder.
"It was a great success," he told us. "The room has almost 300 seats, and there were around 80 people standing. Afterwards around 50 people came outside with me and the organizers for the sales and auction."
We did show - even ahead of the talk - the room's capacity, based on the official Web site, repeating that point a few times thereafter. The room had nearly 300 seats and if the numbers stated above are correct, then we're looking at close to 400 people at the talk this past Monday. Remember it was only advertised one business day earlier!
According to the organisers, a video of the talk* will be available at some point. █
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* Now waiting for the POuL video channel to show a video of the talk, as we always try to convert these videos to WebM when they become publicly available.
Photo source: NOTICIAS UNT