Last Saturday we celebrated Software Freedom Day in our college premises which went out extremely well. Oh but wait! What is Software Freedom Day? Well, Software Freedom Day or simply SFD is an annual worldwide event celebrated every third Saturday of September with the aim of increasing awareness of Free Software and its virtues, and encouraging its use. It was first celebrated on 28th August 2004. And since 2006 it was decided that SFD will be celebrated every third Saturday of September. Since that time it has grown in popularity and every year more than 300 events are organized by over 100 cities from around the world. Thanks to the god of coincidence, the day is also shared by International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Free Software is a matter of liberty not price. With free and open-source software, you can run the program as your wish for any purpose. You can modify the codes and make the program the way you want it to be. You will have the freedom to study how the code works. Each one of us can contribute to the open-source community and make a great difference in the larger scenario. Free and open-source software has taken the use of software to a whole new level. It's all about sharing and Software Freedom Day is a perfect platform to make people aware of what they are bound to in using the software.
This year's Software Freedom Day was celebrated with the theme Freedom Matters. Nepal Open Source Klub (NOSK), a group of volunteers working to promote the use of open-source software organized the event on our college premises. I, along with 34 other members and 10 organizers, volunteered for the event. The event featured a Hackathon, demos on several Linux distributions, demos on open-source hardware and software, open-source games, 3D movies, Virtual Reality with Google Cardboard, open art competition, and other stuff which would make this post annoyingly long if I had to mention them.
Every volunteer was assigned to conduct a specific demo working in groups. I took responsibility to conduct a demo on Raspberry Pi which is an incredible open-source hardware. The event saw around one thousand technology enthusiasts. At the end of the day, the event was concluded successfully by cutting a beautiful SFD cake (not to mention free pizzas and crazy group dances). Volunteering always provides a great opportunity to interact with so many people and a lot of things to learn from. I heart-fully want to express gratitude towards NOSK for organizing the event and providing us the change to learn so much from it.