Greeks check out GNU/Linux

By Egan Orion LATER THIS WEEK a GNU/Linux roadshow will be rolling into Athens, that ancient cradle of Western Civilisation. The E-Business Forum and Greek Research and Technology Network are holding a two-day "Workshop on Free Software / Open Source Software" June 27-28, with Thursday's programme pitched for software developers and Friday's oriented to public Government and Education management.

If you've guessed that the mention of Free Software twigs the presence of Richard Stallman, well... you'd be correct. He's the leadoff speaker for the GNU Project, and will be joined that first day by Scott Collins from Mozilla, Mattias Ettrich for KDE, and Mathieu Lacage of GNOME.

The second day lineup will include welcomes by Greek government officials, followed by Joseph Bremer of the European Commission, John Weathersby for the Open Source Software Institute, Jean-Michel Dalle from Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan, and Andrew Aitken of Olliance Group. Thanasis Priftis of the Greek Information Society will deliver closing remarks.

Greek government officials and technologists must have noted increasing adoption of free/open-source software in government and public systems elsewhere, worldwide (e.g., Denmark, Germany, France, Peru, South Korea, Taiwan, et al). Perhaps they too will seek to regain control of their software licensing and directions, as well as reduce their IT costs?

The workshop announcement is here.

We don't know whether or not they'll be selling tickets at the door, but we're open to any airfare donations to sunny Athens to cover this.µ