Building An Open Source Hardware Movement

Last Saturday’s celebration of this year’s Software Freedom Day in UP Diliman was a rewarding experience both for its organizers and the students and enthusiasts that braved the rain and floods to participate. More than a thousand eager attendees joined the morning plenary talks and the various breakout sessions in the afternoon on different aspects and uses of free and open source software (FOSS).

I was among the plenary speakers together with Prof. Peter Sy of the UP Diliman Interactive Learning Center who discussed the Center’s various programs using FOSS to support educational initiatives in the University. There were speakers on the open source browser Mozilla by its country rep Eusebio Barrun and on current mobile trends given by Ms. Charo Nuguid.

Rep. Raymond Palatino gave a talk on how FOSS can contribute to environmental awareness while Mr. Edgardo Quiros shared his experiences in the adoption of FOSS software at the National Library. Another discussion by Jojit Ballesteros from Wikimedia Philippines was about Open Culture.