We’re pleased to be working with the West Yorkshire Linux User Group to host a very special guest lecture.

On the evening of 23^rd August, international award-winning ‘crusader for the freedoms of computer users’ Dr Richard Stallman will be in Leeds to give a guest lecture which we’re hosting here at Leeds Metropolitan University.

 Dr Stallman’s guest lecture is entitled ‘For a Free Digital Society’.

Here’s a little more detail on the themes of this lecture:

Activities directed at “including” more people in the use of digital technology are predicated on the assumption that such inclusion is invariably a good thing.  It appears so, when judged solely by immediate practical convenience.  However, if we also judge in terms of human rights, whether digital inclusion is good or bad depends on what kind of digital world we are to be included in.  If we wish to work towards digital inclusion as a goal, it behoves us to make sure it is the good kind.

Dr Richard Stallman launched the free software movement in 1983 and started the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984.  GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small.  The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today.  Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award, and the the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates.

The event is on Tuesday 23^rd August 2011 at 7pm here at Leeds Met University. The exact room will be dependent on the take-up - so it’s either at Old Broadcasting House, or at The Rosebowl.  Please sign up for the event via Eventbrite