Free Software in Balkans 2010

The conference Free Software in Balkans is an annual meeting of the free software users, developpers and supporters in the Balkan countries. It will travel from country to country, year to year to different locations. The Conference will gather professionals, academics and enthusiasts who share the vision that software should be free and open for the community to develop and customize to its needs, and that knowledge is a communal property and free and open to everyone.

The conference will be a traditional event, which will gather a regional audience once a year for lectures and presentations by a variety of international and national professionals who will present the latest developments in the global FOSS community. The conference should bring all the activists from the Balkans to one place for cooperation.

The conference will also be used as a meeting point for a network of individuals, associations and companies with the aim of sponsoring and initiating projects which benefit the people of Balkans, by establishing it as one of the European centers of FOSS, which should result in commercial benefits for the Region.

Other aims of the conference are to introduce Balkan businesses and public to low cost alternatives to expensive proprietary software, to train local people in the latest developments in software and social-collaboration tools, to promote respect for legal licenses, and introduce the public to the best methods for localization of software and knowledge.

The first conference of this kind is going to be hosted by the University of Vlora, in Albania. The ideators of the conference are Flavia Marzano and James Mike DuPont. The organizers are the University of Vlora, the FLOSSK (Free/Libre Open Source Software Association of Kosova), FreeSoft.AL (Albanian Association for Software Freedom and Open Knowledge), and the Albanian Academy of Sciences. By starting in Albania, we hope to help create a community there that will continue next year to host it’s own conference.

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