The newly formed Manchester Free software Group hosted Richard Stallman in Manchester or the first of May.
Talking on the subject of Free Software in ethics and practice", RMS drew a crowd of more than 300 people to the event, run in association with the BCS and IET.

Anna Morris is co-founder of FLOSSIE conference for women in Free Software, Manchester Fellowship Group Deputy Coordinator, and Co-Director of ethical-pets.co.uk. She is currently writing a book on video editing with Free Software, and volunteering with Document Freedom Day 2013 in her spare time.

She talks about running her e-commerce company with Free Software tools.

«'Public Software'? The so-called Public Software is a political project which aims to remove the Free Software main feature: the Freedom. It tries to put the people in the role of mere 'viewing public'.

"The Free Software conferences held in Berga during the last weekend, where eyeOS participated with a conference and a workshop, ended with a very special moment: The official inauguration of the first “Free Software” street in the world. Richard Stallman, founder of GNU Project and Free Software Foundation, was invited and after speaking, officially inaugurated the street..."

"The free software street is a street about 300 meters from the city of Berga, province of Barcelona (Spain), located from the coordinates 42.097168, 1.841567 to 42.096138,1.839265. The particularity of this street is the first in the world dedicated to free software movement, and which was officially opened by Mr. Richard Stallman, founder of free software, on 3 July 2010..."

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) mounted its protests against "corruption" of the BBC by Microsoft in London and Manchester this morning.

"Add this to your diaries. Richard Stallman will be talking about free software in Manchester on 1st of May. The talk has been organised in association with the Manchester branches of the BCS and IET. Details from announcements are..."

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is planning protests at key BBC sites because it believes the national broadcaster's management has been corrupted by Microsoft. Protests will be mounted outside Television Centre in London and outside the corporation's Manchester offices on Tuesday, 14 August.

At a recent free software advocacy event I encountered a great example of free software being used in the community. Chris Kilby has been running an IT suite for residents of his local housing estate in Stepney, east London. A suite of desktop PCs running Edubuntu with a Fedora-based server has been built and runs on a shoestring budget.