On Sunday July 24th 2005, Fernanda Weiden opened the meeting "Women and Free Software", organized by FACIL pour l’appropriation collective de l’informatique libre, the Koumbit network, the Laboratoire de Communication Médiatisée par Ordinateur (LabCMO) and Communautique.

Fernanda Weiden herself, activist within the Free Software community in Brazil since 1998, was the inspiration for this meeeting. Involved in organizing the first women and free software meeting of Brazil in 2003, she has since founded "Projeto Software Livre-Mulheres", a project developed to work alongside organizations of women in order to encourage debate on their needs and their participation in the domain of information and communication technologies (ICT) and particularly of free software. She is a participant in the Debian project (GNU/Linux distribution) and in the "Free Software Foundation of Latin America".

The July event was the first step of a medium term objective to create a "Women and Free Software" collective in Montreal. The participants were given the opportunity to determine the stakes of free software through these topics: women and the development of free software, women and the access to training for ICT, social and digital integration, participative uses (network citizens and solidarity) and appropriation models of free software, concerns of the social environment and paradigms of local development. The presentation was followed by a roundtable where guests involved in different domains (development, education and IT in Quebec) shared their experiences. There was also a discussion and presentation of books and documents about free software.

For more information, please visit the website of the event:

http://femmes.informatiquelibre.info

This event was also the occasion to discuss the workshops and presentations for the SQIL, Semaine Québécoise de l’Informatique Libre, which will be held between November 12th and 20th 2005.