From July 9 until 13, the third edition of the "Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre" (LSM) also known as the "Libre Software Meeting", will be held at the University of Bordeaux I in Bordeaux, France on campus at the ENSEIRB. The LSM is a unique event in that it is the only conference on free technology and software that is also freely accessible to the public. Like the two previous years, the meeting is being organized by ABUL "Association Bordelaise des Utilisateurs de Logiciels Libres" in collaboration with APRIL and AFUL, the two national associations of the free software, and with the assistance of the Regional Council of Aquitaine and the European Union. Last year, the LSM brought together over four hundred participants coming from more than forty different countries.

An Open Program to Contribute to the Rise of Free Software

The primary objectives of the LSM are to offer a single meeting ground open to the largest number of people possible and to permit the rapid exchange of ideas and the combined energy from free software projects to inspire and fuel innovation. The conference is open to any person wishing to contribute to the rise of the free software: project leaders, developers, translators, end users, lawyers et al. Some of the best international specialists in these disciplines have met here in the past two years to discuss and share their ideas with others. As Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project which is at the origin of the movement, said: "it is essential that Free Software advocates take part; conferences devoted to Free Software are far too rare and the LSM is the only meeting completely devoted entirely to Free Software."

Open to the General Public

The LSM is not only a meeting place for international specialists: the purpose is also to allow the general public to discover the applications of Free Software. The sessions open to the public will cover how education, health, music, graphics, the public works and companies and use Free Software. These sessions will proceed from the tenth of July until the thirteenth and will be organized by the creators of the software themselves. One of the forces of Free Software is that this meeting is between the users and the developers and it is partly for that that it is adopted by an increasing number of users, as well on a purely personal basis.

Free Software

Programs which are classified as Free Software are programs which are provided with their source code (i.e. blueprints). It is, however, more than just this: users are guaranteed the freedoms to use, distribute, modify and redistribute the modified versions of the software as long as they extend these rights to the recipients. Free Software is not necessarily free with respect to its cost even thought this is often the case. Free Software programs have become examples of high quality software because the best developers of the world have united to embrace these ideals. Only meetings such as the LSM can, however, enable them to meet physically and interact on a large scale.

To learn more about the LSM, visit:
http://lsm.abul.org

Web sites of the organizing associations are:
http://www.abul.org - http://www.april.org - http://www.aful.org

Press contact:
Alix GUILLARD
email: presse@lsm.abul.org
tel: +33 630 35 10 55