SYNOPSIS

This essentially is the business and technology part of a 2-hour lecture I gave in November 2005 at the University of Tartu in Estonia, restructured for a Debconf audience.

It answers questions like:

- Why are Free Software-based blogging technologies the best CRM, Marketing and Project Management framework?
- Why is Free Software the best argument to convince venture capitalists that they should fund your startup?
- Why is Free Software the best data preservation and support guarantee for both business and government?
- Why is Free Software the best tool for governments and NGO to reach and maintain a dialogue with their audience?

DESCRIPTION

Because it often appears as pioneering technology that fuels innovation and fosters the sort of open standardization that supports internationalization and interoperability, Free Software makes perfect economic sense for everyone, in any country, rich or poor.

As abundantly demonstrated at Debconf5, Debian indeed offers an ever-increasing variety of software for widely diverse purposes and in an ever-increasing number of languages. In truth, Debian arguably is the biggest and most widespread Free Software distribution on the planet, because it serves as the reference upon which most other popular "Linux" distributions are based.

We discuss how Free Software developers can efficiently and eloquently leverage these facts to attract venture capitalist funding, to stimulate business adoption, and to help governments standardize on free and open solutions that guarantee their population a low-cost and equal access to the services.

SEE ALSO

http://q-funk.iki.fi