Thousands of people have lost everything in the fire that destroyed much of Slave Lake and forced the population to evacuate. The new library is gone. That means hundreds of school-age children will have no access to computers when they return to the area and families will be without computers and Internet communications.
GNU/Linux and free software is known for its adaptability to the needs of developing and recovering communities, which Slave Lake now is. While we focus on the tragedy, we should not lose sight of the opportunity to introduce thousands of people to the many benefits of secure, sustainable, open and adaptable software. Let's put a dent in the mountain of allegedly obsolete computers otherwise destined for unsafe disposal or the landfill. Let's help Slave Lake put funding into more important things than software license fees and pricey hardware they don't actually need. With experience in aboriginal organizations, a location in Edmonton, connections in Athabasca (where an evacuation center is located) and experience converting computers to GNU/Linux or free software on Windows, I am in a unique position to coordinate aid for Slave Lake. I'll be over at the temporary shelter in Edmonton to see what I can do for the people who are staying there, both in the short term and when they start rebuilding. Sincerely, Ralp Pichie For those of you who are not familiar with free/open source software or computer recycling/re-use, here are some links: Ubuntu Canada Local Team web site: http://ubuntu-ca.org/ Ubuntu main site: http://www.ubuntu.com/ Free software at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software Free Geek Vancouver: http://freegeekvancouver.org/ Linux for Aboriginal beings http://tinyurl.com/3d939t4 If you missed this important bit of Canadian news: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/05/17/slave-lake-tues.html _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list clug-talk@clug.ca http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
