BelizeOS Meeting - July 2017

[Harry Noble]

there was no attendance at the online meeting, may have called it
late. If someone thinks the day and time are not good for the majority
then it can be changed. Anyway we can do a mailing list one now.

first off following the agenda,

Belize Open Source was officially registered in 2013 but existed as
Belize Linux User Group for many years before.
We are mainly trying to inform non tech and tech users of the options
available other than windows.
So we have held many open days and conferences to attract new members
but have not been very consistent with it.
I think we should continue to do this as there are many people in
Belize that have no idea of the open source options available and
choose just to pirate software, of course this can not last forever

We have a website https://belizeos.org graciously provided by a
member, that is not much used and should be more up to date, So I am
asking who would like to volunteer to maintain content on it as
webmaster.

In keeping with our advocacy of open source, we should have an event.
We have had software freedom day in San Igancio and Belmopan before
http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/
So if anyone can get a public venue for 16 September 2017 to host this
years event I would like to hear from you. we should start planning
this sooner and not later.

So thank you for your time and if you feel there is something else to
discuss replay to the email.


On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 2:25 PM, Harry Noble <hno...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Monthly BelizeOS meeting ( Usually first Saturday of month ) is this
> Saturday 1 July 2017 at 9AM Belize Time. As always, everyone is
> welcome to join!
> Its online at http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=BelizeOS
>
> Our agenda:
>
> * Introductions (for new folks)
> * BelizeOS Website updates
> * Ideas for more events
>
> * Any other topics proposed
>
> If you'd like to discuss a topic, please mention it on the list ahead
> of time or bring it to the meeting.
>
> Thanks everyone and I look forward to chatting with everyone!
>
> Harry

[Jeromy Reimer]

Hi everyone,
Sad that nobody attended the online meeting. I don't fully understand why there are so few people in Belize interested in technology and especially open source technology. So much of our everyday life is filled with open source software and yet we don't realize it. Most websites run on open source software and even the core of Android is open source.

I have several friends who I got into using open source and I'm surprised how little they would have known about it if I hadn't told them. Now they're really digging it and one of them says he prefers LibreOffice above any other document suite (and yes that includes Microsoft Office) and that GIMP has all the features most people would need and doesn't see the need to pirate or buy Photoshop. All of them dislike Windows, especially Windows 10 cause of the crazy amount of bandwidth it uses compared to the internet speeds in Belize (another sad reality).

I think it's sad that people choose to pirate instead of looking for alternatives or paying for the software. I know a lot of people in Belize actually pay others to install pirated software for them and what's worse is the ones paying for it often don't even know it. And the ones trying to do it legitimately don't get that much customers cause they're price is so much higher. Another issue is that people like to give the excuse that they don't want to learn how to use different software so they stick to pirating. Or in the case of LibreOffice they say it's because almost everybody sends them Microsoft Excel files so they have to have it. This isn't really a valid excuse because LibreOffice works really well with most excel files. I had one person then tell me that LibreOffice doesn't save to Excel format by default so therefore he won't switch (that's just lame).

About the website not being used much. I could maybe start posting reviews or updates of random open source software sometimes. I am not much into taking lead in most cases, but if there's no one else I could maybe fill in till there is.

Now about hosting the Software Freedom Day event I would probably do it if it wasn't for the fact that I'm in Canada right now. Even if I was in Belize I probably wouldn't be too interested in leading it.

I really hope you have some success and maybe when I'm back in Belize again (which might be a year from now) I could help.

Best wishes,
Jeromy Reimer

[Amilcar Vasquez]

i think the website needs to be more interactivvvvvvvvvvve. my letter  v is stuck sorry.  but yeah i can help with updating etc...

--
Belize Open Source https://belizeos.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BelizeOS-Discuss" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to belizeos-discuss+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to belizeos-discuss@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/belizeos-discuss.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/belizeos-discuss/02064ba9-dcbf-458a-bd92-30b4ce3c48f9%40googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Amilcar Vasquez
501-623-6365