Monthly FOSS Chch meet up

We meet monthly to discuss all sorts of stuff about free and open source software (FOSS). We've been going for 5-6 years now. Since Covid, we've moved our meetings online.

We always meet via BigBlueButton <- this link will automatically redirect you to the video conferencing system we're using any given month (it changes occasionally due to us running our own conferencing infrastructure).

Unfortunately, Meetup.com has short-sighted restrictions (strongly biased to favour proprietary options) about what sorts of video conferencing services it allows us to specify, so it rejects the valid link to our BigBlueButton du jour. That's why we have to put it here in the event description.

At the meetings, we do demos of software, presentations about coding, platforms, and whatever else folks attending want to share. We talk about what FOSS is (and isn't), FOSS-friendly employment, how to find work, how to contribute to FOSS. We talk about the politics surrounding this stuff, as well.

Attendees talk about projects they're working with, that they use, how others can use them. We debate stuff, help clarify confusing topics, and generally have a good time (meetings run from 2-3 hours, and people can come and go as they choose)

Some future ideas of what we could do: "help clinics" for people wanting to run FOSS apps, like maybe put LineageOS on an Android phone, or install Linux on their laptop, address any annoying niggles...

We could demo deploying a cloud server running Linux, deploying Docker containers to run some useful web app, look at hardening a server.

Ultimately, we do what attendees want to do! Sign up and help chart the course we take!