[3]

The ceremony

The interest of IT's main actors towards Free Software, towards its enthusiasm and reactivity, keeps growing -- even though their marketing departments, in order to reassure their investors, commonly (mis)name it the 'Open Source community.'

What makes the children of free digital knowledge keep going is the will to share and the power to create. They also benefit from the experience gained through partnerships with private companies and in their R&D labs. IBM has set up such partnerships a long time ago.

It is therefore a pleasure to hand IBM The symbol of The ceremony for its major contribution to The community.

This increasing collaboration with the free software community is a sign of a general move from writing software to providing services -- and this move starts being a real pain for some IT professionals indeed ;)

The pattern featured on The symbol is also a reminder of the care and concern we attach to the issue of software patents in Europe, which would seriously affect this wealthy and fruitful collaboration.

And the colo(u)r of the symbol (sunflower yellow for those who are going to read this) is also a friendly message aimed to pension fund holders who turn themselves to the sun on the beaches of Florida. It's meant to tell them that investment in services will reap rich rewards to their portfolio without proprietari(z|s)ing knowledge.

Freely yours,

On the t-shirt :

Stop mad software
fed with software patents.

Only free software
guarantees fully traceable sources.

Pictures :

ceremony 1

ceremony 2

the t-shirt