justinbax/vanierfloss

Vanier College FLOSS Club

Vanier FLOSS Club

Welcome to Vanier College FLOSS Club!

Where the Vanier community gets together to celebrate and contribute to FLOSS projects.

If you are just curious or already passionate about the FLOSS world, you are more than welcome to join us!

• What is FLOSS
  • The 4 essential freedoms
  • Curated projects
• What are typical contributions? Can students help?
• Why should you join the Club?
• Where and when do we meet?

What is FLOSS?

It stands for Free/Libre and Open Source Software, and basically, it is software that respects users' freedom. In order to maintain human rights and civil liberties in the realm of software, below are the 4 essential freedoms as defined by the Free Software Foundation.

The 4 essential freedoms:

1. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
2. The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Curated projects

Refer to our curated list of FLOSS projects and get inspired!

What are typical contributions? Can students help?

Totally yes! If you've done any of the following, that's what we do!

• Coding
• Testing and Reporting bugs
• Writing documentation
• Translating software or documentation
• Designing graphical material
• Mentoring newcomers

Even if you haven't done any of the above, if you need a helping hand to start contributing, join the Club and you'll be at the right place.

Why should you join the Club?

There is no single answer here, we each have our reasons. If you are interested in any of the following, consider joining!

• Improve your coding skills
• Contribute to FLOSS projects
• Build your developer portfolio
• Meet friends that share common values
• Gain STAR recognition

Where and when do we meet?

Our main means of communication is a discord server.

We use Jitsi for our virtual meetings, a FLOSS solution for video conferencing. Join our channel and make yourself at home! No account needed.

In the past, we used to have weekly meetings at the STEM Center, but since many members graduated, we are basically meeting to run the FLOSS Day, once a semester.

Meeting in-person is specially important for newcomers, as a way to quickly get them into the FLOSS world. While club members work on their own FLOSS activities over the week, having people around might encourage more contributions.

If you want to propose the return of regular meetings, please announce it in the club server and we'll create a pool to figure out the most popular time slot.