The yearly meeting of the Open Software and Open Source Community – FOSSCOMM 2020 (https://2020.fosscomm.gr/) took place for the 13th year at the Weekend of 21 st & 22nd of November 2020 via internet under the auspices of the University of Western Macedonia in cooperation with the Regional Directorate of Education West Of Macedonia and with EEL/LAK.
In the two-day conference, over 40 interesting speeches and workshops took place from Greek and from all over the world speakers for the open technologies that watched over 1200 participants. The beginning of the workshops of the conference began with a greeting from the Professor of the University of Western Macedonia, Dr. Angelo Michala, on behalf of the Organizing Committee of the Conference, the Rector of the University of Western Macedonia – Professor Theodoros Theodoulidis, the Regional Director of Education of Western Macedonia, Mr. Theodoros Mardiris, the Associate Professor of Harokopio University. Iraklis Varlamis as well as the Coordinator of the Educational Project of Informatics of Western Macedonia, Mr. Dimitrios Tzimas.
Then they started the work of the conference with the presentation of the Head of the Open Source Program Office of the European Commission, Mr. Evangelos Tsavalopoulos, entitled “The Open Source Strategy of the European Commission” where reference was made to the new open source strategy of the European Commission (presentation). Indicatively, some of the very interesting speeches that took place during the two days were:
- The presentation by Alexander Sander (FSFE EU Policy Manager), on the role of Free Software during the Pandemic and the importance of free software being funded by the State (presentation)
- The presentation of Sivan Pätsch (Research Director στο Open Forum Europe) and Paula Grzegorzewska (Policy Analyst στο Open Forum Europe) on the role of Open Source in government policy (Presentation).
- Italo Vignoli (Founding member of The Document Foundation, head of the Associazione LibreItalia and member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI)) for the 10 years of Libreoffice and its role in user freedom (presentation).
- The presentation of Diomidis Spinellis (President of the Open Technologies Organization – Professor AOP) on the open hardware project Epidose (presentation).
- The presentation of Giannis Farsaris (Founder of the Open Library (www.openbook.gr), on Creative Hacking in art (presentation)
- The presentations of the projects from the Panhellenic Competition of Open Technologies in Education (presentations)
- The conference program as well as information on all speakers and presentations can be found on the conference website.