We often get requests for speakers who can represent the GNU Project and/or the free software movement at a conference, event or panel discussion. You can use this page to find someone to speak on behalf of the GNU Project and/or the free software movement. Speakers are listed in alphabetical order by last name. If you would like to invite one of these speakers to an event, please contact the speaker directly via email.
This page ends with advice to people who would like to become speakers.
Frédéric is the executive director of April. He is also the treasurer of the FSF France.
Frédéric can address the following topics:
Frédéric speaks French.
Loïc first got involved in free software in 1987. He is now a senior developer who has contributed to many software projects. In January 2001 he initiated Savannah to improve the infrastructure of the GNU Project. Loïc also does volunteer work for free software organizations, mostly in Europe, to protect free software from legal threats and promote cooperation and freedom.
Loïc speaks French and English.
Nagarjuna G. is one of the founding members of the FSF India and currently serving as its Chairperson. He holds a faculty position at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR in Mumbai. He is an author and maintainer of the GNU project GNOWSYS, and leads the Gnowledge Lab in Mumbai. He holds M.Sc.(Biology), M.A. (Philosophy) from University of Delhi and Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in the area of Philosophy of Science.
Nagarjuna G. is willing to deliver speeches about the following topics:
Nagarjuna prefers to give speeches in English, but if the situation demands, he can also manage in Hindi and Telugu.
Ricardo Galli is an advocate of free software. He holds a PhD in Computer Science and he is a professor of the University of Balearic Islands. He has more than 40 scientific papers, some of them devoted to free software issues. He has been teaching Operating System subjects based exclusively on free software and GNU/Linux since 1993. He has released several Free Software programs (cpudyn, llaut, wp-cache, etc.). He research interests include Small Worlds graphs, the impact of free software on the regional economy and ethics applied to the use of software in research and high level education.
Ricardo Galli is willing to deliver speeches about the following topics:
Spanish, English and comfortable with Catalan speaking audiences.
Joshua Gay was the editor of the book Free Software, Free Society. He is active in and familiar with a number of free software and free culture communities.
Joshua Gay can speak about:
English
Georg C. F. Greve is a Physicist (German Diploma from the University of Hamburg) with experience in the areas of medical science, physical oceanography, biophysics and nanotechnology, although computer science has always been a focal point. Example activities are his authorship of the monthly GNU forum “Brave GNU World” and the program GNU Xlogmaster. He is also initiator and president of the FSF Europe.
Topics Georg Greve can speak about include
Greve speaks English and German fluently, and can deliver speeches in either language.
Peter is the Program Chair for Bachelors & Masters IT programs at Abu Dhabi Men's College in the United Arab Emirates. Peter's first experience with GNU/Linux was a Caldera CD in 1999. This experience has given him a profound appreciation for the recent advances in auto-configuration of X-Windows. Peter has been a leading proponent of Free Software at ADMC since joining in 2004.
Peter can speak about the following
Peter can deliver talks in English. He remembers half of the French he took in high school, and can order Lebanese food in Arabic.
Federico Heinz is a latin-american programmer and free software advocate living in Argentina. He is a co-founder of La Fundación Vía Libre , a non-profit organization that promotes the free flow of knowledge as a motor for social progress, and the use and development of free software as a powerful tool towards that goal. He has helped legislators such a Argentina's Ing. Dragan, Dr. Conde and Peru's Dr. Villanueva draft and defend legislation demanding the use of Free Software in all areas of public administration.
Federico can speak to audiences on a range of topics around Free Software, including:
Federico speaks fluent Spanish, English and German, and can deliver speeches in any of these languages.
Benjamin Mako Hill is an author, technology and copyright researcher, activist, and consultant. He is currently working full time on research into the application of technologies and lessons learned in free software toward the production of other types of creative works a graduate student at the MIT Media Laboratory. He has been an leader, developer, and contributor to the free software community for more than a decade as part of the Debian and Ubuntu projects. He is the author of the Debian GNU/Linux Bible and the Official Ubuntu book.
Mako can speak about:
A more complete list of talks that Hill has given is also available.
English. He also used to speak Amahric as well but is very out of practice.
Kefah Issa is a software programmer, he holds a BSc degree in electrical engineering from the University of Jordan. He is an activist and an advocate to free software in the Arab World, participating in many events. He got extensive experience in delivering commercial software solutions across a wide range of applications. Kefah wrote a document in Arabic, “Free Software Whitepaper”, introducing free software and detailing the various strategic reasons why it should be considered.
Kefah can speak about the following topics:
Kefah T. Issa speaks Arabic and English he can give talks in both.
Jose E. Marchesi is a long-term GNU hacker. In 1999, he founded GNU Spain, and he later assisted in the creation of GNU Italy and GNU Mexico. He maintains several GNU programs such as sed and GNU Recutils and is a member of the GNU Advisory Comittee.
Jose can address the following topics:
Jose gives speeches in Spanish.
Alex is one of the founding board members of FSF Latin America. Since early 1990s, he has been free software user, then volunteer developer, then evangelist and professional toolchain developer. He holds Computing Engineering (1995) and Master in Computer Sciences (1998) degrees from the University of Campinas, where he pursues a Doctorate degree in Computer Sciences.
Alex is a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker and a fluent English speaker.
Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU Project, launched in 1984 to develop the free operating system, GNU.
In October 1985 he founded the Free Software Foundation, and served as its president until September 2019.
Richard Stallman is the principal author of the GNU C Compiler, the GNU symbolic debugger (GDB), GNU Emacs, and various other GNU programs.
Richard Stallman has prepared speeches on the following topics:
Dr. Stallman is also available for press interviews and panel discussions concerning all aspects of the GNU project and the Free Software Movement.
Dr. Stallman speaks English, French, and Spanish fluently, and can deliver speeches in any of those languages.
John Sullivan is currently the Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation, where he has worked since early 2003. He is active in and familiar with a number of free software and free culture communities. While he has received more formal training as a penniless poet than a programmer, he has authored and currently maintains a few free software packages in his off time, and does freelance web development using free software tools. He has a B.A. in Philosophy from Michigan State University and an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University and is based in Boston, Massachusetts.
John Sullivan can speak about:
He is working on other languages but currently only speaks English well.
If you have been working for some time in the free software movement and you would like to become a speaker, here are some suggestions.
If you can present the free software ideas clearly in a foreign language, you can surely do it even better in your first language. Thus, if we get a good recorded speech in a non-native language, we can list you as a speaker for that language and for your first language too.
However, the inference doesn't go in the other direction: we don't know how well you speak a foreign language unless we check. Thus, if you would like to be listed for speeches in languages other than your first language, please show us recordings in those other languages.