Mr Christopher Dimech, from the Department of Geosciences, in collaboration with the Department of Mathematics, will present a series of talks.
The first in the series, 'Digital Rights. Free Licensing.' will be held on Thursday 28 February, 2019 in Room 405, Maths & Physics Building, from 09:00 to 10:00.
The events are inspired by the 2019 Summer of Code, open to university students, age 18 and older in most countries. GNU is a large and complex project, and thus is subdivided into packages, which are relatively independent projects. In Summer of Code, GNU acts as an umbrella organization for its packages. Christopher Dimech leads the Geocomputational part of GNU, which he founded in February 2017 (see https://www.fsf.org/ free-software-supporter/2017/march. The original idea was announced during the 2013 GNU Hackers Meeting which was held at the IRILL, the Center for Research and Innovation in Free Software, in Paris.
Christopher Dimech鈥檚 talk 'Digital Rights. Free Licensing.', will address the many threats to freedom in the digital society of the 21st Century , focusing on issues of non-free technology that controls users, digital handcuffs, massive surveillance, and censorship that undermine the foundations of the enlightenment. This is a non-technical speech and is open to the public. Following the speech, there will be a Q&A session with Christopher Dimech.
Christopher Dimech is a digital rights advocate and a computer hacker primarily focused on geocomputation and geoassessment of geophysical phenomena. A graduate of the University of Malta, he started his career in Oil and Gas Exploration at the Office of the Prime Minister, and subsequently in all all aspects of Natural Resource Exploration and Exploitation. In 2014, he left his post as the Chief Research Mathematician of Compagnie G茅n茅rale de G茅ophysique, the French global geophysical services company to concetrate on the digital rights advocacy and the development of free software.
In 2018, whilst at the Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera (ICTJA) he was invited together with Richard Stallman to the Spanish National Centre for Supercomputation (BSC-CNS) in Barcelona by BSC-CNS Director Mateo Valero Cort 虂es, and BSC-CNS Head of Parallel Programming and Cyber-Physical Systems Xavier Martorell Bofill.
Their presence in Barcelona got the attention of the administrative and executive sections of Barcelona City Council, that resulted in an invitation to a discussion at Maker Faire 2018 with Barcelona City Council Chief Technology and Digital Innovation Officer Francesca Bria, speaking on free software, digital rights, and people-empowered cities.
