Who We Are
COSI is the Carolina Open Source Initiative, a student group based at UNC Chapel Hill. We have a wiki of our own - check out our other projects!
What We're Doing
We'll actually be celebrating Software Freedom Day a day early on Friday September 14th in order to get students involved in the area of campus known as "The Pit." Think of it as pregaming. 
Looking for us? Check out our annotated map
Current Sponsors
Please visit our sponsors: they love OSS as much as we do!
Platinum Sponsors
Our platinum sponsors have contributed $1000 or more to help make Software Freedom Day a great success! Check out their tables at SFD.
Dell - Dell is also providing two demo laptops for use at SFD!
Gold Sponsors
Our gold sponsors have contributed between $400 and $1000 each.
MindTouch - producers of a supported wiki product (DekiWiki) with WYSIWYG editor. Visit OpenGarden.org, which is the MindTouch - supported open source developer community. Mindtouch is also an SFD global sponsor. Thanks to Aaron Fulkerson!
OpenNMS - the company behind the OpenNMS enterprise monitoring software. Thanks to Tarus Balog!
- Siena Tech - Chapel Hill-based Linux and Oracle consulting firm. Thanks to Ron Joffe!
Other Sponsors
Contributions have also been made by the following individuals and organizations, as well as our awesome volunteer team!
Cerient Technologies - an RTP-based VAR and Linux consulting firm. Thanks to Jason Tower!
Speakers and Participants
10am, Max Spevack, Fedora Project Leader
11am, Amit Bhutani, Sr. Linux Software Engineer at Dell
Mr. Bhutani has been leading Red Hat and Novell’s Enterprise Linux efforts at Dell since early 2004. His most notable accomplishments include launching the first ever Intel 32/64 bit enabled Linux OS i.e. RHEL3 Update 2 as well as launching RHEL4, RHEL5 and assisting with the launch of SLES10 across the line of Dell Power Edge and SC branded servers. His most recent accomplishment was leading the Engineering effort for the “Idea Storm Linux” project which enabled factory-install of Ubuntu Desktop 7.04 on several Dell consumer systems. - http://www.ubuntulive.com/cs/ubuntu/view/e_spkr/3910
12 noon, Pam Sessoms, University Library
- Pam will be giving a talk on how her team customized the Pidgin chat client for use by librarians at UNC-CH. Multiple librarians can seamlessly answer questions using the 'davisrefdesk' IM nickname, and evening questions can be routed to librarians at Duke and NCSU as part of the Night Owl chat feature. Such customization would not have been possible if Pidgin had not been released under an Open license.
12:45pm, Mark Finkle of Mozilla, the makers of Firefox
- Mr. Finkle is a lead development evangelist at Mozilla and will speak on getting involved with Mozilla. His primary job is to make it easy for people to develop extensions for Firefox. He also provides support for developers building applications on XULRunner and embedding Gecko in native applications.
1:45pm, Joseph Mack
Joseph will be discussing the Linux Virtual Server for people who are unfamiliar with the project and for those who would like to get started but want some background. Mr. Mack is a scientific programmer working as a contractor at a U.S. Government supercomputer center.
Some guidelines to make SFD a positive celebration**:
- DO present the capabilities and practical benefits of FOSS.
- DO NOT pretend that FOSS is perfect for everyone or everything.
- DO have the ability to present FOSS ideology clearly and concisely to interested people.
- DO NOT beat uninterested people over the head with ideology; this will confuse and intimidate them. Instead...
- DO let the quality of the software speak for itself and its ideology.
- DO have DEMO MACHINES present if possible.
- DO your best to connect people with a local FOSS community.
- DO provide contact information for your SFD team so people can subsequently contact you for more information.
- DO get contact information from interested and willing people, so you can proactively follow-up with them later.
- DO proactively follow-up with people who attend your SFD event.
- DO FIND AND COOPERATE WITH OTHER SFD TEAMS IN YOUR AREA.
- DO START OTHER SFD TEAMS IN YOUR AREA - this is cooperation, not competition!
- DO NOT -- seriously -- DO NOT bash Microsoft or SCO or any other false Great Satan. Software Freedom Day is not about any individual companies or people; Software Freedom Day is a positive community celebration of Software Freedom.
**borrowed from SFD...emphasis added in places