Unlimited Potential (UP) in association with the New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS), SuperHappyDevHouse, Wellington Linux User Group (WellyLUG) and CWA New Media are organising Software Freedom Day 08.

As part of the International Software Freedom Day celebrations, Software Freedom Day 08 will be an opportunity for the best minds and talents associated with the development and use of open source software to come together and share their stories, ideas and code with each other.

The event will feature an ‘open source barcamp’ and ‘hackfest’ offering participants the opportunity to demonstrate open source software, and discuss their experiences of developing and using open source software.

More than 150 software enthusiasts from around the country are set to attend Software Freedom Day 08 – including leading programmers, website development teams, and open source advocates.

The event will be hosted by Nat Torkington. Nat has chaired the O'Reilly Open Source Convention and other O'Reilly conferences for over a decade. He ran the first web server in New Zealand, co-wrote the best-selling Perl Cookbook and was one of the founding Radar bloggers. In recent years Nat has organised the kiwifoo barcamp in Warkworth, north of Auckland.

Those attending include Jill Wilson from company CWA New Media – an international leader in e-learning; Brenda Wallace from SuperHappyDevHouse – New Zealand’s own hacking and programme development network; and members from the Linux user group, WellyLUG.

A team from the non-profit organisation One Laptop Per Child will be also present at the event.