Montreal Tech Watch

Marc-André Cournoyer has just released another ruby project. It’s called linkr, and is a place to share bookmarks with friends and coworkers. There are voting features; which makes it look a lot like reddit.com

What interested me in linkr is that it’s a follow-up to a series of other programming projects. Have a look at his code repository:

This led him to be recruited by standoujobs, and this got me into thinking about open source projects in Montreal and also people involved in Free Software.

• First, there is the Montreal Linux Users Group, which is one of the oldest tech community in Montreal. The group holds regular meetups, like for instance Ubunty party installs, and also participates in SQIL,
• Speaking of SQIL, this stands for Semaine Québecoise de l’Informatique Libre, or Quebec Week of Free Software. This year, it will be held from 15 to 23rd of September; the objective is to promote Free Software among the Québec population,
• There is also Koumbit, a community of web developers and designers who support Free Software, such as Drupal.
• FACIL – Appropriation Collective de l’Informatique Libre supports Free Software and Open data formats. They hold regular conferences, and publish also articles on the Free Software movement on their blog,
• The folks from bande passante are a strong believer of Free Software (see Robin Millette or Fred’s 1984 blog )
• I met also Marc Laporte, who is involved in the TikiWiki project,
• Open Source Cinema is a project started by Brett Gaylor. The goal is to invite readers to make the movie, together

Now, there is also wikitravel and librivox whose “business model” is centered around the Open Source movement. Actually, Hugh McGuire has also launched datalibre, a blog that is working on open data formats. It’s sure there are more Open Source initiatives in Montreal, but this new blog and other projects like open source cinema or SQIL are enough to make me think that Open Source is well and alive in Montreal.

As for my personal experience, I have never participated into an Open Source project (as a main contributor that is). But I use the tools daily and have launched for instance OpenSpace. Many people forget that without Open Source Sofware and tools, there would be much much less content on the web and much less companies.

And you? what do you think of the Open Source movement? Do you know of other Open Source projects in Montreal?

Update on 2nd of July:
Damien Seguy from nexen reminds me of phpquebec. And Dominique Boucher also writes in the comments that there is a vibrant lisp/scheme community in Montreal. Thanks