[GNUz] The Great Hall Booking Sponsorship Request

[Don Gould]

Dear Nigel,

We are writing to you today to ask the Arts Centre Trust to consider 
sponsoring our use of the Great Hall, or the Hurst Seager Room, on 
Monday 18th of August from 7pm to 10:30pm.

We propose an open public event where Mr Richard Stallman, from 
Massachusetts USA, will speak.

Donations will be invited to cover the cost of bringing Mr Stallman to 
Christchurch. We are hopeful that his presentation will generate enough 
interest to cover the necessary plane fares and leave a surplus towards 
other hosting costs.

We would like to ask the Arts Centre to sponsor the entire cost of the 
venue, but would also be happy to meet some of this cost if the event 
does raise funds to a point that would allow us to do that.

As the founder of the Free Software Foundation and GNU software project, 
Richard Stallman is a world renowned public speaker; see http://gnu.org

Richard Stallman is to free software what Bill Gates is to proprietary 
software. It is both an honour and privilege to have him speaking in 
Christchurch, on the last leg of his New Zealand tour in August.

Mr Stallman will be presenting a talk about the philosophy and the 
history of free software around the world.

Free software is what powers most of the internet. Without it we simply 
wouldn't have the quality of communications network that we all enjoy today.

Canterbury people and businesses benefit from free software every day 
without realising it. Thousands of New Zealanders use free software 
directly on their PC desktops too. Google is run on free software and 
simply wouldn't exist if the people who built it had been forced to use 
proprietary licensed software.

GNU software is all 'open-source'.  This means it can be used in 
education for students to learn how programs and computers work:

"Source code is to software what a recipe is to a cake".

In line with the Free Software philosophy, we will not be charging a fee 
for people to hear Mr Stallman, but will request donations to cover his 
expenses to get here. Mr Stallman continues to inspire others to learn 
and grow through community development around licensed free software 
development.

Mr Stallman's point of view is important for both commercial and 
educational arenas to understand, relating to computer infrastructure. 
His work has inspired many to do great things, such as the "Linux" 
software distributions that are the best known expressions of free software.

Mr Stallman presenting in our city is a gift of immeasurable value.  We 
would like the city to present him the gift of being allowed to present
in the Great Hall.  We do not have a great choice of free or low cost 
but spacious venues, and understand that Mr Stallman enjoys historic 
architectural surroundings.

The BSD-GNU/Linux User community will be hosting Mr Stallman's visit to 
Christchurch.  The group is made up of local software enthusiasts and 
has no financial standing.

Free software drives more innovation and development within the 
commercial software field, by helping keep that commercial world in 
check and healthy. It makes a huge difference to every local community. 
There are large but mostly unreported contributions made by free 
software to the public good, through science and education as well as 
through telecommunications.

What we can offer the Arts Centre in return for support of this 
educational and cultural event is to host web site advertising, that 
will be notified on public emailing lists and provide links to the Arts 
Centre's web site.

We will fund a poster advertising promotion ourselves, and use community 
notices, word of mouth and personal contact also to communicate the event.

We will hand out a small information sheet to attendees on the night and 
we are happy to include a logo and contact details on all such flyers.

Regards


Don Gould for GNUZ.