Free Software Street ( ca, Carrer del Programari Lliure) is a

street A street is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of d ...

in the town of

Berga Berga () is the capital of the ''comarca'' (county) of Berguedà, in the province of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It is bordered by the municipalities of Cercs, Olvan, Avià, Capolat and Castellar del Riu. History Berga derives its name ...

in Catalonia, Spain. It is the first street in the world dedicated to the

free software movement The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run the software, to study the software, to modify the software, and to share copies of the s ...

. It was officially opened on 3 July 2010. The street is about long and is located in a newly redeveloped area known as Pla de l'Alemany in the southwestern part of town. It is a mixed-use street, with a large hotel (the Berga Park), a school, a police station, some offices, a parkland, and some undeveloped plots.

History

In June 2009, Albert Molina, Xavier Gassó and Abel Parera from Berga Telecentre organized the first Free Software Conferences to be held in town. After the conference, they noted the possibility of naming a street in honor of free software so that they applied for it to the Berga Town Council. In January 2010, the second edition of the Free Software Conferences was being organized and it was decided to invite the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ("s ...

founder

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to u ...

to participate in the planned events, including the naming ceremony of the street. At the same time, the contacts with the politicians from the town council were being successfully concluded. On 10 June, the renaming of the street as "''Carrer del Programari Lliure''" ("Free Software Street") was officially approved during a plenary session at the town hall with 14 votes in favor and 2 abstentions. On 3 July 2010 at 20:00 (19:00 UTC), the Mayor of Berga Juli Gendrau and

finally inaugurated the street.

References

External links

* {{coord, 42.0968, 1.8406, region:ES-CT_type:landmark_source:kolossus-frwiki, display=title Streets in Catalonia Free software culture and documents Berguedà