Re:Free Software (Score 1)

I actually attend and about your remarks:

• The HOS was not a corporate event, on the contrary as it was organised by a "stichting" which is a dutch kind of company which is not supposed to make any money and needs to have a specific goal.
• Corporate sponsorship enabled them to keep the prices low (180 Euros is not a lot of money and students/academia could even attend for somewhere around 40 Euros)
• Inviting people who have a contrary meaning about free actually leads to a healty discussion
• Patent law is still under discussion in Europe and today (june 3rd) there was a new report going to Dutch parliament stating that it would be best to just not implement the EU directive and that this should be the vote of the Dutch Parliament, which could lead to a Dutch veto on it. (this is also backed by for instance Dutch industrials like Philips
• 400 people attended, so it drew quit some attention in the Netherlands and those that i spoke with were satisfied with the meetings and speakers
• You are right if it didn't mention freedom as it actually was the Holland Open conference and most discussions were about Open Source, and Open Content, and the bear actually was free :)