Diego Berrueta

Last week, I attended to a very unusual concert. The idea was to merge classical music, information and communication technologies (ICT), and development aid for poor countries. The concept was created by some of my colleagues at CTIC (see Paco Prieto's blog). I enjoyed the event, the music was nice, the spectacle was fun and, at some points, really moving.

One of the musical pieces was inspired by the most popular operating systems, i.e., Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux and MacOS. Typical sounds from Windows and Mac were used as part of the music, but... how does Linux sound like? I was asked this very same question some weeks ago. At that point, I failed to provide any practical advice or suggestion. Eventually, someone had an idea, and the orchestra played (in the background) some notes from "Libre" by Nino Bravo. Probably only the geeks among the public made the connection between that old song and the Free Software movement. Well, for a long-time supporter of free software like me, it was touching to listen an orchestra playing inspired by Linux.

Update (12/Oct/2008): Paco Prieto has uploaded to his blog the piece I describe above, "Appeltura de Windows, opus Linux". Thanks, Paco. (For the impatient, the "Libre" part starts at 5:30).