If you are planning a non-trivial website, this twenty-five minute presentation by Paul Albert, Digital Services Librarian at Weill Cornell Medical Library which compares Drupal, a free Web Content Management System and Application Framework, to FatWire, a proprietary Web CMS, should be required viewing.

Many of the arguments presented here in favour of Drupal also apply to any of a number of popular free systems, and most of the arguments against FatWire apply to any proprietary system. In this case the systems were evaluated for their suitability for use by a Medical Academic Library, but any situation where management of a great deal of information via the Web is required might be considered broadly comparable. The staff at Weill Cornell Medical Library found that:

• Drupal is and will be cheaper
• Drupal is robust, extensible, and enterprise ready
• Other departments in their college are already using Drupal, as are other colleges and libraries, and many are dropping equivalent proprietary systems
• Drupal supports "perpetual beta" (continuous improvement of a site)
• Drupal has a much more active support and development community, and "a culture of sharing solutions"
• Drupal has been paired with other technology in proven ways
• Drupal has a gentle learning curve (compared to other development environments)

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Software Freedom Day is a global, grassroots effort to educate the public about the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software. Local teams from all over the world are organising events on 16 September 2006. We will be helping to organise an event in Coffs Harbour to celebrate, but it's size and success depends on how many people volunteer to help. At the moment, we are planning to hand out CDs and flyers in the street on Friday, and a day of software demonstrations and presentations on Saturday.

You can help! We need:

• People involved in free software to give presentations
• People involved in free software related projects who are interested in having a table/stall
• People to pound the pavement and hassle bewildered passers-by on Friday
• Contacts in the local media
• People to help set up stuff before, schmooze during, and take stuff apart after the event on Saturday
• Probably lots of assistance in areas I haven't thought of yet and may never think of without assistance

Contact us if you are able to help. The official SFD Coffs team page is at http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams/oceania/au/coffs