Road to Damascus

FOSS2005.org is an announcement of a Free and Open Source Software to be held in Damascus from March 2-4, 2005. Speakers will include Richard 'RMS" Stallman, and participants from Europe and the UNCTAD too.
Organisers also announced that they've completed the translation of the LPI LinuxIT course into Arabic, and the GNU FDL has been translated as well.
This event has the patronage of the Minister of ICT Dr. Mohammad Bashir Al Munajjed, and the involvement of the Network of Syrian Scientists, Technologists and Innovators Abroad (NOSSTIA) in addition to the Syrian GNU/Linux Users Group.
Early announcements listed among the participants Linux Professional Institute Canada vice president Glenn McNight, UNCTAD Switzerland economic affairs officer Dimo Calovski, Bridges.org program manager Philipp Schmidt of South Africa, FSF Europe vice president Jonas Oberg, Saudi Computer Society president Dr. Khaled Al Ghoniem, Saudi Linux president Dr. AbdulRahman AlJadahi, and Freesoft (Jordan) project manager Isam Bayazidi.