Re: Who's here and how did you get here?

[Alex Hudson]

On Sun, May 13, 2001 at 06:52:35PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> Would the list admin care to tell us how many subscribers we have?

And who is the list admin too?? (Just useful to know :)

> Did anyone get here by a route other than the fsfe list?

Not me.

> Does anyone mind if I start promoting this list to outsiders?

Not me.

I would suggest holding off a little while, though. The reason being I think
it would be useful to discuss a charter (i.e., what we want to discuss - I
think this should be Free Software in the UK, rather than FSFE-only
discussion, and perhaps also what the aims are). It's very easy to get a lot
of people onto a list, but I think it's best that people know what they're
joining - a Free Software discussion list. I for one would not really be
interesting in discussing the merits of different open-source licences, and
whether or not the GPL is good or bad, etc. I'm interested in discussing
Free Software licences, matters which affect Free Software, stuff like that
(although I'm certainly not suggesting that everything should be on topic
all the time :). The alternative would be to attract a lot of people who are
interested in general open source / Linux / whatever, and we might end up
wasting a lot of time arguing over GPL / RMS / etc. which I don't think
would be useful.

On a different topic, I would be interested to know what people's views on
a UK Free Software User's Group are. I very much want to see an organisation
setup to promote the cause of Free Software in the UK, since this is
something we're lacking quite badly. I also want to see something dedicated
to Free Software in general, rather than just GNU/Linux, although obviously
the options are a little limited :) 

A little of my background: I've worked for one of the few Free Software /
Open Source companies who hired in the UK (ID-PRO, who also employed the
President of the FSFE, Georg, among others, and who also went bust a while
ago :( ), I'm active with LUGs (in Sheffield mainly), and am also doing
stuff at Birmingham Linux Expo (among others), which hopefully people will
have heard me talk about on the FSFE list. 

Cheers,

Alex.
-
FSFE discussions U.K
address@hidden
http://www.x31.com/~ukfsfe/