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

[Marc Eberhard]

Hi,

just a few words about me first. I moved to the UK last summer from Germany,
because I wanted to enhance my English (I'm still far from being satisfied
and I hope never to pick up this terrible Birmingham accent) and get the
feeling of living and working in another country. I'm currently a research
fellow at Aston University working in theoretical physics. Our main subject
is optical communication systems, so I do not work in the IT branche. The
first thing I did, was to shock everyone here, by simply removing the
preinstalled Windows from my office PC and installing Debian... :-)

Oh yes, and a long long time ago I wrote vgetty, which is part of the
mgetty+sendfax package you can find in almost every Linux distribution. But
that is so long ago, that I don't really remember the details... that was
the great time, when I was a student and had enough time to do, whatever I
wanted to do!

On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 01:05:27AM +0100, Andy Fletcher wrote:
> A formal organisation in the UK would be a very good first step in

I agree. Which resources (time, money) do we have currently? I can help only
occasionally, because my free time is quite limited. Do we have someone, who
can afford to invest more? Do we have a sponsor somewhere in the UK?
Contacts to politicians?

> A charter for this mailing list would be a good idea, I just threw the web 
> page together and kept the list description as general as possible so as not 
> to restrict discussions.

I think, that's the right way to go. My personal feeling is, that the list
should be to coordinate our efforts to promote free software in the UK. The
more general questions about the GPL and so on, should be on the FSFE list.

I think, the first real event for us will be the LinuxExpo in Biringham.
Since I live in the Birmingham area, I have already offered my help to the
FSF (Yes, FSF. Didn't hear any reaction from the FSFE core team yet).

> Long running arguments about software licenses or logos are not my
> preference as I would like to focus on forming a UK organisation and
> coming up with some sort of agreed publicity campaign. There

I fully agree.

> are different opinions as to what constitutes Free software and what is
> fair use of it (ie, can you use it and get paid in the process) but I am
> sure that a basic agreement can be achieved allowing everyone to sing from
> approximately the same song sheet.

I would say, that the GPL clearly states, what is allowed and what not. The
discussion about how to interpret specific parts of the GPL should be on the
FSFE mailing list. Since the UK seems to lack behind in the free software
movement, I would propose to form a very open community. If we want to
spread the flame, we have to accept everyone, who contributes in some way.
And I personally don't mind, if someone earns money with free software.

> If anyone has any doubts as to the potential problems convincing business
> in the UK then I suggest that they have a look at
> http://www.brightstation.com/html/evangelist/060501.html This guy is
> frightening and I am planning to post some background information onto the

Yes indeed, frightening. However I find the article not much convincing. It
ignores a lot of very basic facts. Copying software doesn't really cost
something, giving burgers away for free surely does. These comparisons in
there are rather stupid. Well, I don't expect this to be a real thread to
us. 

Since I moved to the UK only last summer, I would appreciate, if someone
could post the current situation. Maybe that should even be our first task.
Let's get an overview of the current situation. What I have seen so far is
approximately:

Only very few people have ever heared of free software. And if they have
heared of it, they don't know really what it is. Open Source, free software,
public domain all the same. This doesn't surprise me, because schools and
universities do not seem to use free software. As far as I've seen these
institutions, they usually have general MS group/institution licenses and
what is worse, they do educate pupils and students to use them exclusively.

So a first step here might be, to offer courses on free software. If we
could convince them, that their students will blame them in a few years for
not having taught them the whole range of available software, they might
consider integrating it into their IT courses. That would be a major step
forward. I mention this in every relevant commitee within the university
here and it seems, that there is no real resistance. Most people who decided
in favour of MS packages just did this for their own convenience. They never
saw anything else and they are surely willing to give it a try. They only
want something that works, they don't mind if it doesn't feature the MS
logo. So it could be quite easy to convince them to at least try something
else.

How do you see the current situation? Looking forward to read you soon...

Bye,
Marc
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