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

[home]

On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 08:43:59AM +0100, Marc Eberhard wrote:
> 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)

I wish you luck in that endevour :) May you never become Brumm-ay.

> > 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?

I think there are a lot of people willing to help out. In terms of actual
investment, I'm not sure any is needed - not yet, anyway. In terms of
politicians, there's always your local MP. Of course, we also have the
minister for knitting, habadashery and the internet (Ms. P Hewitt, IIRC),
although I'm not sure how receptive they are.

It tends to be swings and roundabouts with the politicians - they've said
they're not in favour of software patents, for example, but on the other
hand we'll be ending up with the EuroDCMA, and we have RIP and others, which
sucks.   

> 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 don't know how others feel, but I definitely don't want to see arguments
about free software on this list. I see this more as a 'doing' zone than a
'talking' zone :) If we do set up an organisation, it would of course be
worthwhile having a UK list to introduce people to the ideas of Free
Software, etc., and that would then be an appropriate place to argue about
GPL and things, but I agree with you - I think this should be a
co-ordination list to get things done.

> 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).

Yeah, I emailed the FSFE too, and they don't seem to be planning anything. I
was hoping that they would at least say that they were going to turn up.
However, at least the  FSF have a booth there. I will be in the association
village, primarily with the LUGs (but I may also be speaking :( ), but
I'm going to try to get around everywhere else too :-)

> I would say, that the GPL clearly states, what is allowed and what not.

I would say the GPL is one free software licence, but we shouldn't restrict
ourselves to the GPL, only free software. Perhaps the DFSG is a better bet?
The FSF do acknowledge other licences as Free Software also. Obviously, the
GPL is the ideal, but it's not only GPL software that is Free.

> there are rather stupid. Well, I don't expect this to be a real thread to
> us. 

Agreed - we all know they're wrong :)

> 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:

Here's my take. Universities _do_ use a lot of Free Software - especially in
the CompSci departments. Some schools are using it too, though mainly as
network infrastructure (SuSE UK have a schools page up somewhere, I forget
where, there's also a Free Software in Schools thing somewhere, although I
don't think it's active any more). 

As regards exposure, a lot of people have heard of free software. PC Plus,
for example, generally do quite a bit of Linux stuff each month, and they're
generally quite good wrt open-source/free differentiation, etc. 

In terms of companies, there are a lot fewer than there used to be. ID-PRO
UK went bust about nine months ago (a long time before the German arm
finally folded). VA Linux used to have a UK presence, I don't know if that's
still the case. SuSE have grown their UK operation, RedHat have a kind of
token presence. MontaVista are still recruiting, and there's a few
consultancies around doing Linux stuff. Apart from that, most use of Free
Software (primarily GNU/Linux) is in-house stuff - there are a lot of
companies who have Free Software advocates within them, and I would say most
companies of any real size probably have some Linux somewhere on their
network.

There are a lot of LUGs about - I don't think there's any part of the
country not served by one - as well as software groups, such as London.pm,
and the venerable UKUUG for unix users. Many are social event oriented, most
if not all have email lists, and a few do demos and display work. 

I think I've covered most areas :)

Cheers,

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