Re: [Fsfe-uk] AFFS still active?

[Chris Croughton]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 02:36:43PM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:

> [...]
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number) is a good starting point.
> 
> Never trust a reference people can edit themselves, but even that
> ack's 0 as a number.  I wrote 1-4, then moved 4 to before 1 and picked
> a different number instead of renumbering all or leaving disordered to
> save time.  I'm surprised and disappointed that it got so much debate.

And renumbering 3 items is such a terribly hard thing to do, of course.

The use of lists starting at zero (as in the GPL freedoms) is something
which immediately proclaims "I'm a geek" to almost everyone, and a large
proportion of them will stop reading at that point because they'll
expect a following series of geek in-jokes.  It doesn't make sense in
English, where there isn't an ordinal for zero (except Asimov's "Zeroth
Law", which is horrible) and certainly not for negative numbers.

> Alex Hudson <address@hidden> wrote:
> > A lot of the reasons AFFS was started have more or less gone away;
> 
> Some of them remain, for sure:
> - financing

For what purpose?

> - connecting UK supporters to other groups

Does that happen?

> - monitoring/helping UK l10n, i18n and politics

Does that happen?  Monitoring politics, to a small extent, but I don't
recall seeing anything about i18n or l10n.

> > Specifically, I think the free software developer community in this
> > country is disparate and not well networked: while LUGs provide this to
> > an extent, we still rely on things like Linux Expos for hackers to meet
> > up. [...]
> 
> Once it sorts itself out, AFFS could assist with the coordination and
> chronicling.  Should AFFS run meets at other events?

In what way, apart from this mailing list?

> If that meeting happens at fairly short notice in one corner of the
> country (as currently suggested), please offer some remote
> participation, or at least record it well and let those who can't
> attend review it.  I doubt I'm the only willing hand who might not
> attend.

A weekday meeting in London is only convenient to those who work in or
close to London.  I couldn't get to an early evening meeting on a
Tuesday, and later evening (8pm, say) I'd have to leave almost as soon
as I arrived.  This is also a major reason developers don't meet very
often outside local LUGs an the like, after work half the people can't
get there and back at sensible times.  Some also have a life outside
developing software (I know, this is strange for geeks but some are even
married).

Chris C