[Glastonbury] letter to the Blcakmorevale magazine

[tim hall]

A few suggestions (to be taken with a POS)

Last Saturday 02 October 2004 13:53, peter cole was like:
> To the Editor,
>
>
> I am sorry that this is probably going to be e boring letter for mos
> people as it concerns computers. Not everyone's cup of tea.

What are you apologising for? Start here, much stronger.

> In 2001 the UK government paid approximately £100 million pounds for
> software licences this is an annual on going cost. This is a lot of
> money!! There is of course no legal way of avoiding this cost.

These two lines (above & below) read badly. Sounds like a contradiction.

> Well there is, it is called Open source software. You stop using
> proprietary software and use open source software.

You can stop using proprietary software and use open source software instead.
[suggests that the reader has a choice]

> What does this mean?
>
>
> Open Source Software (OSS) is provided with a license that gives the end
> user the right to use it freely for private or commercial use. You also
> have the right to inspect and even modify the underlying source code.
> You can give away or sell the original version you received or one with
> your modification, provided that you then in turn pass on the modified
> source code so that others can benefit from the changes you have made.
> This last clause protects the developer's work from unfair exploitation
> by others, while allowing the source code to be released to the
> community. You are not required to pay royalties to previous developers,
> but you are still permitted to charge money for the sale of OSS. This
> disc may have been given to you by a friend; or sold to you for a small
> fee, and both are permitted.
>
>
> What software is available?
>
>
> Office suits, Internet browsers ( these have better security than a very
> well know Internet browser that comes with most computers), high quality
> graphics packages ( sometimes use by hollywood) and 1000's of other
> aplications

suits = suites
>
> How can this help me?
>
>
> You of course run fully legal licensed software on your computers! But
> you don't want to cost of upgrading to the newest software package but
> you can't open documents sent to you. 

Comes across better if you don't tell people what they are doing, especially 
if you don't know these things for sure.

> You could try OpenOffice this has 
> good import and export filters.

Just positively tell them that OOo will open most known file formats.

>
> Open source software is available for many operating systems.
>
> For more information on Open Source software that runs on Windows ® look
> at this web site www.theopencd.org
>
>
> "TheOpenCD" is a trademark of H.N. Omma
>
>
> There are other operating systems that are open source Linux and BSD are
> 2 well known versions most of the software for the these operating
> systems is open source.

That should be 'GNU/Linux' - the system as a whole and as a collection of 
software is GNU, you could run the same software on top of a Darwin or Hurd 
kernel and it wouldn't be Linux at all.

> One very good thing about the Open source operating systems is that they
> are secure and there are very few viruses that attack them up to 100
> compared to 20,000 to 30,000 that attack another operating system.

This sounds inaccurate to me. Open source OSs _can_ be made secure. Viruses 
come calling, just the same as Windows, they just have little or no effect on 
Linux - at the moment.

> IBM, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Novell have all released software
> under an Open source licence.
>
>
> Schools could also benefit greatly from this . See the 2 web site
> addresses
>
> www.linuxinschools.orgwww.opensourceschools.org/
>
>
> Other useful links
>
> www.opensource.orgwww.fsfeurope.org
>
>
> I hope that may look at doing an editorial on this as this could help a
> great number of people and organisations save money.
>
> Do i use open source software Yes i have only run open source software
> on my home pc for the last 2 ½ years and have not had one virus attack

Issues:

Organisations will have to do a significant amount of retraining and 
reorganisation to migrate to GNU/Linux, or even just to Open Source software.

Of course 'Open Source' is just 'Free Software' re-branded for people who find 
the concept of freedom complicated confusing and scary. ;-]

cheers

tim hall