[Gllug] Register article: "Open source UK" gets trade body

[Richard Jones]

On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 04:21:49PM +0100, Bruce Richardson wrote:
> "The association will promote open source in general, and Zope, Plone
> and Python technolgies in particular".  Sorry, but the particular may
> well come into conflict with the general.  In fact, it already has: why
> call a general trade body *Zope* UK?  Zope is the name of a particular
> application, so to people familiar with OS applications it would tend to
> indicate a specific interest.  To other people, it's a meaningless and
> (frankly) stupid word and represents nothing.

I'm unhappy with the name and focus too, but nevertheless my point
stands that the free software community *needs such a body* to defend
its interests.  Ideally it would be an elected body that everyone
would have to pay into, although there are some obvious problems with
making that happen.

Does this body exist already?  Is it the EFF or the FSF?  Possibly,
but those are US organisations, and are always going to be US
focussed.  Furthermore they aren't huge, well-funded orgs like the UK
trade unions or the BMA from my example, and so they cannot really
defend our interests fully.  This is only going to happen if everyone
pays an annual sub, and that need not be a large amount of money
individually because there are many of us.

Rich.

-- 
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