[Lancaster] GNU

[andy baxter]

Wayne Ward wrote:
> ha ha cheers john !! good bloody point!!
> i have  lot of respect for the guy and his contribution not only to  
> linux and the gnu
> i certainly dont mind supporting advertising the gnu :)
>
> any yer dude i talked the guy respect :)
>
>   

I agree that it's good to give credit to GNU for the work they did (even 
though it's a losing battle that Stallman is fighting on this point, as 
far as I can see).

While we're on this subject, I have a bit of a quibble with some of the 
wording on the front page of the LUG site. Where you say:
"Our members share interests in Linux and free or low-cost 
implementations of Unix", it implies that 'free' means free-as-in-beer.  
That just plays into the hands of people that don't understand free 
software and think that windows is free because you can install cracked 
copies.To me it's important to keep making the distinction between 
free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech. The second of these is more 
important in my opinion, because everything else (including the 
free-as-in-beerness of many distros) stems from that. I would be happier 
if you could change it to something like:
"Our members share interests in Linux and free (as in speech) 
implementations of Unix."

If I wanted to be really picky, I would also say that when you go on to 
say "as well as apple macintosh", I would be happier if this was put in 
a separate sentence saying something along the lines that linux and free 
(as in speech) software is the primary focus of the group but 
(obviously), being geeks we are interested in what is happening on other 
platforms including macintosh, bsd, solaris, mobiles, embedded systems, 
and even windows while we're at it. The point being that even though 
macs are cool in some way because they aren't windows and they use BSD 
as part of the OS, much of what Apple does as a company isn't so good 
from a free software point of view, and I think it's a mistake to try to 
include Mac users in the group any more than anyone else who likes 
computers when really Apple is just another company the same as 
Microsoft (who I think own a lot of their shares) who will do what they 
can to make a profit regardless of the things that free software stands for.

But I won't (be really picky). promise. Not at all. I never said a thing.

good wishes,

andy