[Sussex] Fair's idea's

[Geoffrey Teale]

A few comments on this thread... 

0. 
==
Well done to everyone who has been involved with the fairs so far, this
kind of grass roots work is vital to raising awareness of Linux amongst
private individuals and small businesses.

1.  
==
I personally have no problem with the presence of Debian logos and the
usual "use Debian" banter that goes on with various SLUG members.  I
certainly wouldn't ask for the Debian logos to be removed in favour of
Tux.  I trust that the people involved are sensible enough to realise
that the average Jo won't understand the benefits of a Debian system
over (say) a Mandrake system in their first few months of usage and that
the broader goal of getting them to use any form of free/open source
software should be achieved.

2.
==
Whilst Steve's comment was tongue in cheek I feel it is worth noting
that manning the SLUG stand at the computer fair is not the only way
members of this list can help spread the word.  (Here's where I push my
agenda...)

I would strongly encourage anyone who feels strongly on the matter to
take one (or preferably more) of the following actions:

   - Write some free software, or help write some.
   - Write some documentation, or help write some.
   - Join the Free Software Foundation as an associate member 
   - Support a free/open source software project financially (the above
point also covers this one)
   - Buy merchandise, disks or manuals from a free/open source software
project (this achieves the above point).
   - Remind you MP that _we_ pay for government software it shouldn't be
property of large US corporations, and as much as possible the
development work should go to UK and EU contractors.

With regard to the Free Software Foundation I'd point out that if you're
prepared to put some work in it offers anyone the chance to help change
things at a slightly higher level.  

* We have a very strong relationship with the UN and UNESCO with whom we
work to bring Free Software to the worlds schools.  

* We are now official observers of W.I.P.O. (the international group
that negotiates worldwide intellectual property law).

* We are actively helping governments in many countries around the world
move entirely to Free Software (this is particularly evident in South
America, Richard has returned from a minor tour there in the last
week).  

* Many of us in the UK branch of the FSF (and our friends at the
Association for Free Software) have been invited to a meeting with the
Department of Trade and Industry.

* We are the creators and guardians of the single most used Free/Open
Source license there is, the GPL.   

In short, we're effective and we're becoming more so, but we need every
ounce of support we can get. 

3.
==

The Windows CD sounds like a good idea (although the FSF sells one with
a book on it's website), BTW, the following pieces of GNU are all
available for Windows:

 *  autoconf 
  * automake 
  * the GNU calculator bc 
  * the GNU Binutils (including the GNU assembler and linker),
  * Bison (a parser generator),
  * Calc (the Emacs calculation package),
  * cperf,
  * cpio,
  * CVS a powerful version control system,
  * Diffutils,
  * the simple editor ed,
  * elib,
  * enscript,
  * Fileutils,
  * Findutils,
  * Flex,
  * GNU Awk,
  * gdb,
  * gdbm,
  * gettext, an internationalization tool,
  * gmp,
  * GNU Go,
  * GPC, the GNU Pascal Compiler,
  * gperf,
  * grep,
  * groff,
  * hello,
  * ID Utils,
  * indent,
  * Ispell,
  * less,
  * m4,
  * GNU Make,
  * MARST,
  * p2c,
  * patch,
  * Perl,
  * RCS,
  * recode,
  * sed,
  * GNU Sh-utils,
  * sharutils,
  * tar,
  * TeX (including LaTex and Texinfo),
  * the GNU Text Utilities (textutils), and
  * web2c 7.2.

-- 
Geoffrey Teale <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
Free Software Foundation