Hi all,
Alcove had the idea to launch a "Why we speak about Free Software" campaign that we considered to be a pretty good idea, so I prepared a text for it that you'll find attached below.
The FSF has agreed to this statement (Richard gave his okay), so has Alcove. This means we have a sound basis to run this campaign. Alcove wanted it done fast and I saw no major reason to delay it, so release date for it is
Monday, September 10th
which means it is not yet officially out and I'd like to ask you to wait publicising the campaign until then.
I have begun preparing a web site for it at
http://fsfeurope.org/documents/whyfs.en.html
that might take a little while to go online (I just checked it in).
There are several things I could think of that would be very useful to do to make this campaign a success:
1. Talk to other companies that might be interested in supporting this campaign from launch-time. The more companies support it from the beginning, the better.
2. We could make web-site buttons saying "I speak about Free Software" "We speak about Free Software" "Free Software - because freedom matters" or so that people could put on their web sites as links to this campaign in order to show support and make it more well-known.
3. Translate the text into other languages - although it is possible that some last-minute changes will still be made.
4. Read over the text to make sure it doesn't contain embarassing mistakes.
5. Anything else you can think of that would be useful.
Regards, Georg
"Georg C. F. Greve" greve@gnu.org writes:
Hi all,
Alcove had the idea to launch a "Why we speak about Free Software" campaign that we considered to be a pretty good idea, so I prepared a text for it that you'll find attached below.
Good idea
...
- Talk to other companies that might be interested in supporting this campaign from launch-time. The more companies support it from the beginning, the better.
We speak about that with Fred today, and Lolix will be proud to be associate to this action from the beginning.
We also add this action in our monthly newsletter wich it sent to the 750 companies register on Lolix website.
Regards
Hi Rodolphe,
|| On 05 Sep 2001 20:27:11 +0200 || Rodolphe Quiedeville rq@lolix.org wrote:
rq> We speak about that with Fred today, and Lolix will be proud to rq> be associate to this action from the beginning.
rq> We also add this action in our monthly newsletter wich it sent to rq> the 750 companies register on Lolix website.
This is good news, thanks. Do you have a small logo to go on the FSF Europe web site?
Regards, Georg
On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 11:53:57AM -0500, Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
Very well written; I like it.
- Talk to other companies that might be interested in supporting this campaign from launch-time. The more companies support it from the beginning, the better.
I think the "company" that we should most urgently convince is Debian.
I've tried very hard a few weeks ago to convince the webmasters to change the use of "Open Source" instead of Free Software, which is a very common ocurrence in www.debian.org. I had an argument with Josip Rodin who affirms that it is part of the Debian constitution that we should use Open Source rather than Free Software. And that the only way to change it would be by a modification of the constitution.
This situation comes from the time when Bruce Perens was the Debian leader, but from what I read nowadays in Debian lists, the great majority of Debian developers use correctly the term Free Software.
Any ideas on how to convince Debian's webmasters?
Jaime
|| On Wed, 5 Sep 2001 21:05:57 +0100 || "Jaime E . Villate" villate@fe.up.pt wrote:
jev> Very well written; I like it.
Thanks!
- Talk to other companies that might be interested in supporting
this campaign from launch-time. The more companies support it from the beginning, the better.
jev> I think the "company" that we should most urgently convince is jev> Debian.
That is a good idea, I'll be flying back to Europe tomorrow, so I won't have enough time to try to convince them. Could anyone on this list get in touch with them for this?
Regards, Georg
3. Translate the text into other languages - although it is possible that some last-minute changes will still be made.
In GNU Spain we would be happy managing the campaign in Spain (translating and broadcasting the information).
-- Jose E. Marchesi jemarch@es.gnu.org GNU Spain http://es.gnu.org GNUs Not Unix! http://www.gnu.org
|| On Wed, 5 Sep 2001 20:34:38 GMT || "Jose E. Marchesi" jemarch@fsf.eui.upm.es wrote:
jem> 3. Translate the text into other languages - although it is jem> possible that some last-minute changes will still be made.
jem> In GNU Spain we would be happy managing the campaign in Spain jem> (translating and broadcasting the information).
That would be very useful, thank you. Do you know of any Spanish companies that might be interested in this campaign?
Regards, Georg
|| On Wed, 5 Sep 2001 20:34:38 GMT || "Jose E. Marchesi" jemarch@fsf.eui.upm.es wrote:=20
jem> 3. Translate the text into other languages - although it is jem> possible that some last-minute changes will still be made.
jem> In GNU Spain we would be happy managing the campaign in Spain jem> (translating and broadcasting the information).
That would be very useful, thank you. Do you know of any Spanish companies that might be interested in this campaign?
Hum. There are few truly free software devoted companies in Spain. One of these could be Andago...
We will search and make contacts.
-- Jose E. Marchesi jemarch@es.gnu.org GNU Spain http://es.gnu.org GNUs Not Unix! http://www.gnu.org -- "And if cynics ridicule freedom, ridicule community... if 'hard nosed realists' say that profit is the only ideal...just ignore them, and use copyleft all the same." -- RMS ---
Such a campaign is always good news, specially if directed towards the users (corporate or private) instead of only to the developers, to try to get them to reclaim their rights and blur the artificial divide between user and developer.
El Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 11:53:57AM -0500, Georg C. F. Greve deia:
Having followed the development of the Open Source Initative for three years, the reasons to prefer the term Free Software have become even more true. For various reasons, Free Software or the equivalent term in the local language is offering many advantages.
Just a suggestion. Why use the term "local language"?. It may look as if you meant English was a global language and the rest are "only" local languages. I know that wasn't what was meant, just trying to avoid any sensibility hurt or misunderstanding, however unlikely. I'd simply say "any language". Paranoid people may feel you don't regard all languages as of equal value. But frankly, I don't know why the whole sentence is necessary. You shouldn't need to give permission to people to translate a phrase, specially something as straight and plain as "free software".
Since the document is going to be translated to many languages, the term Free Software (in English) won't appear in the translations (or maybe in parenthesis or something, but I don't know whether it is even needed, it is pretty obvious). Well, in any case it won't appear alone in English, so the fact that "the equivalent term in the local language" is valuable, will be obvious from the use in the document itself. I don't know, but it sounds to me like if you said, "the term Free Software, either spoken aloud or written, in any typeface...". It's superfluous.
Well, I don't know, maybe I'm just being paranoid about "political correctness". By the way "local language" appears somewhere else, too.
I'd also put the "Free software offers freedom" part at the top, so that:
- You avoid a forward refrence in
Although access to the source code is a precondition for two of the freedoms, access to the source code alone is not enough.
- If someone does not read it all at least they will read the four freedoms.
|| On Thu, 6 Sep 2001 07:52:18 +0200 || Xavi Drudis Ferran xdrudis@tinet.org wrote:
xdf> Just a suggestion. Why use the term "local language"?.
You have a point there. My gut-feeling says that "other" is slightly better than "any," though, so it is now:
"For various reasons, speaking of Free Software or the equivalent term in other languages offers many advantages."
I feel that "other" is entirely neutral and should not pose a problem, or am I missing something here?
xdf> I'd also put the "Free software offers freedom" part at the top, xdf> so that:
I'm not so sure whether this is a good idea although I see the points you are making.
This is because the last part tends to stick to the readers brain best and I want that to be the freedom part, also it gives us the nice chance to end with "Freedom counts!," which I believe is nice. Putting it on top also kind of destroys the "flow" of the document, I think. Does this make sense to you?
Regards, Georg
El Thu, Sep 06, 2001 at 07:56:17PM -0500, Georg C. F. Greve deia:
I feel that "other" is entirely neutral and should not pose a problem, or am I missing something here?
I can't see a problem with "other".
xdf> I'd also put the "Free software offers freedom" part at the top, xdf> so that:
I'm not so sure whether this is a good idea although I see the points you are making.
This is because the last part tends to stick to the readers brain best and I want that to be the freedom part, also it gives us the nice chance to end with "Freedom counts!," which I believe is nice. Putting it on top also kind of destroys the "flow" of the document, I think. Does this make sense to you?
Yes, maybe you are right, you'd fix one thing but break another...
- Translate the text into other languages - although it is possible that some last-minute changes will still be made.
Almost done in French.
Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
- Talk to other companies that might be interested in supporting this campaign from launch-time. The more companies support it from the beginning, the better.
So what would a company have to do to support the campaign? Put a link on their web site? Give it's name to be listed on the campaign page? Something else?
Thanks,
Hi Reinhard,
|| On Thu, 06 Sep 2001 10:41:02 +0200 || Reinhard Müller reinhard.mueller@bytewise.at wrote:
rm> So what would a company have to do to support the campaign? Put rm> a link on their web site? Give it's name to be listed on the rm> campaign page? Something else?
There are several possible ways I can think of for a company to support the campaign:
- ask to be listed on project page (possibly with small version of logo)
- distribute the initiative through its own press channels as a campaign it supports
- link to the initative from its web site
for the third it would be quite helpful to have a little button/banner to put online.
There maybe be other ways, but these would be the ones that come directly to my mind.
Regards, Georg
"Georg C. F. Greve" wrote:
Hi all,
Alcove had the idea to launch a "Why we speak about Free Software"
Thank you Alcove!
campaign that we considered to be a pretty good idea, so I prepared a text for it that you'll find attached below.
I like it very much.
The FSF has agreed to this statement (Richard gave his okay), so has Alcove. This means we have a sound basis to run this campaign. Alcove wanted it done fast and I saw no major reason to delay it, so release date for it is
Monday, September 10thwhich means it is not yet officially out and I'd like to ask you to wait publicising the campaign until then.
Ok...just a few days :-)
I have begun preparing a web site for it at
http://fsfeurope.org/documents/whyfs.en.html
that might take a little while to go online (I just checked it in).
There are several things I could think of that would be very useful to do to make this campaign a success:
- Talk to other companies that might be interested in supporting this campaign from launch-time. The more companies support it from the beginning, the better.
But talking to other companies it's similar to publicise it ;-) Joking.
- We could make web-site buttons saying "I speak about Free Software" "We speak about Free Software" "Free Software - because freedom matters" or so that people could put on their web sites as links to this campaign in order to show support and make it more well-known.
Let's decide for one slogan: I like "We speak about Free Software".
- Translate the text into other languages - although it is possible that some last-minute changes will still be made.
On Saturday I'll be able to translate it, please consider me for this work.
- Read over the text to make sure it doesn't contain embarassing mistakes.
Ok for tonight. Tomorrow I'll read it again...
- Anything else you can think of that would be useful.
Hmmm.... Ok: brainstorming.
CiaoG.