[GNUz] Lost in the battle

[Timothy Musson]

fill wrote:
> As an end user of a linux distro and subscriber to this list, I have
> to admit to being completely lost amongst its recent content and
> becoming increasingly disinterested in opening it.

> One would imagine the politics of the users and people that attend
> groups (being whatever set of letters it has in it) would be moving in
> a fairly similar direction with similar goals in mind with some
> passion behind it.

Here's the shortest explanation I can manage. If it scares you off:
tough.

We depend on computers more and more all the time. So think about the
future.  Do you want your great great grandchildren stuck in a world
that seems to work by magic, because ordinary people are legally
forbidden from understanding the technology they depend on? That's the
kind of world we'll dump on them, if we worry more about immediate
gratification than ethics and politics.

There's a very cheesy short story here, which explains it pretty well:
  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Anyway:
In 1984, Richard Stallman (RMS) started the GNU project: the goal was to
write a complete Operating System, similar to UNIX, licensed so that its
source code could be studied, modified and shared by its users. He
called it "Free Software", referring to those liberties. Because it's
about freedom and ethics, it's inseparable from democracy and politics.

In 1998, the Open Source movement split off the Free Software movement,
as a kind of public relations tactic. The Open Source folks wanted to
concentrate on the practical benefits of Free Software (which they refer
to as Open Source rather than Free Software), not its ethical/humanist
values.

The GNUz mailing list to which you're subscribed was set up for people
interested in the Free Software movement. Hence the discussion about
what kinds of things it's ethically appropriate for a Free Software
group to promote/recommend.


> My ignorance to the matter gives me the impression that it should be
> called neither LUG CLUG FLOSS or FOSS but LOST!

I hope my explanation wasn't useless, and that you'll stick around and
just ignore the threads you're not interested in.


> When the bickering is sorted and the dust settles, i'm sure there will
> be some quasi winners and losers that will scowl at each other across
> meeting rooms whilst others sit at computers learning and sharing
> knowledge.

Hmmm! I think we're trying to figure things out, rather than bickering.


> Happily apathetic to it all

That's okay :^)


Tim
-- 
trmusson@ihug.co.nz