On Sun, 28 Jul 2002, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Someone needs to provide: ... > I'm sorry, but I don't see any of the mentioned groups providing anything > at all like what I've described above. I have personally been involved in some way with all of the things you mentioned, and I know others that have been as well. It may not be well documented at this point, but that is a resource problem : the small number of people doing this work currently needs a lot more support from the community! I don't think you want to ignore or downplay the huge amount of work that is currently being done simply because it is not yet visible to you. Can CLUE help build the support and visibility? That is up to the core members of CLUE. > So no, if CLUE decides to take on these challenging tasks I don't see > any overlap with canopener or any of the other groups. While I see all > sorts of DMCA talk on flora there's no record of the group having made > formal representation to the government forums on digital copyright. > Without an official position made to the gov't such forums amount to > little more than virtual navel-gazing. Just because you didn't see them, doesn't mean they didn't happen. I have personally been making formal representations to government on these issues, to a number of departments and in a number of forums. Not to sound harsh (as say, you seem to be sounding ;-), but I didn't see someone representing CLUE involved in any of those things you mentioned. These things are happening, just without the help or involvement of CLUE. My own work wasn't done as a representative of anyone other than myself (and my business). In this I received considerable research help in everything I have done from the folks in the DMCA opponents, CanOpenER and FreeITGov mailing lists. Far from being Navel gazing, these forums have been extremely valuable. On the other hand, it was the as-advertised navel-gazing (and hopefully clarification of its purpose) that CLUE is currently doing that made me want to pop in again and see where CLUE is headed. I would love to get involved in CLUE, and to even represent CLUE in some of this work that is being done. I suspect there are many people in these other projects that feel the same way. That will have everything to do with what CLUE decides is its mandate and message. So far there isn't much clarity (or even a "clue" ;-) coming out of CLUE. This is "paperwork" that the core CLUE people need to do to bring in these other people, not something that already busy people in existing projects can do for CLUE. > As just the simplest of examples of the community's lack of salesmanship: > the very fact that people still insist on using the term GNU/Linux in > public instead of just "Linux" demonstrates a total misunderstanding of > how to sell Linux to the general public. See my other message. Not all of us are interested in "Linux" beyond the fact it is a complete kernel that is licensed under the GNU GPL ;-) That being said, I do believe the GNU/Linux phrase enters us all too quickly into making the name too long as it is the ...etc/ETC/BSD/GNU/Linux distribution... The GNU project offered quite a bit of the tools required to make things possible, but they weren't the only large contributor to a project that was given the name of a (comparatively smaller) contribution. If there was considerable work being done on a GPL licensed derivative of the BSD kernel, I would likely be running it. I doubt many "Linux" users would even know the difference if they weren't running "Linux" any more at all, but some other Free Software or Open Source kernel. --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> See http://weblog.flora.ca/ for announcements, activities, and opinions Getting Open Source and Linux INto GovernmentS | No2Violence in Politics http://www.flora.org/dmca/forum/942 | http://www.no-dot.ca/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
