On Fri, Dec 27, 2002, Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote about "Re: Hamakor website - 
http://www.hamakor.org.il":
> Software related activities. Hamakor is trying to unite the various
> Linux groups and activists in Israel and get us working *together*.
> There is more to Linux in Israel then IGLU, and I'm saying it as a proud
> IGLU member - whatever that means ;-)

Just to reiterate something that various people already said (and that I
know Gilad knows :)): Hamakor is not a *Linux* user group. It is not
even a union of all Linux users group. It was coceived as a society for
the promotion of free software [1] of every kind, not just Linux. I want
to remind you that free software existed before Linux, and still exists
independently of Linux: there's *BSD, for example, and many people use
free software on commercial OS's, like Solaris, Tru64 Unix, or god forbid
Windows.

[1] If it were up to me, the official name of the amuta will not include
the redundant lable "open source" (in addition to "free software"), and
even if it did, certainly not in front of "free software". But I'm not
in the board of Hamakor, and I already raised this point (with long
explanations) before, so I'll shut up now :)

> >   What about promoting open standards? Shouldn't that be explicitly
> > mentioned?
> 
> Actually, it's a very good idea. Consider the Amuta a typical Open
> Source project - good patches are always welcome ;-)

Before Hamakor was created and a first vaad was elected, many of us
raised many good ideas of what this Amuta will be about. But once a vaad
exists, one of its purposes is to define the Amuta's policy; Anybody
can obviously think differently, but you cannot "represent" the Amuta
if you go against its official policy.

Knowing the nice people on the vaad, I'm sure they are open to other
people's suggestions for FAQs, ideological manifestos, policies, and
so on. But they get to decide: that's why they were voted in. And if they
make bad decisions, next year, when the Amuta has more members, they can
be voted out.


-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Friday, Dec 27 2002, 22 Tevet 5763
[EMAIL PROTECTED]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |If you tell the truth, you don't have to
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |remember anything.

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