<quote who="Anand Kumria">
> Ah, so no moral issues can be discussed then. What a shame.
Not at all - some are more relevant than others. (Thus the apology for the
hailstorm of response to the current thread, at other times, it might be
deemed somewhat appropriate, or at least not garner the reaction that it
has.)
> > People are more accepting of the technical threads because they can see
> > migration going on in the background, and people finding cool uses for
> > Free Software.
>
> Or, perhaps, they just like to help people and have no agenda.
Absolutely.
> I think you have not yet realised that the "other side" is doing everything
> they can to make life harder for us. That includes gimicky changes and fixes
> to the EULA, requiring money even if you don't use their software, etc.
>
> No, I'm not talking about Microsoft per se. Most vendors who are feeling the
> heat of Free Software are following this path.
I realise this (very much so), but - there are proactive threads, and there
are whiny, ranty threads, and it's the proactive threads that are of more
interest and use to everyone here.
I would far prefer to read a "holy cow, look what they're doing now, how are
we going to keep Linux in schools?" post to slug-chat, and then a "what slug
can do about the recent changes to educational software purchases" post to
the main slug list than a "gosh, darn, they really are bastards, how will we
ever survive" thread on the main list that goes on for weeks, and finally
dies in a flamewar about four wheel drives and the price of petrol outside
Sydney.
It's not like I'm afflicted.
:-)
> Sometime the fix can be done by upgrading to foo version 2.3.2 but needs
> to be done by political action and/or commerical pressure.
Sure, and SLUG needs to organise itself and shout from the rooftops [1] when
that happens, not post megabytes of gibberish to our main list, drowning the
poor people just trying to get started with Linux (not even aware of the
benefits of Free Software or any of the politicking that goes on behind the
scenes yet).
So, yes, there are a lot of these issues that are relevant, and they are
given differing attention based on the noise on the list at the time. This
week, it went a bit overboard on a number of topics that are fairly
peripheral, so a few people bit (not only on the list, a few people took a
swipe at me about it too, others said yay when I posted).
But it's certainly up for discussion, no one's talking from on high or
whatever.
- Jeff
[1] And the committee will be raring to go when something like this arises.
--
"The plural of lego is legouch, from when you tread on those plural on
the floor in bare feet." - Telsa Gwynne
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
