Draft for new free software group with a broader focus. Feel free to comment on it.
(One part is very specialized) Not sure about name ____________________________________ Feminist Free Software Movement This movement intends to take both feminist causes and free software movement seriously and simultaneously. Much progress has happened in the handling of human aspects from a formal perspective at applied level, but their impact on software development has not been substantial and a lot can be expected to happen in the near future. It is a fact that we cannot efficiently handle human emotions in a formal way - that should not be an excuse for bad specifications. Specifications do not come out of the air. They must be specified and documented and ultimately originate in objective reality. Free software distributions cannot be independent of this and the artificial delimitations implicit in the construction of software should be changed in a positive way to accommodate users of diverse specifications. Proper accommodation can be a medium of socio-economic change and progress. >From a different perspective, commercial and non-commercial interests of different GNU/Linux distributions contribute negatively to the expansion of their networks. The problems are in their limited vision of user involvement and needs. Networks tend to strenthen internally but fail to expand in any substantial way after a certain point of time. One possible way is to add more semantics to the network - we want to integrate free software with knowledge that addresses specific human problems for reaching out to newer communities (both hidden and visible) and more efficient utilization of resources. The problem of reforming and educating people is also our concern. We want to expand networks in a very targeted way. To be precise, we will be concerned with the following: 1. Applied Feminist Perspectives (human non-discriminatory varieties) 2. Free Software Advocacy, Adoption and development (with a socio-economic and cultural perspective) among women and gender minorities. 3. Artificial Intelligence, Soft Computing. 4. Sexual and Gender Rights 5. Free Software Specifications. 6. Region-specific Adaptations. Who can participate? Anybody with positive interest in some of the topics and a willingness to contribute/learn may participate. _________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, AMS, CLC, CMS http://www.logicamani.in _______________________________________________ WFS-India mailing list [email protected] Message archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: To unsubscribe, please login to your account at http://www.wfs-india.org/ and unsubscribe to the WFS-India list from your account settings. -- WFS-India - http://www.wfs-india.org
