Hi,
As a followup to
http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2001-December/002033.html
I'm pretty sure there is no obstacle for FSF Europe to distribute paper copies of this magazine. When I mean no obstacle, I omit the fact that someone has to take care of this ;-)
The FSF Europe being an established non profit, a volunteer would only have to make sure the copies are printed, to get in touch with distribution chanels etc, etc. When I mean "only", I omit the fact that this is a quite demanding task.
From the followups on the previous thread I guess there will be enough content. Organizing the distribution is another subject. If you ever know Free Software friends who would like to contribute in this way, please invite them to participate on this list, to make themselves known. It would be a great opportunity to demonstrate that contributing to Free Software does not always requires coding skills.
As of now, one could coordinate with non profit Free Software organizations in Italy (ASSOLI), Portugal (ANSOL), Spain (GNU Spain), Germany (FSF Europe, FFII), Austria (FFS), France (FSF Europe, APRIL, AFUL), UK (soon). I won't go into more details or this will become a project too tempting to resist and I should not distract myself from my current tasks ;-)
Cheers,
I'm pretty sure there is no obstacle for FSF Europe to distribute paper copies of this magazine. [...] As of now, one could coordinate with non profit Free Software organizations in Italy (ASSOLI) [...]
In Italy we can't distributed printed stuff so easily. The publisher (or importer) must deliver 4 copies to the police before being allowed to distirbute. And magazines (those published once every month/whatever) must have additional authorizations. [1]
Free press? Never heard of that in this part of the world.
/alessandro
[1] I asked to diritto@softwarelibero.org first (diritto == law). I thank Donato Molino for his reply.
On Mon, Dec 10, 2001 at 01:31:11PM +0100, Alessandro Rubini wrote:
I'm pretty sure there is no obstacle for FSF Europe to distribute paper copies of this magazine. [...] As of now, one could coordinate with non profit Free Software organizations in Italy (ASSOLI) [...]
In Italy we can't distributed printed stuff so easily. The publisher (or importer) must deliver 4 copies to the police before being allowed to distirbute. And magazines (those published once every month/whatever) must have additional authorizations. [1]
Free press? Never heard of that in this part of the world.
Do the police read every piece of advertisement that gets into your mailbox? Or mailboxes in Italy don't get flooded with advertisement? (if that's the case, I definitely want to move to Italy :-)
Isn't an association as Assoli allowed to distribute a newsletter among its associates? And there might be some PC magazines interested in including a "free" supplement with their monthly issue.
Regards, Jaime Villate
Do the police read every piece of advertisement that gets into your mailbox? Or mailboxes in Italy don't get flooded with advertisement? (if that's the case, I definitely want to move to Italy :-)
Last week, I sent some CDs from Beijing office to Wuhan headquarter, and I went to the post office handling center, ha, there are so many workers there, and so many letters, parcels are handled there, I think I had a good lesson on how mail system works. I think none will have time to read each mail, because there're so many pieces of letters and parcels to handle by the workers.
also one question puzzled me, they are so busy, why they always claim they loss money --- I don't understand.
Isn't an association as Assoli allowed to distribute a newsletter among its associates? And there might be some PC magazines interested in including a "free" supplement with their monthly issue.
this is legal for them to do so as the magazine is freely re-distributable. But they need to pay for the costs by themselves.
Cheers, Frederic
I'm pretty sure there is no obstacle for FSF Europe to distribute paper copies of this magazine. [...] As of now, one could coordinate with non profit Free Software organizations in Italy (ASSOLI) [...]
In Italy we can't distributed printed stuff so easily. The publisher (or importer) must deliver 4 copies to the police before being allowed to distirbute. And magazines (those published once every month/whatever) must have additional authorizations. [1]
well, if it is a state law to do so, then we have no other choice (it looks worse in Italy than in China --- in China, you could distribute any copies to anybody, police station never acts under this censorship...)
Free press? Never heard of that in this part of the world.
I am glad to know you say so (actually I am proud of this)! Why not unite all of our community and try it now with Free Software Magazine?
Best wishes, Frederic
On Mon, 2001-12-10 at 21:56, Hong Feng wrote:
I'm pretty sure there is no obstacle for FSF Europe to distribute paper copies of this magazine. [...] As of now, one could coordinate with non profit Free Software organizations in Italy (ASSOLI) [...]
In Italy we can't distributed printed stuff so easily. The publisher (or importer) must deliver 4 copies to the police before being allowed to distirbute. And magazines (those published once every month/whatever) must have additional authorizations. [1]
well, if it is a state law to do so, then we have no other choice (it looks worse in Italy than in China --- in China, you could distribute any copies to anybody, police station never acts under this censorship...)
That law was done in 1939. So you can understand the goals that were behind it. No government changed it; the last one extended it in some way to electronic publications, the actual just ignored the results of a campaign aiming to reform it. Sometime I'm not so proud to be an italian.
Free press? Never heard of that in this part of the world.
I am glad to know you say so (actually I am proud of this)! Why not unite all of our community and try it now with Free Software Magazine?
In any case we (Assoli) can try to support the publication of the Magazine, accomplishing the law, but it will be a lot of burocracy ...
Ciao Simone
In Italy we can't distributed printed stuff so easily. The publisher (or importer) must deliver 4 copies to the police before being allowed to distirbute. And magazines (those published once every month/whatever) must have additional authorizations. [1]
well, if it is a state law to do so, then we have no other choice (it looks worse in Italy than in China --- in China, you could distribute any copies to anybody, police station never acts under this censorship...)
That law was done in 1939. So you can understand the goals that were behind it. No government changed it; the last one extended it in some way to electronic publications, the actual just ignored the results of a campaign aiming to reform it. Sometime I'm not so proud to be an italian.
If you are interested in distrite the magazine (printed paper copies) in Italy, we could send you the 4 copies for police --- that's no problem. I just wonder if the policemen could read and understand the articles inside.
In any case we (Assoli) can try to support the publication of the Magazine, accomplishing the law, but it will be a lot of burocracy ...
I think you could not only support it by distribution copies in Italy, it has online web version, so you could mirror it in your local area. More, welcome you write your articles for it.
In the first issue, there is alredy an author from Italy, who is the core member of psycopg (the DA between Zope and PostgreSQL), also there are authors from Russia, and other countries.
We welcome hackers all over the world contribute for this magazine, as this magazine is target to "hackers write for hackers". If you could write articles, pls pay a visit to our guidelines for authors at http://www.rons.net.cn/english/FSM/issue01
Best wishes, Frederic
On Sun, Dec 09, 2001 at 05:04:02PM +0100, Loic Dachary wrote:
Hi,
As a followup to
http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/discussion/2001-December/002033.html
I'm pretty sure there is no obstacle for FSF Europe to distribute paper copies of this magazine. When I mean no obstacle, I omit the fact that someone has to take care of this ;-)
The FSF Europe being an established non profit, a volunteer would only have to make sure the copies are printed, to get in touch with distribution chanels etc, etc. When I mean "only", I omit the fact that this is a quite demanding task.
I was wondering about the fact that it would perhaps need to be translated, before being printed ? Did you think about it, or you thought it wouldn't need to ? In France, a lot of people have difficulties to read English speaking publications, so they avoid them as often as they can.
Except this potentially huge question, I'd be very interested by this project, at least for participating to the French publication. I'm the French translator of Georg's Brave GNU World, and the responsible for Alcove's newletter, so I suppose I've already proven to be in favor of any publication about Free Software...
Could the Brave GNU World be a part of this publication ?
Raph
I was wondering about the fact that it would perhaps need to be translated, before being printed ?
Did you think about it, or you thought it wouldn't need to ?
I have thought about these ideas. Actually, I am expecting the magazine could be translated into various languages by the local free software community all over the world.
One tricky issue is: not every article in the magazine will be GNU FDLed, some of them would be "verbatim" license, means modifications are not allowed with the prior permission of the author (RMS said this is a reasonable rule for the authors who dont want their opinions will be changed by others), translation is regarded as a sort of "modification".
So, if a local free software community wants to translate the magazine into their locale, I hope they could contact with me at first, to discuss the copyright issues, and other details on technical support.
In France, a lot of people have difficulties to read English speaking publications, so they avoid them as often as they can.
this is usual case, some programmers here in China are good at hacking, but their english are poor, so definitely we will have Chinese version of the magazine. There are already several local publishers want us to support them (though the virgin issue is not born yet)!
Except this potentially huge question, I'd be very interested by this project, at least for participating to the French publication.
Good news that you could support it. At present, France is a "strong" country for free software movement, I suggest you need to have 2-3 more people to join. One will be in charge of translation (organizing other hackers to do it) and editing, one for typesetting, and one for printing and distribution. Distribution is very time-consuming, as you have to print the addresses of many recipients, paste the labels onto envelopes, send them to post office, etc.
I'm the French translator of Georg's Brave GNU World, and the responsible for Alcove's newletter, so I suppose I've already proven to be in favor of any publication about Free Software...
Could the Brave GNU World be a part of this publication ?
I have not see any drawbacks to do so, but we would better to discuss with FSF or FSF-Europe on this idea.
Best, Frederic
Hi,
El mar, 11-12-2001 a las 00:21, Hong Feng escribió:
I was wondering about the fact that it would perhaps need to be translated, before being printed ? Did you think about it, or you thought it wouldn't need to ? I have thought about these ideas. Actually, I am expecting the magazine could be translated into various languages by the local free software community all over the world.
I'm in touch with Hispalinux, which actually is the greater legal user group around Linux and Free Software in Spain. Although I have no time myself to contribute translations, I'm going to spread info about the mag in the member mailing-list. I think that at least we could provide a mirror for the mag.
Anyways, first of all it would be interesting a small list of "wishes":
- Translators for local languages - Distributors for paper version - Mirrors of web version? - ...?
When we have a complete list, I'll see what can we do.
Regards.
I'm in touch with Hispalinux, which actually is the greater legal user group around Linux and Free Software in Spain. Although I have no time myself to contribute translations, I'm going to spread info about the mag in the member mailing-list. I think that at least we could provide a mirror for the mag.
Good.
Anyways, first of all it would be interesting a small list of "wishes":
- Translators for local languages - Distributors for paper version - Mirrors of web version? - ...?
When we have a complete list, I'll see what can we do.
Here is the list I suggested how to get involved with the magazine (published at http://www.rons.net.cn/english/FSM/issue01):
----------------------------------------------- How to get involved
If you want to contribute to Free Software Magazine, you can do it in the following ways:
* Write an article. Go see the Submission Guidelines listed as below for Free Software Magazine.
* Send your suggestions, comments, criticisms or trick (or more) with a brief explanation to fred@mail.rons.net.cn or hongfeng@gnu.org
* Help preview articles! Send a note with your name and email address to fred@mail.rons.net.cn or hongfeng@gnu.org
* Mirroring Free Software Magazine in your local area.
* Buy Your Hard Copy from us. Your payment will be used to finance MNM Project to support the free software community. Send your order to orders@mail.rons.net.cn
* Place Advertisement about your free software, or free software based system, hardware, or service. --------------------------------------------------------------------
Best, Frederic
|| On Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:21:44 +0800 (CST) || Hong Feng fred@mail.rons.net.cn wrote:
hf> Could the Brave GNU World be a part of this publication ?
hf> I have not see any drawbacks to do so, but we would better to hf> discuss with FSF or FSF-Europe on this idea.
Although I don't quite understand why the FSF Europe or FSF would have to be consulted on this issue, I certainly do not see a problem with including the Brave GNU World in a magazin for Free Software if you succeed in creating one.
Regards, Georg
hf> Could the Brave GNU World be a part of this publication ?
hf> I have not see any drawbacks to do so, but we would better to hf> discuss with FSF or FSF-Europe on this idea.
Although I don't quite understand why the FSF Europe or FSF would have to be consulted on this issue, I certainly do not see a problem with including the Brave GNU World in a magazin for Free Software if you succeed in creating one.
thanks for your giving your idea on this. I think the Brave GNU World will consistantly encourage all the members in our community to work for the gaol to create a better society. So I will include it into the magazine as an usual column.
Rgds, Frederic