Hi,
Here is what I plan to do regarding software patents. This choice is dictated by 4 reasons : 1) petition.eurolinux.org is alive, 2) creating a domain name that is not bound to Free Software is a necessary step, 3) contributing a calendar is not a hard job, 4) all this can be done within a week.
I do not say these are the most important things to do. I think these are good things to do and can be done fast.
- Contribute some content to petition.eurolinux.org (Calendar of past and future events)
- Sort the content of the patent-examples@gnu.org list and insert them in the petition.eurolinux.org database for easier access.
- Create the domaine nosoftwarepatents.org
- Duplicate content from petition.eurolinux.org on nosoftwarepatents.org
- Mirror the content of nosoftwarepatents.org on fsfeurope.org + gnu.org
Your comments are welcome.
The current slogan on the FSFE webpage is "Free Software - equal chances for people and economy". I think this should be changed as soon as possible. It does not read like proper English. I'm no expert, but I know when something doesn't look right.
I believe that "Free Software- an equal chance for people and the economy" would be closer to grammatical correctness. Anyone with more of a clue than me care to chip in?
Lord Alistair Davidson, part time deity wrote:
The current slogan on the FSFE webpage is "Free Software - equal chances for people and economy". I think this should be changed as soon as possible. [...]
My personal opinion: I do not understand this slogan, and I would like to replace it by something entirely different.
Peter
On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 02:39:36AM +0200, Peter Gerwinski wrote:
Lord Alistair Davidson, part time deity wrote:
The current slogan on the FSFE webpage is "Free Software - equal chances for people and economy". I think this should be changed as soon as possible. It does not read like proper English. I'm no expert, but I know when something doesn't look right.
I believe that "Free Software- an equal chance for people and the economy" would be closer to grammatical correctness. Anyone with more of a clue than me care to chip in?
My personal opinion: I do not understand this slogan, and I would like to replace it by something entirely different.
There are two separate issues here. A change of message of the slogan and delivering the message in a grammatical form that do not make people laugh or scratch their heads trying to figure out what it means. The second issue seems much more urgent to me; as I already said it in an old message in the webmasters list, I agree with "Lord Davidson" that in this context it should be "the economy" and not just "economy".
Keep in mind that we are not discussing what the slogan should say, but just the correct way of saying what is currently trying to say.
Cheers, Jaime
|| On Wed, 16 May 2001 08:45:16 +0100 || "Jaime E . Villate" villate@fe.up.pt wrote:
My personal opinion: I do not understand this slogan, and I would like to replace it by something entirely different.
jev> ...
jev> Keep in mind that we are not discussing what the slogan should jev> say, but just the correct way of saying what is currently trying jev> to say.
I would like to agree with Peter. We need a better slogan for the web site.
The "equal chances" one is merely on there because I felt we should get rid of the "consciousness of software" one as soon as possible since it sounds very much like the raised finger and is likely to turn people away that don't know about Free Software already. It was never intended as the final solution, however.
So we are looking for a simple to understand slogan that won't turn people away because it raises the moral finger and that expresses an important aspect of Free Software.
Does anyone have a good idea?
Regards, Georg
Hi!
On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 10:07:20AM +0200, Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
Does anyone have a good idea?
FSFE, freedom for software
Bye, Marc _______________________________________________________________________________
email: marc@greenie.net email: m.a.eberhard@aston.ac.uk, web: http://www.aston.ac.uk/~eberhama/
"Jaime E . Villate" villate@fe.up.pt wrote:
Keep in mind that we are not discussing what the slogan should say, but just the correct way of saying what is currently trying to say.
I agree. I'd suggest to correct the grammar immediately, but at the same time we should look for a better slogan.
Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
So we are looking for a simple to understand slogan that won't turn people away because it raises the moral finger and that expresses an important aspect of Free Software.
Does anyone have a good idea?
Information wants to be free.
Peter
Hi!
On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 02:11:14PM +0200, Peter Gerwinski wrote:
Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
So we are looking for a simple to understand slogan that won't turn people away because it raises the moral finger and that expresses an important aspect of Free Software.
Does anyone have a good idea?
Information wants to be free.
FSFE, because software wants to be free.
Bye, Marc _______________________________________________________________________________
email: marc@greenie.net email: m.a.eberhard@aston.ac.uk, web: http://www.aston.ac.uk/~eberhama/
|| On Wed, 16 May 2001 14:08:04 +0100 || Marc Eberhard m.a.eberhard@aston.ac.uk wrote:
Does anyone have a good idea?
Information wants to be free.
me> FSFE, because software wants to be free.
Or maybe
"Communication must be free"
Which would go into the direction of the "right to read" story. For those who haven't read it yet:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Being able to use the medium software is becoming as important as the ability to read and write. Therefore it must not be controlled. I'd *really* like if we'd find something that would express this in just a few words.
Regards, Georg
Hi!
On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 03:14:53PM +0200, Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
|| On Wed, 16 May 2001 14:08:04 +0100 || Marc Eberhard m.a.eberhard@aston.ac.uk wrote:
me> FSFE, because software wants to be free.
Or maybe
"Communication must be free"
Well, communications means a lot. Phones are also a medium to communicate. I'm a bit afraid, this slogan would be associated with something like: Phone calls around the world should be free. Or maybe even worse: Mobile phone calls should be free. That's why I don't like the word communication in that context.
Bye, Marc _______________________________________________________________________________
email: marc@greenie.net email: m.a.eberhard@aston.ac.uk, web: http://www.aston.ac.uk/~eberhama/
Hi all
On Thursday 17 May 2001 10:02, Marc Eberhard wrote:
Hi!
On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 03:14:53PM +0200, Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
"Communication must be free"
Well, communications means a lot. Phones are also a medium to communicate. I'm a bit afraid, this slogan would be associated with something like: Phone calls around the world should be free. Or maybe even worse: Mobile phone calls should be free. That's why I don't like the word communication in that context.
wait a minute, I WANT phone calls to be free. Free as in speech, of course. No echelon, plz.
:-)
bye
-- Stefano Maffulli aka Reed | Milano Linux User Group http://www.zoomata.com a close-up on italy | http://www.milug.org tel: +39 347 1493.733 | http://HomePage.Coming To err is human...to really foul up requires the root password.
On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 02:08:04PM +0100, Marc Eberhard wrote:
On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 02:11:14PM +0200, Peter Gerwinski wrote:
Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
So we are looking for a simple to understand slogan that won't turn people away because it raises the moral finger and that expresses an important aspect of Free Software.
Does anyone have a good idea?
Information wants to be free.
FSFE, because software wants to be free.
How about a double acronym: "FSFE: Free Software For Europe"
Bye, Marc
Cheers, Mark
Marc Eberhard wrote:
On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 02:11:14PM +0200, Peter Gerwinski wrote:
Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
So we are looking for a simple to understand slogan that won't turn people away because it raises the moral finger and that expresses an important aspect of Free Software.
Does anyone have a good idea?
Information wants to be free.
FSFE, because software wants to be free.
Addressing a more general aspect (as Georg wrote):
FSFE, because people wants to be free
or, better:
Free Software, because people wants to be free
Ciao, Stefan
Hi,
I wrote:
Information wants to be free.
I still think that this points to the right direction.
I have the following vision:
* We have computers and the Internet. Information can be copied and spread at minimal costs.
* The legal structures we are confronted with (copyright law, etc. - "intellectual property") are still the old ones which have been appropriate in the world of the past.
* Free Software is the new structure which is appropriate for the world we have today.
* Those who ignore the new structure (by "protecting" their information against "illegal" copying - see DeCSS for an example) will be wiped away sooner or later, because the old structure is against the nature of the new world.
* Those who understand the new structure (= Free Software) can benefit from it.
If we find a slogan that expresses all this in a few words, I think that it can attract the attention of many people to our information material who would perhaps otherwise think "Free Software? That's not for me."
Just my 2 Centieuro,
Peter
Hi!
On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 07:57:23PM +0200, Peter Gerwinski wrote:
Information wants to be free.
Your doctor's records about your health are informations too. You surely don't want them to be freely distributable, do you? That's why I don't like the word "information" here. It sounds too much like you want to bring down current data protection laws.
Bye, Marc _______________________________________________________________________________
email: marc@greenie.net email: m.a.eberhard@aston.ac.uk, web: http://www.aston.ac.uk/~eberhama/
"Georg" == Georg C F Greve greve@gnu.org writes:
Georg> So we are looking for a simple to understand slogan that won't Georg> turn people away because it raises the moral finger and that Georg> expresses an important aspect of Free Software.
Georg> Does anyone have a good idea?
How about: "Because freedom makes a difference."
It's short but to the point, I think.
Regards, Lars
Couldn't we use that latin motto by St Agustinus as slogan ?. Possibly with a translation to the language the page is written on. I guess that's already considered and discarded, so we should think something else.
I can't think of much. What about
Let freedom grow on software, let software grow in freedom.
?
In fact it doesn't say much beside the Free Software Foundation Europe name itself, so it may not be very useful. By the way, whether it is useful or not, is it proper English?.
On an unrelated point. I want a t-shirt (at least one), with the map, Europe riding the gnu and the latin motto (not this one). Who should I contact?.
Just as a notice:
Once upon a time, there was a slogan contest for Linux. See http://www.linux.de/slogan/slogans.php3 Most of them are in German and OS dependant where some of the slogans are reusable for Free Software, because they are in English and OS independent. Actually, I'm reading slogan 1000 and did not find something suitable.
Eike