FSF, APRIL, FSF France and GNU working together

Bradley M. Kuhn bkuhn at gnu.org
Fri Jun 1 18:47:04 UTC 2001


Great report, Loic!  Thanks for sending it.

Does FSF Europe collect these reports somewhere in a file, or savannah
project ;)?  I'd like find some volunteer, at year's end, to go through
them, and write a summary in a page worth of text on "What FSF Europe did
in 2001", so that we can put it in the FSF annual report.  I think that's
a great way to increase awareness about FSF Europe in the states, and
strengthen our (already strong ;) affiliation with each other.

(If anyone would want to volunteer for that, they are welcome. ;)

loic at gnu.org <loic at gnu.org> wrote:
>      The FSF distribution office (DO) is located in Boston downtown,

We actually have begun calling this the "FSF Main Offices" publicly.  The
offices got the name "DO" because the office was originally just for
distributing magnetic tapes, CDs, t-shirts, and books.

We do so much more than distribution out of this office these days, it's
really a misnomer, and makes it sound to the public that all we do is
distribution.  It'll be a long time before people drop the habit of
calling it the DO, but I think we should try, at least when speaking to
people outside the internals of the FSF USA and FSF Europe.

> When I asked, Bradley told me that they will destroy the building and
> relocate everyone in another one, currently in construction across the
> street.

Actually, there's new information on this front.  I was told recently that
an MIT subsidiary (or something like that) bought the building, and it
won't be demolished.  However, the CS department is still moving, which
means RMS and the GNU offices there will probably move within the next
five years.

> [after seeing "Gates" sign, ] I headed for the DO, two subway stations
> away.

At least our sign reads "Free Software Foundation".  ;)

>      weeks ago after 8 years of vacations (;-) to be the Account
>      Manager.

Noted elsewhere on this thread, Lisa is the "Business Manager", not
"Account Manager".

> Bradley does the usual thing a Vice President and a kernel do :
> switching context.

...and sadly my brain's hard drive is usually thrashing, and it's hard to
get real work done with all that swapping going on.  ;)

>      Although I did not count them, a wild guess would be that he
>      handles from 30 to 100 contexts a day.

My estimate would be about 50-60.  ;)

> Well, except the day he spent talking to journalists about RMS's talk to
> counter the Craig Mundie statement.

Actually, I was juggling at least 10 contexts that day in between calls.
;)

>  On behalf of the FSF Europe members and friends, I extend my gratitude
>  to all FSF members and friends.

Indeed, we appreciate your gratitude towards us, but as it turns out, the
whole point of the event was to extend *our* gratitude to all of you.  The
Free Software Movement must be a world-wide movement, and we have tried to
for too long to cover the globe ourselves.  We need FSF in every country
to fight locally, while coordinating globally.  And, FSF Europe will
always have a special place in our hearts and minds because they were the
first official FSF outside the USA.

>      Before leaving tech square to the airport Bradley introduced me to
>      Gary Sussman. Gary scared the shit out of me by explaining that the

It's "Gerry", actually.

>      copyright law is controlled by Disney, world wide.

> Since he is a member of the FSF board I should better check this to find
> out if he was kidding or not :-)

It's actually a simple idea: Disney (and other companies allied with them)
lobby the USA Congress for all kinds of laws extending copyright (e.g.,
DMCA), and then the Berne convention enforces those copyright world-wide.

Disney is creating what RMS calls "perpetual copyright on the installment
plan".

>      Also Bradley spared half an hour to install grub and teach me the
>      basics. I'm converted.

;)

>      This was the conclusion of a successful, 100% cooperative project
>      involving FSF, APRIL, FSF France and GNU.

I am looking forward to many more.  Thanks, Loic, and everyone else for
your hard work.

>   16. http://france.fsfeurope.org/news/bkuhn@gnu.org

This link is dead.... What is it supposed to be?


BTW, have you all set up some sort of software system for handling these
reports.  Long ago, I had the idea of building an XML DTD for "journal and
log entries", along with software with exporting capabilities to
livejournal, advogato, and other formats.  If anyone wants to start a
project to hack that, perhaps it'd be useful to both the FSF USA and FSF
Europe.


   -- bkuhn
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