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[Frank Heckenbach]

josX wrote:

> 1. I see no point in trying to influence politics: it won't work, not
>    now not ever.

Then you might as well stop using and writing free software right
now because it will be illegal soon. The big proprietary companies
surely do see a point in trying to influence politics, and the
actions to hamper/outlaw free software are already underway.

> > > garden huh? expensive restaurant? .... I see you put your money where you
> > Did you check the other pages of the Villa Vogelsang too
> > (http://www.villa-vogelsang.de/engl/index-en.html)? It is a completely
> > independant Hotel, that is _donating_ services to the FSFE. The local Linux
> > Users Group has a regular meeting there every Tuesday. Yes, you can just
> > come and enjoy it. No entrance fee, no drinks you need to buy, nothing. But
> > you will always get a presentation on some Linux stuff. Once a month the
> > meeting is dedicated to beginners. Why not?
> 
> How handy.... an independant Hotel "donating"...
> Don't you know /anything/ about bisnis? What about exposure, what about deals
> like "get some pictures of our hotel in the press-release, and you can stay
> there once in a while...". This is how the money game goes, and I see you
> are already sucked in (asuming for a minute that was not your aim, which I
> am /heavily/ suspecting). Possibly same for the LUG, dunno. And if this is
> an exception.... sorry, this is the way these things go, and it fits it like
> a glove on a hand.

According to your last two sentences, what you claim is nothing but
prejudice then.

A hotel that runs its infrastructure on GNU/Linux and serves as a
real example of free software in use in this branch (the first one
in Germany, perhaps in Europe), that organizes Linux seminars and
that donates services to FSFE and the LUG -- what do you want more?
Would you expect the owner to sit down each night and write some
code himself until you're willing to call him a good person?

(Yes, I've been there, and I've met the owner personally, so you can
call me corrupted, too. ;-)

> > Because the Hotel doesn't belong to them.
> 
> No, they belong in part already to the Hotel.
> Are you crazy/blind !?!

Since also the American FSF accepts donations from companies, I take
it you also accuse RMS of having sold out to these companies? (Same
for the Debian project, the Linux kernel, etc.)

> > The FSF Europe has the vision to not just hack a few lines of code
> > today, we want to fundamentally change things and make sure free
> > software will prosper on the long-term scale. This requires thinking
> > in 30-year perspectives.
> 
> And that's why I am afraid of you.

So, you don't like long-term thinking, you don't like organizations,
and you don't like discussions -- what are you doing here, anyway?
(I don't mean this as "p*** off", but since you don't believe in
influcencing people and prefer action so much, why waste your time
in these discussions and not write some more code?)

> > m.a.eberhard at aston.ac.uk Wed May 09 10:27:40 2001 Wrote:
> > On Wed, May 09, 2001 at 10:03:34AM +0200, josX wrote:
> > > > Your remark just made me think about that:
> > > > As far as free software are concerned, we all know the legitimity 
> > > > and leadership of people in the community come from the achievment done 
> > > > in developping free software.
> > > > Hilaire
> > Indeed a very good point. Jos, please tell us a bit more about yourself and
> > what you've done so far for the free software community as a whole. Which
> > "actions" have you taken so far?
> 
> Does it matter for the things at hand?

Since you've (wrongly) accused the core team members of being no
hackers, it seems justified to question your own contributions.

> This is the adress of my website: http://www.xs4all.nl/~joshb

OK, so you're not some kind of troll who hasn't ever written
anything himself. Fine. But you have to admit that, e.g., Peter's
and Werner's projects (GPC and GPG, as has been mentioned) are at
least two orders of magnitude larger, and if they decide to do some
lobbying for free software *in addition*, how can you blame them for
that?

(BTW, I still hold that such larger projects require more
organization and coordination than small programs on which you can
"work for hours and then just put it on the web". I've done both,
and what works for the latter doesn't often work well for the former
where the amount of work is measured in years rather than hours.
Maybe you're content working on small projects, and that's fine. But
don't demand that everyone else shares your preferences.)

> I showed the pictures to my brother (who is unaware of anything btw) because
> he is good at sniffing out things by seeing the physical appearance, and
> he said "They look like bisnis-man, very relaxed and discussing something
> seriously. They don't look like old hackes with long beards but that may
> be an old idea... . They don't look like criminals".
> 
> Why are you positioning yourself as being managers/politicians. Why can't
> you simply be like we all are.

Oh, and what exactly are we all like? Are you an old hacker with a
long beard? I don't know, but I'm not, and I know quite a few other
free software hackers who are not.

Sure, it's a nice image, but many (most?) of us really don't look
like this, so we shouldn't pretend to. Freedom also means diversity.
A crowd of RMS clones (to fit an image, not because of free
decision) is just as senseless as a crowd of businessmen in black
suits and ties (to fit their image).

Finally, judging people you obviously don't know very much about
from some photographs is very much like prejudice.

Frank

-- 
Frank Heckenbach, frank at g-n-u.de
http://fjf.gnu.de/
PGP and GPG keys: http://fjf.gnu.de/plan