Villa Vogelsang (was: Logo timeline)

[Peter Gerwinski]

josX wrote:
> You are not hackers, you are not free software, you are a bunch of shrude
> managers seeking to exploit free software. A big villa huh? with a nice
> garden huh? expensive restaurant? .... [...]

The Villa Vogelsang (http://www.villa-vogelsang.de) is the German
center for GNU/Linux and Free Software, and we could use it for
free. Reinhard, the owner of the villa, donates free resources for
the Essener Linux User Group (ELUG, http://www.elug.de) and the
FSFE. We can use two seminar rooms with beamers, notebooks, 100 MBit
ethernet, and internet connection.

If you want to have all this for yourself, just come on a Tuesday
evening after 19h and meet us in the ELUG, or watch the ELUG web
pages for the next weekend event. If you do not want to get a cheap
room in the Villa, take your tent with you, so you can sleep in the
nice garden.

As for the food, Reinhard and I paid it from our private money. The
restaurant was good, but not expensive. The other FSFE members paid
their flights and trains from their own private money. All this is
part of our contribution to Free Software.

The whole event was financed by private money and did not cost the
FSFE one single Euro.

> Why don't you sell the villa to
> generate funds so we can buy computers for the kernel-hackers?

It does not belong to us, so we cannot sell it. But anyway: IMHO the
villa serves Free Software better as it is now. In some sense, the
villa with all its computers, beamers and network _does_ belong to
the Free Software hackers (and not only the kernel hackers).

> Why don't
> you use that money to start printing free stickers to be given away 
> wherever possible etc etc etc?

We (to be precise: our French friends:-) are using our private money
to print free stickers to be given away wherever possible etc. Watch
out on conferences for our "dynamic duo stickers".

Concerning our appearance: My hair is longer than what is modern for
men right now; this holds even more for Bernhard and Frederic. Also
I have a beard - a mustache, to be exact. If you like, you can call me
"Dr. Petr Erichowich Gerwinski" (see http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/ecsl/).

In fact I own several ties. On http://adele.gerwinski.de/~peter/gpl-tie.html
you can see my favourite tie, but normally I prefer bow ties in
combination with a smoking or ritz when I enjoy dancing with my
wife Anja. In normal life, I am more like on the FSFE pictures
(http://adele.gerwinski.de/~peter/fsfe-20010506/20.jpg) Sorry if
this makes me a shrude manager seeking to exploit free software, but
I will not give up my freedom how to dress myself just to please you.

Okay, back to writing the official inofficial protocol of the
meeting on Sunday.

    Peter

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