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[Ludovic PENET]

I think there a misunderstanding from the beginning between people of this
list.
Some, like Jos, think that Free Software is, at the end, that Free Software
should be a hobby.
Some others think that we can make a living of writing free, should get
organized to dialog with authorities like government to promote the use of
Free Software. I just can not see how we can convince authorities like
government to trust us if we present us as a joyous amateur movement.

If we adopt the first point of view, everything should be free, cooperative,
fully distributed and we do not really need representatives to convince
anyone: we are already convinced, have fun, and do not worry about what
other people can think of our hobby.
In the second point of view, at the extreme, we can find professional
software developpers (I am one such strange thing :-) ), who eventually like
GNU/Linux and would like to use it in their daily work, recommend it to
their clients, all that if possible contributing to the Free Software
movement. In this perspective, we need people to represent the free software
movement, at least so that big organizations can have an interlocutor.
Along with that, there are points common to both point of view, like the
interest of having Free Software used by governments in order to avoid
naughty things like back doors...

Both point of views are quite respectable, but we should make clear whether
FSF Europe aims to represents the first or the second point of view. I
thought FSF Europe defends the second one (I found strong indices of this by
the existence of the GBN, for instance). Does everyone agree with that? Or
at least, can the core team precise its position?

Best regards,

Ludovic