Hi,
During the meeting last night the flyer, I did some weeks ago was discussed. Right now, I don't have access to the source (which is at home), so in this e-mail, please look at the "original" at http://www.geocities.com/eibhear.geo/IFSO/IFSO-free.pdf and see the changes outlined below. We are trying to get something prepared for Malcolm and the Indymedia conference starting on Friday, so it would be best if we keep the really obsessive nit picking for a later revision. This *is* a first try.
It would be ideal that changes are communicated to me before tomorrow night. Can I leave printing to someone else?
The introduction has been reworded as follows ============================= All software is licensed. This means that the owner of the rights of the software has specified how a user may use it, and that user agrees to abide by the license conditions. Free software is also licensed, but the rights granted to the user with free software are very different to those granted with non-free software. Free software grants users these rights: + To run the software program for any purpose; + To study how the program works and to adapt it to the user's specific needs; + Te redistribute copies of the software program for others to use with the same rights; and + To improve the program and to release those improvements to the public. In order to exercise the second and fourth of these rights, the user needs access to the software program's source code (the program's blueprint). These freedoms and rights help to foster a community of dedicated computer programmers who work with each other over wide geographic areas to develop high-quality programs for the benefit of the community and the world at large. ============================= Malcolm, Ciaran, Glenn, you had raised concerns about the first and the last paragraphs that I didn't record. Can you let me know what they were?
The section entitled "Irish Free Software Organisation" has had minor changes and now reads: ============================= The Irish Free Software Organisation (IFSO), at http://ifso.ie/, was formed in January 2004 to support the free software community in Ireland and to promote the use of free software throughout all walks of life. =============================
The section with the title "How does it work?" is to be rephrased as follows: ============================= Copyright law grants users of a creative work a very limited set of rights on that work. Any extra rights require the express permission of the rights owner of the work. Creators of Free Software grant users rights using a model license that makes the software free. The best known is the GNU General Public License (GPL) as devised and maintained by the Free Software Foundation (see below). In the same way as with non-free software, the user may choose not to accept the license governing the software. In this case the user must still abide by the copyright laws of the land. Other licenses used by free software developers include The Apache Software License and the BSD license. =============================
The "Examples" section has been changed to remove Samba (why -- does it not toe the party line?) and to delete "based on netscape" from the Mozilla section.
The section entitled "GNU and the Free Software Foundation" has been changed slightly to read: ============================= GNU stands for "GNU is Not Unix". It is the name of a project (http://www.gnu.org/) whose goal is to provide a complete computer operating system using only free software. The Free Software Movement and the GNU project were started by Richard Stallman in January 1984, and the project is maintained by the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/). All GNU software is copyrighted by the FSF and is released under the GNU GPL. ============================= While the LGLP is missing in the last sentence, would adding it cause confusion?
The section called "What Free Software Isn't" has had the "Stolen Intellectual Property" part removed from it, and the "Viral" part has been reworded thus: ============================= ... Viral. Installing GPL software does not mean that a company's software products must be released under the GPL. ============================= I have removed the "...those who say this either fail to understand the GPL or have deliberately misunderstand it." I would like something like it returned in a later revision, or in a separate "Myths and Facts" flyer. A large amount of the anti-GPL articles I've read and the "independent" reports I've heard of are by very qualified people who explicitly support companies like MS, and the possibility that they all innocently misinterpret the GPL just doesn't work with me.
The section entitled "Some providers of free software are household names." has been dropped for this revision. Reference to Sun should be dropped altogether as they have cloven hooves.
The copyright notice now reads: ============================= Copyright Éibhear Ó hAnluain, 2004. Prepared on 21st April, 2004 for the Irish Free Software Organisation. For more information, see http://ifso.ie/. For corrections, contact ifso@gibiris.org. =============================
Layout: Now that the "household names" section is gone, there is more space to play with. I will be decluttering the look of the flyer, but the sections will stay more or less where they are now.
I use scribus (version 1.1.5) to edit the file. It can export the document in PDF, EPS or SVG. If anyone has a better utility that I could use that can read these formats, please let me know. Note that I only have a GNU/Linux installation (Mandrake or Fedora) available to me for this work.
Thanks
Éibhear
-- Éibhear Ó hAnluain IFSO Ireland.