[Fsfe-ie] Information Flyer -- draft 2

[Éibhear]

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 at 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.