On 8/14/06, Baishampayan Ghose b.ghose@ubuntu.com wrote:
Ask yourself this small question --- ``What is the minimum amount of knowledge you can expect from a member of a GNU/Linux Users' Group mailing list?''
Honestly, the first time I had started using GNU/Linux I only knew that a group of hackers built Linux and the tools around it. It took me a good few months to actually remember all the names (except Linus' for obvious reasons). In my first meet I was confused as to who/what was being referred to as RMS. I decided to wait for someone to decode it during the conversation and luckily for me someone did.
It's not really about losing or winning a war. It's about knowing _why_ we are here today. No more, no less. Let me paraphrase Eben Moglen in this --- ``People who don't know the _why_ will hardly ever understand the _how_''. That's exactly what I can see happening. People just _love_ to shout about ``Linux'' and the greatness of ``Open Source'' but fail to understand something as fundamental as ``Freedom''. Trust me, it's not just about the software,
We need to consciously separate the "Free Software Ideology" from "Free Software Repository". In that sense people know the why, as in "why do I want to switch over to linux". It's because it's free, open source, more secure, challenging, upcoming tech I must know to get a better job, etc. In terms of the Free Software Ideology most of them hardly think about the 'how', so forget about the 'why'.
People come to GLUG lists for support and we cannot disillusion ourselves by thinking otherwise. Once they're in it's our job to introduce them to the Ideology of Free Software and how it could make things better in all respects. FSF does a great job with upholding or trying to uphold the spirit of Free Software, but we do a less than satisfactory job (note the euphemism) of actually connecting with people and businesses.
it's about the whole society. No matter how many ``Linux'' users are there in this world or how many companies support ``Open Source'', the whole Free Software revolution will remain a failure as long as we don't understand what Freedom is.
Freedom is much larger than software. Ofcourse, everyone does his part and RMS has done (and is still doing) a fine job of promoting the idea of freedom in software development and usage.
Regards, Siddhesh