On Wed, 31 Jul 2002 09:53:05 -0400 (EDT)
Russell McOrmond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| The above is in and of itself an ideology - that being inclusive
| of all licenses/distros/etc makes one more "professional". I
| have seen this in many political discussions, with one side
| defining their point of view as being the "natural" one and the
| other side being "politically motivated" or idealistic.
Sticks and stones. The point, once again, is to get past "sides".
Just try and think about what would be good for the profession as a
whole.
Professionals do have to deal with multiple licences. It's not
unusual to have Winders on the desktop, Solaris on the workstations,
OS X in the DTP department, Linux on the servers, and so on. It's
not helpful to ignore that. Even within Linux there are a range of
licences to be complied with professionally. Apache, Perl, GPL, etc.
CLUE can help to sort these out. A home user can get away with most
anything, but failing to comply with licence requirements in the
commercial world can have legal and financial consequences. As a
professional organization we have to address the needs of a very
large and diverse group of professionals. It's difficult to see how
we could attract broad professional support if we confine ourselves
to one or two licences.
If CLUE supports many licences, that doesn't mean that you have do
so as well. If you want to run an OSI only shop that's fine. You're
not obligated in any way to support the GPL (as much as I personally
am in favour of it). But how would you feel if OSI wasn't
supported? It seems to me that a many licenced approach is more a
matter of necessity dictated by the facts of the world rather than
belief.
| I believe that being up-front about things is going to get you
| much further. There is nothing you can do to attract everyone to
| your group : you need to decide who you want to be part of your
| group, which by definition involves excluding others (or more
| specifically, setting up conditions such that some people won't
| want to join).
Well I have to confess as to not being very good at the 'manifesto'
approach or even that good with groups. I would tend to leave it up
to individuals to decide for themselves which licences they wished
to use for example. In a sense, trying to seat ESR and RMS at the
same table is a recipe for fireworks, but I think that's the sort of
thing CLUE has to do. It may help to create subgroups or SIGS as has
already been suggested. The purists and the pragmatists will both
feel right at home and confict can be minimized. Choosing one or the
other would be a mistake - least for a national organization. Linux
by its very nature is diverse and we have to deal with that
constructively. Balance is a good thing.
| CLUE will never have all Canadian Linux users as membership -
| this is simply impossible to do.
Agreed and we shouldn't even try. But that doesn't mean we should
exclude or ignore them either. I believe they may have a role to
play with regards the desktop if they want to contribute.
| Being open and up front, defining your terms in a FAQ - that is |
| how to avoid flame wars. Stating that being license-liberal and |
| "professional" will avoid them is in-and-of-itself flamebait.
Only if you bite! B->> But yes a FAQ can be useful - as can a code
of conduct, which would also be defined openly and up front.
bill
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