On Saturday 12 March 2005 10:45, Sam Liddicott wrote: > Lee Braiden wrote: > >No, but as a member of the free software community, I'd offer to write an > >article once in a while, and if maybe to mirror a public distribution site > > or at least to run a bittorrent seed. The only time you need > > corporate-style finances and resources is when you choose to be a > > top-down distribution and enforcement organisation. To me, that's not > > what free software is about. > > Well free software is about being able to modify and improve designs and > share those designs.
That is one aspect of it, but there are many others, such as the ability to actually get the sourcecode and build it yourself. > It would be a pretty dull magazine if each issue > was an incremental revision of the previous issue. That would be a strange periodical indeed. I certainly never suggested that approach. > Presuming there are enough people who want to write an article, somebody > else needs to select articles. A better quality publication attracts > more submissions and takes more selection. Naturally. But if you substitute "articles" with "patches", this statement could apply to any big free software project, such as the Linux kernel. I fail to see your point. > AFAIK many top kernel contributors and maintainers have someone with > enough interest to pay their wages. Well, if you think that Linux would not have succeeded without people paying the developer's wages, I think you've got it backwards. People pay wages to Linux developers BECAUSE it has succeeded AS Free Software. > I want the magazine to keep existing > each month. If a guy needs wages to do this magazine, I am happy to > contribute because I get my moneys worth. I would rather have another guy write an article for an interest and concern in the subject, rather than for pay. It happens on Kuro5hin.org many times a day, and on sites all over the internet. > It is a nice ideal for the world to be the kind of world we think it > should be, sometimes financial support makes this ever so much more > likely in very specific ways. Financial support can be a good incentive, yes. There are better incentives though, such as belief in a cause, the desire to educate others, sheer excitement about a topic, altruism, genuine interest in discussing an important point, simple community spirit, etc. Anyway, I'm not trying to convert anyone to my way of thinking, so I'll drop it here. -- Lee. _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
