[seul-edu] Re: Linux inservice day

["Chris Shaw" <chrisjshaw@compuserve.com>]

I like the idea of having access to some shared material to help with
missionary work - I don't know anything like enough to do that myself.
Having a coordinated time to have a shot also sounds good.

Titles are not everything, but words have associations and carry messages.
Often these things are different depending on the country / culture that you
are in.  So here is my small contribution to thinking about the words you
choose from my (UK) point of view, sorry if it sounds like rubbish to you :

Free = Cheap giveaway, usually not worth having, seedy salesmen.
Open Source = Not much, something technical and boring perhaps.

I would have thought the kind of words we want should strike a chord with
folks in education who, I would say, are generally in the business of
working communally for the good of society.  I think words like Public,
Community & Shared might be good which could lead to titles like Community
Software Day, Public Software Day etc.

Just a thought,
Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas S. Blank" <dblank@cs.brynmawr.edu>
To: <seul-edu@seul.org>
Sent: Friday, September 06, 2002 3:35 PM
Subject: [seul-edu] Re: Linux inservice day


>
> To bring the conversation back around to the inservice day, I had
> proposed an international "Open Source Day". Burkhard Woelfel then
> suggested a "hipper" (and "hippier") name: "Free Software Day".
>
> I did some further searching and found that Tony Stanco, founder of
> FreeDevelopers.net, had tried to get one together last October, but
> it didn't happen. He is still in support of the idea, though.
>
> I think the "day", whatever it be called, would be a good idea that
> wouldn't necessarily require a lot of organization, money, etc. If
> we just agreed on a day (or even week or month), then anyone that
> was planning to do such an inservice presentation could tie it into
> this.
>
> This would give us a common deadline with common goals, and we could
> all develop and share resources (slide shows, HOWTOs, resource
> links, etc) for putting on our own local presentations. Of course,
> we have a slant towards education, and our resources would reflect
> that, but others could join in with other emphasis if they wished.
>
> So, some things to consider:
>
> 1. Are you in favor of having such an "Open/Free Software" event?
>
> 2. What span of time should it cover: day, week, month? A single day
> might be too short, maybe a month is too long...
>
> 3. What would the name of it be? Open Source, Free Software, or
> something else? "Freedom of Software Week"?
>
> 4. What date(s)? It would be nice if there was an important day to
> celebrate, such as: the date of the birth of GNU, Linus's first
> post, RMS's birthday, etc. There is Feb 14 that is stamped on Tony
> Stanco's "The Declaration of Software Freedom", on-line at
> http://freedevelopers.net/freedomdec/index.php, but that is maybe
> too political, and Feb 14 has other celebrations (Valentine's Day
> here in the US).
>
> I don't necessarily want to bombard these lists on this topic if
> y'all aren't interested. So, let's do this: send me specific answers
> to these four questions, and I'll summarize in a week or so. Or, if
> you have general comments that everyone would be interested in, post
> them to the list so that we can discuss.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Doug
>