Communicating freely
Thoughts on how we can all talk a little easier, and how that can make life better.
The Shane Roadshow (me? a copycat?)
SCO has (had?) one. Ciarán from FSFE has one. Now I have one too! Yes, it’s time to lock your children inside. It’s time to hide behind the sofa. Shane has a roadshow.
I’m on a one-man mission to spread the FSFE word across the Midlands of the UK, and last night my first victim…um…I mean audience…was the Wolverhampton Linux Users Group. I used to study at Wolverhampton Uni (way back before electricity), and it was great fun to return to the city. It was even more fun to meet the people behind the LUG.
When I first turned up at Spice Avenue balti restaurant I didn’t know what to expect. Old people, young people? Happy people? Sad people? A bunch of people who would set fire to me and dump the body because I dual-boot Ubuntu and WindowsXP? As it happens, the Wovles LUG is made up of a diverse range of people with a whole variety of commercial and non-commercial interests. One thing unifying the group is that everyone is really friendly.
We ate before we did any serious talking, and it was only after stuffing myself with a nice chicken dish that I stumbled upstairs to a conference room to chat about the FSFE. I didn’t want to present too much information and bore everyone to tears, so we had a quick run-through about Free Software (as opposed to open source), the role of the FSFE, and how people can help out. Then we had a much longer section for Q&A.
During the question time a lot of interesting points were raised about DRM, trusted computing, and getting people to adopt GNU/Linux. There is some common ground about issues like DRM, but there is also a lot of worry about things like Linus’s rejection of GPLv3 draft 1. From a practical perspective, a very good point was made about GNU/Linux as a whole: until the average person walks into PC World (a large chain in the UK) and sees Linux machines there, Linux will have a lot of trouble getting to the desktop.
My favourite comment of the evening had to do with “is Linux ready for the desktop?” I suggested that for many people it’s not, and I was rightly corrected by a wise LUG member. They pointed out that if someone has never used a computer before, something like GNOME is easy to pick up. The problem is transitional users. For people used to Windows, Linux systems have a learning curve, and that is where a lot of people don’t want to put in the effort. Excellent point!
We need to engage with each other closely in the coming years. GNU/Linux is more popular than ever before, and it would be wonderful if we could keep expanding our reach. However, we need to work together on this one, drawing LUGs and Free Software Foundations and governments and businesses closer. The purely hobby years of Linux are gone, but that’s no reason to take the fun out of it. If we can all find common ground, and aim towards aspirational goals like technological provision, I believe we can make a massive difference not just to existing computer users but also to disadvantaged people around the world.
Personally, I would like to see more dialog. I’d like to see more people talking to more groups, and to make full use of all this communication technology we are sitting on. That way we can really deal with some of the issues (DRM, sustainable business models in FOSS) that are floating around.
Thank you Wolves LUG! I had great fun, and I’ll try to make it to the next meeting!