At the Steering Committee meeting on Wednesday night, we noted that
our membership is a diverse lot ranging from new users to old hands.
Accordingly, we have to account for this when setting up a meeting
agenda.
*In general*, we're going to try to schedule three or four
presentations or discussions during each meeting:
1. News and group discussion concerning VanLUG activities such as web
site development, installfest preparation, Linux advocacy, etc.
2. A demonstration or presentation concerning some aspect of UNIX
system or network administration. (E.g., packet filtering using
Linux)
3. A demonstration or presentation concerning some aspect of UNIX
end-user application. (E.g., a Mobitex driver for Linux. [Mobitex
is a wireless data network similar to Ardis.]
(This might include some aspect of Amateur Packet Radio, a
demonstration of a new release of a Linux application (Mathematica,
MATLAB, Applixware?), demonstration of Palm Pilot tools for Linux,
etc. Or it might be a case study of Linux/UNIX use in a scientific
or business application, or development of a Linux/UNIX application.)
4. Finally, we want to take full advantage of the wealth of technical
knowledge and expertise in the group. Our mechanism for doing
so will be a roundtable discussion hosted by Art Stone.
Like the rest of us, Art is constantly coming up with questions
about Linux in particular (and UNIX in general) which are more
suited to group (rather than mailing list) discussion. For
example:
1. What's likely to be involved in "porting" an
RPM'd or similar package from one distribution to another,
say from Red Hat to Slackware, or from Slackware to
S.u.S.E.?
2. Red Hat has recently changed its principal
compiler, away from GCC. And. S.u.S.E. says
they're likely to make the same change when they
get to their 3.0 release. What's involved? Where
did the new compiler come from, and what are its
advantages?
2a. What effect does the change in compilers have on
"porting" applications between Red Hat and other
distributions?
3. What's this about a big argument between Red Hat
and FSF several months ago? What are the points to be
considered on each side?
3a. And what are the drawbacks ( or features :) of
the GPL, compared with other ways of putting software
in what I like to call PROTECTED public domain
-- that is, putting it in p.d. in such a way that it
will stay there, cannot be stolen, made private.
For example, the first version of Emacs was not
protected; then Emacs was made private, a commercial
product, in the Gosling Emacs -- that preceeded the
GNU Emacs we have now.
(So Gosling went on to do Java instead.of Emacs. :)
To put it briefly: what's wrong with the GPL?
And what are better alternatives?
Each month, we're going to ask you to suggest such questions to Art.
(His e-mail address is <stone@math.ubc.ca>.) A few days before
each meeting, Art will post these questions to the list so, if you
wish, you can do some homework before joining in on the discussion
at the meeting.
Does this approach sound okay? We're only five guys on a Steering
Committee! If you have an idea, please let us know, or, better still,
join us!
And, if you have an idea for a presentation, please let us know that,
too!
In any case, I hope to see all of you at the Linux meeting on Monday
night!
-- Dave Michelson AT&T Wireless Services davem@ee.ubc.ca http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/davem/