Hi guys,

I've been exchanging a few emails with GNOME.Asia summit committee and Richard Stallman about his visit to Beijing (and maybe Taiwan) in August. His schedule is not confirmed at this time however he raised one issue as a condition to visiting (or not) the BLUG:

Richard Stallman wrote:
I have to point out that I cannot participate in an event that calls the GNU system part of "Linux"; I think this would exclude me from events of the Beijing Linux User Group, unless it changes its name.
Note that he is looking for audiences with over 100 people so we might not qualify anyway.

Note 2: he visited us in 2005 (but we might have had GNU in our name at the time

Note 3: we dropped the GNU because it was making the name too long, a bit like people call me Fred, because Frederic is long... and it was easier to fit our name/logo with the website graphic.

Anyway I think it was important to let you know and decide whether we should change our name or not.

Fred

Interesting, if he can find +100 users that are actually calling their system GNU Linux in Beijing, I'd be interested to meet them too

He won't be missed.

I have seen the email as well, interesting.
btw, I'm sure we were called BLUG when it's 2005.

To be honest, I don't think combine GNU and Linux is a big deal, because GNU is actually a core component in our distributions nowadays(so was gnome, kde etc), but when people refer to 'GNU/Linux' system, he say "GNU/Linux" would be much complex, I believe that FSF would be probably better to change their manner of the propaganda to make people easy to accept....

or give us a easy-remember, easy-speak name?

It's funny how much dogma an acronym of a recursive wordplay can hold.

hehe, the BGNULUG ^^ speak that out!!

Honestly, there are not soooo much gnu user-land tools in a typical distro anymore, there so many new tools that start replacing old GNU stuff, if everyone starts with that 'i want to be named' it will be: GNU/Gnome/cowsay/Linux thats just stupid. Same as the debian project, it will be for me always Debian, not 'Debian GNU/Linux' nor 'Debian GNU/Hurd' or 'Debian with solaris kernel and BSD userland'

I can understand that if a guy comes buy takes all credits for a small kernel and a huge package of software and calles it just Linux and everybody likes it ... that not nice for some people ego, but if you like Free software just be happy that Linux helped GNU tools sped all over the world ...

Cheers
xuedi

P.S.
I would like a podium discussion with Richard Stallman much more than just a talk

For what it's worth RMS is actually going to speak on August 4th in Beijing on a conference sponsored among others by Microsoft, about security.

But what's really ironic is that the conference entrance fee is somewhere between U$350 and $450 to attend. For sure it's not about free as in free beer!

One thing is certain, he'll be talking to a whole different audience this time, and maybe it's a good thing (versus preaching to already convinced people).

Fred

Perhaps Microsoft finally found a way to get revenge after that attention whore "open source" nutball disrupted Bill Gates' speech here a few years ago?

Fred wrote:
For what it's worth RMS is actually going to speak on August 4th in Beijing on a conference sponsored among others by Microsoft, about security.

But what's really ironic is that the conference entrance fee is somewhere between U$350 and $450 to attend. For sure it's not about free as in free beer!

One thing is certain, he'll be talking to a whole different audience this time, and maybe it's a good thing (versus preaching to already convinced people).

Fred

Haha, Agreed.

Actually I would like to remind people that we already are a GNU/Linux User Group as per our 'status' written in 2002 and which can be found here:
www.beijinglug.org/en/index.php?option=c...;id=87&Itemid=15

Now for some graphical reasons we dropped the GNU in the logo as it didn't fit in the box.

So while supporters of GNU definitely in ideology we have a bit forgotten about it.

Fred

8 years soon, can't wait for the birthday party