🚀 go-pugleaf

				"The only act of revolution left in a
				 collective world, is thinking for yourself..."
				-- Bob Geldof

Dear GNUs,

I think this discussion reached the point, where *everyone* get's ready
to jump into asbestos, and start flaming.
Simply: it won't help anything.

As "yet another" European, I feel the need to try, to calm down the waves,
before a Europe vs. USA clash breaks loose; that is neither "winable", nor
desireable. (Unless we want to learn some new/old transatlantic prejudices.)

Moreover -- I can't help myself; everybody (on the net) seems to think
that GNU projects are leaded by God-like coding-creatures, who solve all of
the software industries problems with a "slight of hand". As far as I know
there are lots of volunteers (students) coding on GNU projects; not all
of them of the EMACS-inventor-type. (At least the most I guess.)

Simply: things take time. (TeX and MF took Don Knuth and his collaborators
8 years to develop in-full-time! Most GNU coding is done in-spare-time...?
(Maybe someone of the FSF could ACK this.))
As with real life, there are lights (flex, gcc) and shadows (indent)
coming with GNU software. And nobody should expect different things.

Right Things are rare, even in commercial software. (See XY-Windows for an
enlightning example; it also shows that the amount of copies sold != quality
of the product.)

I'd wish we'd distinguish between the FSF (an incorporation of some highly-
skilled hackers) and GNU, the *idea* of a freely available full-featured UN*X.
My point is: We can contribute to this *idea* without joining the FSF,
GPL, etc.

FSF resembles a COMMON BLOCK like structure of an, unfortunately not so ancient
programming language called FORTRAN; an organizational structure, that has
been superceded by distributed models, long ago. I think it's time
for another step in the USENET's evolution...

Simply: find some people who are interested in forming a project group,
and start hacking your own project(s)...I think there should be a place for
dozens of Free Software Foundations, on the net. If they all contribute to
the GNU idea, why not?
(I'd strongly recommend forming international groups, it helps to "drive out"
most, too often heared prejudices.)

But that all sounds like "Grey are all your theories; the golden tree of life
is green" (Mephisto in Goethe's Faust); I simply did it. I set up a project
group called MAGPIE, The European Free Software Foundation, that will make it's
tools available for the rest of the world via USENET's comp.sources.misc).
But again: Things take time. (Good things take longer.)

Simply: Use the USENET!

	-joke

--
Joerg Heitkoetter
Systems Analysis Group
University of Dortmund, Germany
(heitkoet@ls11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de).