Re: [tlug] Re: Why the shirts? Why TLUG?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Attila Kinali writes:

 > There are a few groups that are politicaly active (fsf, groklaw, etc)
 > but that's the minority of the unix world.

Oops, I intended to say something about that, but forgot.  For
political stuff, the FSF (positive advocacy of free software, closest
to what I think Shannon is talking about), League for Programming
Freedom (aka LPF, another Stallman brainchild, IIRC, politically
oriented to anti-patent and weakening copyright activity), Electronic
Frontier Foundation (aka EFF, mostly legal advocacy, also privacy --
eg support for crypto implementation) are now decades old.

The Creative Commons seems very cool, but they're more generic than
software.  They're also more "open source" than "free software" types,
eg, IIRC some of the people involved with the Creative Commons are
pro-patent, with certain reservations.  Of course there's the Open
Source Foundation, but that seems kind of closed.  Debian itself is
very politically active.  Gentoo is politically innovative, but mostly
internally.  Out on the libertarian kook fringe is Russ Nelson's
Public Software Fund.  (Don't get me wrong, I like and respect Russ
very much, both personally and his political views, but his position
on firearms is the same as Eric Raymond's.  "Gun nuts.")

Law, I grok, but groklaw, I don't get.  It's not really an
organization, though, it's just Pamela Samuelson's blog, right?

Of the above, I believe that FSF/GNU and Debian both have active
Japanese chapters.  Don't know about the others.

 > > ("Is this the path to Tao?"
 > > "Sorry, but you can't get there from here." Abstracted from a longer
 > > philosophic joke.)
 > 
 > You have to explain that one to people who are as illiterate as i am.

"Tao" in Chinese is "dô", or

道, ie, "path" or "way" in English.  The
joke is that "having Tao" could be considered a goal (I think; I am
only an egg), but "Tao" is not a destination.  Tao is, like, "wherever
you go, there you are."[1]

In other words, "by 'just going' somewhere (anywhere), you've already
got Tao".

The Tao Te Ching is great stuff for reading and pondering.  I highly
recommend the English translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English,
Vintage Books, ISBN 394-71833-X.  It's not just a readable
translation, it's also a very beautiful book, containing the original
Chinese in calligraphic style, and wonderful photographs.  Here's an
example, written about Linux :-) I'm sure:

    45

    Great accomplishment seems imperfect,
    Yet it does not outlive its usefulness.
    Great fullness seems empty,
    Yet it cannot be exhausted.

Footnotes: 
[1]  In my dialect, "there you are", like "here you go", is often used
when fulfilling a request.  Eg:

Keith:  <looks meaningfully at empty glass>
Steve:  <pouring beer>  There you are!