[tlug] [tlug blacklisted? hehe] Happy Year, o-hisashiburi, yada, yada, ya

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

OK, well, let's try this again, now that I've received my subscription
confirmation.  (I'm assuming that the listserv handles posts as
efficiently as it does admin requests....)

--- Begin Message ---

• Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 16:18:37 +0900
• From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>
• Subject: Happy Year, o-hisashiburi, yada, yada, ya
• Organization: The XEmacs Project
• User-agent: Gnus/5.1002 (Gnus v5.10.2) XEmacs/21.5 (celeriac, linux)

Russ Nelson of OSI and PubSoft.org asked me for an intro to Japanese
LUGs, and I don't post where I ain't subscribed[1], so ... I be back.

Anyway, the story is this: 

Russ got a Brother MFC-3820CN printer, and Brother won't cough up the
docs (although they have a linux-support@example.com address!) so he
can write drivers.  The whole sad story is here:

            http://russnelson.com/Brother-MFC-3820CN.html

He suggested that somebody start with his essay

             http://crynwr.com/on-being-proprietary.html

and write something similar oriented to the Japanese environment.  I
wrote Messr. Yamagata, the obvious suspect for this kind of thing, but
he didn't respond AFAICT.

Russ says

    I don't mean that they should translate it.  I want a
    persuasive essay written for a Japanese audience.  They don't
    need to understand English, they just need to understand the
    issues and be an advocate for free software.

    Ideally, they would publish it on a web page, and send email
    to linux-support@example.com pointing to it.

If there's somebody around with better Japanese skills than mine who's
interested in doing something like this, I'd be happy to help (and
provide the host, if TLUG isn't interested).  But I can't really
promise to put in that much time at the moment, so I don't want to go
on "point".  NB: it's a good essay, it's worth doing anyway, but this
is an especially good time to be doing it.

If somebody has a suggestion for an alternative place to go trolling
for support for a change of heart by Brother, or a translator, let
me/Russ know.

Also, if you're currently in the market for that class of peripheral,
you might just write Brother and say that you are an OSS user, but you
heard about Russ's troubles and have crossed Brother off your shopping
list (or whatever variation on that is true enough to tell them).

Regards from the attitudinally overendowed,

Steve

Footnotes: 
[1]  When I was last here you had to be subscribed to post, anyway.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.

--- End Message ---

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.