From: "Gary's Encyclopedia" <nobody@example.org>
Subject: WWW: Take my Linux site -- please.
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 20:53:57 GMT

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----


ANNOUNCEMENT:

"Gary's Encyclopedia", at http://www.aa.net/~swear/pedia/index.html , has
been released to the Public Domain and is available for copying by anyone
interested in incorporating any of its content into a Linux web site.  It
is mainly a Linux documentation site with > 1 MB of > 4000 annotated links
and other info in > 150 hierarchically-organized categories covering almost
anything that might interest a Linux user or developer.

In the unlikely event you would want to use the existing name, please
don't, as I intend to keep the site on the WWW with little maintenance.

COMMENTARY:

Gary's Encyclopedia has been on the web for over a year now and, while I 
believe it is the best site available for finding Linux-related info,
I've been unsuccessful in convincing others of that [grin].  I've decided
that its low useage (50-100 home page hits per day) is not worth my 
efforts in its continued normal maintenance.

(Use of key definitions and auto-indentation within Emacs has made editing
quite simple but it still takes many hours per week to extract, denotate,
and categorize links from these and other sources: Linux Today, Linux
Weekly News, Slashdot, Linux Gazette, and occasionally other Linux sites.
Occasional checks for broken links take many hours because the automated
tools I've tried identify many good links as broken and very many links
must be hand checked.)

When I started the site, there were few general Linux documentation sites
on line and none that I considered very useful for finding info on a
particular subject when it was needed.  I'm glad to see that there are now
many Linux sites with documentation.  I probably wouldn't have started my 
site if those sites were available a year ago.  I do wish that these
sites were more comprehensive and better organized for both searching
and browsing.  I wish they would use many more categories, put lots of
info on each page, and not rely on search tools that often return junk.

I had intended to organize a distributed version of the site with many 
people maintaining "canonical" pages for their topic which all interested
parties would help provide content for, but I never worked up sufficient
confidence in my social-organizational skills (and desires) to attempt it.

Most of the blame for the "failure" of my site is mine, but I feel the need
to assign some of the blame to the sad state of our culture in which people
value poor products in glitzy packages more than good products in plain
packages.  I do take the blame for these reasons: I failed to make my site
look "professional".  (I insisted on using very simple HTML with default
colors, no graphics, no advertising, etc.)  I failed to widely publicize my
site by wide e-mailing of requests for links, etc.  I failed to put my site
on a server for which I could easily implement a search tool and failed to
implement one in Java.  I insulted the GNU world by my impolitic complaints
of their misuse of words like "free" (i.e., uncontrolled) and 
"non-proprietary" (i.e., not owned).  (GPL'd SW isn't even close to 
deserving either adjective.)  I lightly encoded my e-mail address on a
sub-page instead of using a e-mail hyperlink on the home page.  I didn't
try hard to find someone to help me.  Oh, well.  I found enjoyment in the
attempt to do something good for Linux and in doing something "my way"
instead of the way one has to do things when professionally employed.  I've
always enjoyed making an attempt more than having an accomplishment. (I 
guess that explains a lot.) I'm glad I've helped Linux some in the attempt.

I hope to devote my future efforts to two things: 1) Helping develop (or at
least test) some multi-OS GUI SDK (wxWindows?) to encourage the
development of SW that runs on Linux by people who currently develop only
for other OSes.  2) Promoting free software (SW given freely without
copyright) and nearly-free software (SW licenced only to protect the
reputation, wealth, or freedom of its authors, not to otherwise control the
use of the software or its derivatives).  I'm disturbed by the high
proportion of people who seem to want to prevent people from deriving
closed software from their "free" (GPL) software or even co-mingling the
two.  I suspect many would like their software to be used in the 90% of
software that would only be written if kept closed but they use the (L)GPL
without careful consideration of alternatives or because existing
alternative licences always seem to require some troublesome rewriting.

- -- 
Gary's Encyclopedia, http://www.aa.net/~swear/pedia/index.html




- -- 
This article has been digitally signed by the moderator, using PGP.
http://www.iki.fi/mjr/cola-public-key.asc has PGP key for validating signature.
Send submissions for comp.os.linux.announce to: linux-announce@news.ornl.gov
PLEASE remember a short description of the software and the LOCATION.
This group is archived at http://www.iki.fi/mjr/linux/cola.html

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.3ia
Charset: latin1

iQCVAgUBN0hq5VrUI/eHXJZ5AQHL0gQAtL0mBhwLdv2nLwIUS5s6VgR/au4RgPW8
NdIgZcwuqUz2x3v3tfxH5oakls74zTrkoQ+TPRvcOvJVzz4DUZy6gq2pwdSwYIOb
RZN3c+C4rWjgcmKOvAAbSewbaTZ0Bdob3F8IbxwyG+VodXwyEaczK9Bz/nO63zqH
9cA83vORYWw=
=3ZnZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----