[GNU-linux-libre] blag n'est pas mort. Vive blag

[Abdur-Rahman Morgan]

Good Day All,

I am Abdur-Rahman Morgan(tearms), a 28 year 21st century technosapien,
from Brooklyn, NY, USA. I am based in Buffalo, NY, representing BLAG
Linux and GNU, focused on reviving the distribution and working with
veteran blaggers, users within our community and others in the Free
Software community who stand behind BLAG and will be contributors to
next release, BLAG 120k. I am also a graduate student at the University
at Buffalo, studying Library and Information Studies, focused on
educating my peers about the importance of Free Software within
information studies because of the similar values that education and
librarianship share with the Free Software philosophy.

Over the past week and a half as several members and I have been working
on our setup with Koji, I was disturbed to hear about A.J Venter's leave
from Kongoni, which prompted me to think about the state of Free
Software Distribution's. Fortunately, I was in the fsfla channel on
Freenode and they were having a discussion about areas where Free
Software distributions could combine efforts. To make a long story
short, I mailed Brett Smith about joining this group and now I am here,
with a ton more if ideas that I would like to share. I will only address
two at the moment, the Free Software Distribution Conference(FSDCon) and
common areas where we can work together.

My vision for FSDCon as Brett mentioned earlier this week has three
goals that I outlined below:

Each Free Software Foundation can introduce itself and its most
important initiatives.
Each Free Software Distribution can introduce itself and discuss areas
where there is need
Free Software Users can actively speak to representatives from both and
coordination can take place for people to network with FSF's and FSD's.

Initially, I saw the event being hosted by each Free Software Foundation
with individuals having a space to gather physically while users listen
to presentations live while simultaneously being streamed in real-time.
Free Software Distribution could follow the same format, but its clear
that while video and audio would be optimal, that a simple audio stream
would be feasible to reach a wider audience. What needs to be clarified
is communication between users listening and   question and answer
session between each presentation. A post that I looked at here by
Jaromil, may be the solution to that problem. If there are hundreds of
users who have questions, who decides what questions should be answered
and what space do we use to answer questions that were not addressed.

The topic is definitely open for discussion because it requires a united
effort to organize if it is important to everyone who represents a
distribution here in addition to each Free Software Foundation's. It
seems that some devs will not be able to attend libre-planet and my
goals with FSDCon is to have a space where we can all meet first and
discuss what it is to become. I have already outlined much of what I see
it as, but I would like to discuss in real-time to really begin
organizing it for a later date(3-6 months)

The purpose of FSDCon is to provide the community with a space where all
users can understand the state of Free Software Distributions and
initiatives where they can contribute to them and FSFs' and I have not
set idea of when it is to take place. I want that decision to be made
based on discussing areas where we can collaborate which has more of a
priority, especially as BLAG hashes issues with its infrastructure. We
have been actively addressing different issues and they will continue in
at our weekly meetings. A strong infrastructure is vital to our
long-term success and I would be interested in seeing how we each
structure things to discuss areas of strengths and weaknesses we can
benefit, learn and work together to ensure fluid communication if there
are areas we have problems.

Well, I have tons more to say, but I only wanted introduce myself and
address FSDCon and briefly state the importance of discussing areas
where we can work together. Feel free to join us in BLAG on Indymedia
when you have an opportunity and I'll be sure to ensure that I have a
presence on your respective mailing list, forums and channels.

Peace,

Abdur-Rahman Morgan