Re: [Fsfe-uk] Why FS is a Good Thing

[ralph]

Hi,

Some more comments for consideration.  Take 'em or leave 'em as you see
fit.

>   As Isaac Newton said in a letter to his colleague Robert Hooke
>   dated 5 February 1676, ``If I have seen further it is by standing
>   on the shoulders of Giants.''

_The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations_ has that as `giants' with a
little `g'.

>   The Free Software Foundation, founded by Richard Stallman, exists
>   to write and support Free Software through it's spearhead project
>   known as GNU (GNU's Not Unix)

No point giving the meaning of GNU since it's recursive and the
audience won't understand the joke or want to know at this point.
They'll just accept the project name is GNU as opposed to Omaha or
whatever.

>   which is a collection of programs for a Unix-like operating system,
>   and a software license known as the GNU General Public Licence

s/license/licence/ as the British English noun has two c's.

>   (GPL).
>   
>   Free Software such as that distributed under the GPL ensures that
>   people are free to make improvements and redistribute software, but
>   must always make the source code available.

This is confusing.  People are free to make improvements, yet not need
make the source code available.

>   commodity, it is more like infrastructure - freely available to all

Is that the right kind of `-'?  I don't know TeX.

> \item Free Software is often distributed for no cost.  This can save
>   around 20\% of the cost of every computer in an organisation,
>   because although hardware has become consistently cheaper personal
>   computer operating systems have increased in price.

because, although hardware has become consistently cheaper, personal

> \item [GNU] which provides the bulk of basic utility programs.
> \item [KDE, Gnome, GNUstep and XFCE] a selection of desktop
>   environments with attractive and easy to use graphical interfaces.

Are we in favour of the Oxford comma around here?  s/GNUstep/&,/  (This
book is dedicated to my parents, Mother Teresa[,] and God.)

> \item [OpenOffice] a word-processing, email, spreadsheet and
>   presentation package that is compatible and visually similar to
>   Microsoft Office.
> \item [Mozilla] is an Internet browser.

s/is //

> \item [Apache] industry standard software used to run 57\% of web
>   sites world-wide.

s/web sites world-wide/the world's web sites/

> \item [Linux] is the operating system kernel, so called because it is
>   central to its operation.

s/is the/the/  Presumably, we're not interested in just Linux?  So
s/the/an/.

Cheers,


Ralph.