Hey everyone,
I just wanted to say Thanks for all the people that were there at the
show, and to those that were there in spirit.
I had a great amount of fun. For me the best part of it was the looks of
confusion and/or surprise when people would say, "Free?" It was almost
as if they thought I was saying "Pirated." :-) I never once got tired of
saying the mantra: Yes, it's free in both senses of the word. Yes, you
can have a copy. Make one for your friends. Put it on your network. No,
you don't have to pay any licensing fees. And so on...
John maddog Hall is an amazing man. He's quiet, reserved. Gentle. His
demeanor doesn't say maddog. He's also amazingly generous. Even though
this was a small show (by his and others' standards) he was here. (Thank
you to those who paid for his travel expenses) I was almost embarrassed
when I found out that this show was small. Or, shall I say, so small. I
knew it wasn't going to huge, but I expected two days like today.
Roblimo is quite a charater, too. I learned a lot about the background
of some of the biggest websites in the Linux community, and on the
internet. I saw one of the "Keepers of the Faith" in action, being
nothing but himself, even if it wasn't all pretty (warts and all!). This
is one of the strengths of Linux. It isn't perfect, it sometimes isn't
pretty, but it gets the job done better than anything else, and we're
not afraid to tell the truth!
I'm still struggling with the 5000 CD figure bandied about: that's how
many Distro copies we gave out. Unbelievable. I'm glad Norb ran into
that guy selling the CD-burning machine, we got roughly 20 copies of
RedHat 7.1 made, and he's got a copy on his hard drive. I encouraged him
to burn RedHat CD's when he's demonstrating its capabilities, and then
give them away, rather than throw the demos in the trash. I hope I made
an impression on him.
I'm glad too that I was able to show off my 25 mhz Mac running Linux.
I'm happy to impress a few people who remember those old machines, and
they can't believe I'm still willing to use it to do something, well,
useful. That's when I tell them about Linux's flexibility. That's when
they "get it." I also saw that when people bring in their own machines,
they tend to shepherd them...not always a bad thing, because it actually
causes people to come up and say, "Wow! What's that?" I did that myself
a few times...
Thanks also go to NKS, which I didn't even know who they were until the
show. Before today/yesterday, I just thought they were a nice company
willing to host our list. I really appreciated their expertise, when it
was needed, it really showed.
I'm feeling greedy. I want more!!!! I had way too much fun.
Russell
-----------------------
I don't care if you're going nowhere,
Just take good care of the world.
-- Depeche Mode
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