[Linux-aus] [Announce] Should Linux Australia change its name to Open Source Australia?

[Russell Coker]

On Saturday, 23 December 2017 12:51:43 PM AEDT Russell Stuart via linux-aus 
wrote:
> I don't know how Linux Australia got its name, but it seems like it
> inherited it from the conference it was founded to run: Linux Australia
> Conference.  I don't know way the conference called itself that,
> because as anyone whose been there knows Linux isn't the only, or even
> its prime focus.  I suspect it was because back then open source was a
> small pool and Linux was a very big fish, so was a good marketing for a
> conference to have Linux in its name.

Well back then BSD had a reasonable market share.  But CALU and the early LCAs 
were very Linux based.

> From my perspective, Linux Australia reason for existence is to
> encourage the understanding, adoption and contributing to open source.
> It modus operandi is to do that by running conferences, and it seems to
> be a pretty successful strategy as now 1000's of people attend
> conferences Linux Australia helps run every year.

Yes.

> As a practical matter, I have not seen LA promote anything other than
> it's own conferences - certainly not Linux.  Given that, maybe you can
> understand the reaction of people who have been on the LA council for a
> while and know what LA really when they see the question "will you
> promote other OSs such as the BSDs as much as you promote Linux?".  For
> me at least it was "I wonder how many opportunities we have lost to
> promote open source in Australia because people believe we are focused
> on Linux".  It's not hard to go from there to believing having Linux in
> our name is a bit of an albatross around our neck.

I think it would be good to have a sub-committee for promoting Linux.  There's 
no reason why we couldn't have other sub-committees for promoting BSD etc.

https://www.winehq.org/
https://www.reactos.org/
https://www.haiku-os.org/
https://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/

There's also some interesting work going on with Wine (Windows emulator often 
used for games on Linux), ReactOS (free OS with NT system call interface), 
Haiku (BeOS like free OS), and HURD is still going.

-- 
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