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The Turkish Linux User Group decided to raise a yearly fee for memberships and email aliases due to the inability to get sponsors for their other projects. Read on for an open letter by Andreas Mueller. On July 19th a small group from linux.org.tr (Linux-Tuerkiye) decided to raise an yearly fee for an e-mail alias/membership at linux.org.tr. They also decided to split the user group into 2 parts. I'm a member of Linux-Tuerkiye. Below please find two postings from TRLUUG officers, both of them are personal friends of mine. There were no discussion between users and officers regarding the upcoming fee before, the fee was simply dictated. The reason was to make money.

Here are my thoughts:

a) To hire a partime student. I know that there are many students who create webpages for free projects at no charge. (Look at http://www.debian.org/ for example)

There were three people offering help with the pages, keeping them up to date. Their offer was rejected. Help wasn't wanted.

b) In a free software community (like the Linux community) all email addresses have some "value". It doesn't make sense to create subdomains within such a linux. domain. We don't need a new two-level hierarchy.

c) Maybe comming soon, members.linux.org.tr will also be splitted into active and passive, stupid and clever.

d) Mr. Gorkem does his job at no charge. If he can't do this anymore, we have to look for somebody else. There are many people who would like to help. It is unacceptable to raise a fee for being an officer of such an organization.

e) Large membership. Mr. Gorkem said that running linux.org.tr depends on personal activity of the officers. It's said that there are 90 members. I'm unable to believe that none of these 90 people would like spend some time on it without charging anybody for it. Why would they want an email alias? Just for fun?

f) Support for Linux. There are three commercial companies at Tuerkiye, that provide professional support for Linux. One of them receives support from me in form of FREE bandwith, with a computer hosted in our network. The other one is the company I work for, we also give FREE support for Linux, including freebies for people who can't afford purchasing a CD.

A while time ago I started a new project to translate Debian into Turkish. This includes webpages as well, so I searched for peoples who can help. I found 40 (fourty) people who wanted to work on this this project FOR FREE. They spend their time thats all. I also invited the German Linux Community to Tuerkiye last year. 20 people have had very much fun time. The Sponsors were the airplane company Akdeniz, a local HighSchool, the German Unix User Group and myself. I even have paid for hotel and meal for the Turkish people out of my own pocket.

My personal activity for Linux at Tuerkiye is very, very HIGH. Richard Stallman visited Tuerkiye one month ago. Now linux.org.tr seems to act like a commercial company. Is this what we deserve?

I don't believe so. If your new plan to make Linux much more attractive, please walk around and ask people who would work for FREE. I'm sure you can find people. You can also find sponsors. For example, when Richard Stallman visited Turkiye, I asked my boss if we could provide him a car. He agreed.

It's also serious that there's no protocol about your meeting or other people don't know about this secret event. At least the situation very dim about what happend with linux.org.tr and I cannot accept this situation. Dont forget Linux is an operating system developed by many, many people and these people invested _their_ free time to develop it. I'll also say thanks that I'm able to choose to use this great product for FREE.

Maybe linux.org.tr needs new Ideas, but if you get money from individuals this is the wrong way. Other people replied to me with a "big thank" for my posting, but they hesitated to post themselves such a letter. Please think again about your ideas for linux.org.tr.

For more information, please see this web page.

The German branch of Microsoft has demanded that our collegues at the German Linux Web site remove their slogan "Where do you want to go tomorrow?". They have complied by blacking out their slogan, but Microsoft's legal position appears tenuous: A search on Altavista for that phrase produced over 400 hits, and ... this trademark is pending for Cybernet Systems Corporation of Michigan anyway..

The German Linux site is reporting that the first KDE 1.1 alpha preview has been released. Now, since I do not personally use KDE, this might only be a snapshot like E DR-0.15 was. However the source files are marked alpha 1. This new release contains more apps, a Mac Style, and an improved integrated web-browser. English speakers can also see the German Linux site in English. German readers might like to participate in the Christmas Quiz (nice prizes).

After a long night in the darkroom working on photography projects, nothing will make me happier than cleaning out the submissions box. So hit the link below and read the huge flood of stuff that has been accumulating while I've been trying to vanquish my end-of-the-semester projects. There is a ton of cool stuff in there worth checking out. Realcosmo commented that OpenBios Project Is looking for a logo. Visit their page for info. James Keller wrote in to send us an entertaining article about using Microsoft Manuals as Targets . Idan Shoham wrote in to say that the The Linux in business reference page has grown to 300 entries of companies that use Linux in a mission-critical setting. Good PHB data.

jahn wrote in to send us a link to Linus and RMS in a techno remix of Join us Now and Share the Software. I think we mentioned this a few months ago, but probably bears repeating anyway. I'm on a total MP3 craze again (4.5 gigs and growing) so this is entertaining me all over again.

[-SwM-] wrote in to send us a link to an online version of Rock Paper Scissors. Goofy. DaveWhitinger from Linux Today wrote in to say that Linux Mandrake 5.2 is available. Gordon Delp sent a link to a new FreeBSD news site called (appropriately enough) FreeBSD Rocks

acb wrote in to send us an entertaining parody of O'Reilly book covers. Several folks commented that WindowMaker v0.20.3 is now out, and several other folks commented that it has a new logo "Well, as you can see the new official logo has been put in place, and the logo contest is officially over. We appreciate all the logo submissions and the people who took time to vote. You can read about the winning entries here." LynXmaN wrote in to send us a link to Sololinux.com, a Spanish Linux News site. have opened. Ant wrote in to send us a link to Quake 2 Penguin Models for you penguin nuts. YogSothoth writes "I've always been interested in fractals, but what I always thought would be fun would be a scripting language-based approach that would give you a lot flexibility (with regard to choosing equations, bailout conditions, coloring techniques) without requiring a math degree to enjoy. Its hot off the presses but works quite well." you can check out Samples or Source Code. Vorx wrote in to warn everyone that this weeks User Friendly has been featuring a strange Star Wars/Linux/ESR takeoff that folks might enjoy reading. Bain wrote in to send us a link to a company that is selling Tux Stuffed Animals that actually look like tux.

Nate, My roommate and all around swell guy, has put a bunch of his Gimp Artwork online if you're interested in that sorta stuff. Its pretty excellent. Chris DiBona wrote in to send us a link to Chick Magnet which has some cool essays including one that explains that the best place for women to pick up guys is at Linux User Group Meetings. Quite funny. J. David Eisenberg wrote in to send us A response to his article on Linux and the Consumer Market. This addresses comments made by Slashdot Readers. Also, his opinions on the KDE thing which probably isn't all that relevant anymore.

See? Lots of good stuff! Anyway, I'm gonna get some sleep so I can get up nice and early and get back on the grind. The zany thing is that in 340 or so hours, I'm ton. Forever. No more school. Then I can finally finish Slash v0.3, fix the rest of the bugs in Slashdot, and actually start working on all the new stuff thats coming. Yee haw. In the meantime, I just wanna beg folks to go easy on the email. Don't hesitate if its important, but please read FAQ first and save us all some time.

Release 0.01 of OpenBIOS is now available. It currently only works on Intel 430HX/VX/TX chipsets. Why bother? Well it'd be nice to have the kernel in ROM on a 4Mbit flashrom device for handheld computers.

Christian Selig writes "As this poll at Linux.de shows, SuSE is the preferred distribution in German-speaking countries" SuSE is the largest European commercial distribution, making it like RedHat in the US.

Christian Selig writes "As this poll at Linux.de shows, SuSE is the preferred distribution in German-speaking countries" SuSE is the largest European commercial distribution, making it like RedHat in the US.