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--------------.--------------------------------------------.------------ alug-announce | Newsletter of the Anglian Linux User Group | Weekly(ish) --------------'--------------------------------------------'------------ ** Please send articles for this letter to announce@lists.alug.org.uk ** *** Please send replies to main@lists.alug.org.uk, not announce... *** ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today's Topics:

1. Fwd: FSFE France enters Free Software Gaming (MJ Ray) 2. Syleham Meeting Report (MJ Ray)

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Message: 1 To: announce@lists.alug.org.uk From: MJ Ray markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 22:51:24 +0000 Subject: [Alug Announce] Fwd: FSFE France enters Free Software Gaming

From: Loic Dachary loic@gnu.org Subject: FSFE France enters Free Software Gaming Reply-To: loic@gnu.org Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 16:23:38 +0100

Hi,

I attached the press release published a few minutes ago. Although it only concerns a french non profit with a french company, I though you'= d be interested to hear about it. If you think appropriate to publish it=20 somewhere I would not mind, on the contrary ;-)

Cheers,

--- [ An online version of this release is available at http://france.fsfeurope.org/news/article2002-10-27-01.en.html ]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact: Lo=EFc Dachary, loic@gnu.org

FSFE France enters Free Software Gaming

Nevrax, the video game company releasing NeL under the GNU GPL decided to outsource the Free Software community management to FSFE France. The fifteen developers working on NeL at Nevrax will continue to operate under high pressure to meet their deadlines while FSFE France will be in charge of connecting them with the Free Software world.

NeL is an essential component of any 3D games. It provides the 3D graphics engine, networking and artificial intelligence that are necessary to develop multiplayer online games. It ultimately intends to compete with high end proprietary middlewares and largely intersects with Free Software libraries such as Crystalspace or Ogre.

FSFE France first became involved in the gaming field by helping with the release of Blender under the GNU GPL. "We are now working to make sure games can be produced and distributed in freedom." says Lo=EFc Dachary, FSF speaker, "Game developers who have the courage to endorse Free Software as a moral principle should know about NeL". Since it is released under the GNU GPL, it guarantees the contributors and authors that it won't be abused by proprietary software vendors. People are welcome to use NeL and build on it as long as they are willing to participate to the Free Software movement.

Nevrax's engineers have been developing NeL during the past three years. The company was seduced by the Free Software philosphy and acknowledged that a service based business model is compatible with it. "We are about to release our first game based on NeL." says Daniel Miller, Nevrax CTO, "We need to rely on the FSFE France to interface between our overloaded staff and the Free Software community." Nevrax decided to move the NeL CVS tree and the mailing lists to Savannah, the development hosting facility of the GNU project, so that the Free Software community benefits from an integrated contributive environment.

Those interested in improving NeL are encouraged to subscribe to the NeL mailing list. For more information please visit http://nongnu.org/projects/nel/

About FSFE France

The FSFE France is a non-profit organization dedicated to all aspects of Free Software. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. Therefore the freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition - allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE France.

About Nevrax

Nevrax is a specialist in the development of massively multi-user online worlds and a fervent believer in Free Software. It currently has teams developing a leading edge Free Software technology platform called NeL, and a state of the art massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Ryzom. Details on NeL can be found at www.nevrax.org. Details on Ryzom can be found at www.ryzom.com.

--=20 Loic Dachary http://www.dachary.org/ loic@dachary.org 12 bd Magenta http://www.senga.org/ loic@senga.org 75010 Paris T: 33 1 42 45 07 97 loic@gnu.org GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt

_______________________________________________ Friends mailing list Friends@fsfeurope.org http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/friends

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Message: 2 From: MJ Ray markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk To: announce@lists.alug.org.uk Date: Sun, 03 Nov 2002 23:17:20 +0000 Subject: [Alug Announce] Syleham Meeting Report

Well, despite my protestations, it was actually a remarkably nice day to go to Syleham, with the low autumn sun keeping us warm as we looked out over the fields from the village hall. It also dazzled us, but closing the curtains soon sorted that one out!

Rather a surprisingly poor turnout (and where were you?), but quite a few pieces of kit to install, fix or experiment on and quite a lot of interesting discussion. Thanks to John, John, Colin, David and Brett for turning up.

Two debian installations took place, including one "bend to fit" install onto a machine that just won't boot from CD and has a processor slow enough that the install didn't finish before the meeting... here's hoping it resumes neatly!

Demonstrations of DemoLinux and Knoppix were run on a Dell Laptop. To some people's surprise, they both worked fine, although DemoLinux didn't autodetect the country it was in (should it?) and Knoppix complained bitterly about trying to start OpenOffice. Both of these CDs are available to take away now, if anyone wants them.

The meeting concluded with handing out of AFFS information packs (www.affs.org.uk), the ceremonial filling of the beer glass and some coloured lights and beeping as we tried not to set off the alarms as we left.

The next meeting is pencilled in for King's Lynn on 1 December, if that's OK for people? After Christmas, I'd like to try to run "Welcome to Linux" sessions, but there's no replies to the thread on the main list yet...