Re: please read this
On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, trevor brooks wrote:
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> Hi my name is Trevor Brooks. I go to Gardner middle school in Lansing Michigan. We have to do a project with donating a dollar to an organization. we have to know where the dollar goes and how it helps. We have to pretend that we are the dollar and tell where we are going. I was hoping you could give me some info. It would be very much appreciated. THANK YOU!!!!!
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> Trevor Brooks
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Hi Trevor,
Debian is a project to produce the Debian Gnu/Linux operating
system and other the Free software it uses. The 'Gnu' in Gnu/Linux are the
tools created by the Gnu Project started by Richard Stallman. The 'Linux' in
Gnu/Linux refers to the operating system 'kernel' created by Linux
Torvalds. All (if not most) of these projects are Free Software. They are
project to promote Freedom: Freedom to use the software, Freedom to change
the software, Freedom to Study the software, Freedom to redistribute the
software, and other Freedoms.
Contributing to the Debian Project does many
things. Debian is part of a larger community of people who volunteer their
time, creativity, knowlege and money to empower people around the world
who speak differently languages, are blind or are poor to be
able to make computer do what they want. Most of there efforts result in
software like web browsers or word processors. The difference is that
these project use the GPL. The GPL is a legal license that says that if
you want to make the software better, you can. But you must tell others
how you made it better, so that others can benefit from your work. You
selflessly contribute to making computer software better. This makes you
part of a community, a community of people who want to make things better
for others. Most of Free Software project are international and thus give
you a change to interact with people all over the world, it broadends you
views.
This list is an example of one of the ways the 'debian users'
community interacts. There are 'debian user' lists in some 10 languages.
In our list, there are people from all the different continents. These
lists represent ways that other people (users) ask for help from others.
We on the list freely help other people to solve their computer problems.
We also talk about other things like world politics, what you have for
lunch or trains used in the UK.
Debian is basically a project to freely help make things better around the
world mostly through computers but also by creating a community of people.
-kev
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