From: jgoodwin@cns35.fnal.gov (John Goodwin)
Newsgroups: alt.uu.future
Subject: FreeLore Bulletin No. 3
Keywords: freelore, FreeLore Project, FreeLore Bulletin
Date: 25 Jan 93 15:59:00 GMT
Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, AD/Controls
NNTP-Posting-Host: cns35.fnal.gov
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

===========================
FreeLore Bulletin No. 3    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
19 January 1993

CONTACT:  John Goodwin, Moderator
          Fermilab
          jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov

          +1 708 840 8069 (voice)

---------------------------

Copyright (c) 1993 by The FreeLore Project.  You
may make verbatim copies of this bulletin for
non-commercial purposes by any means, provided
this copyright notice appears on all such copies.

---------------------------
Articles

**1.  FreeLore Project Steering Committee Formed
**2.  How to become a Member of the FreeLore
Project
**3.  Join a (Virtual) Mailing List
**4.  The FreeLore Whitepaper is Out
**5.  Request for BBS and E-journal Posting
**6.  Getting Documents and Information

---------------------------
**1.  FREELORE PROJECT STEERING COMMITTEE FORMED

The FreeLore Project has around 30 members with
many different interests, all focused on our basic
goal of producing freely redistributable (FR)
educational materials and the software to use
them.

The following persons have agreed to be on the
FreeLore Project steering committee:

 John Goodwin, Moderator jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov
 Gary Benson            inc@tc.fluke.com
 Richard Kim            richard@blazers.tv.tek.com
 Gavin Nicole           nick@nsis.cl.nec.co.jp

Each mailing list comprises a working group or
committee on its topic.

Please consider volunteering for the project by
joining a mailing list (see article #3 and the
FreeLore Whitepaper for details).

  >>THE FREELORE PROJECT IS IN DESPARATE NEED OF
  A MAIL SERVER.  IF YOU CAN DONATE A SERVER AND
  SOME DISK SPACE, EITHER TO DISTRIBUTE OUR 
  DOCUMENTS AND SOURCE CODE OR TO STORE CONTRIBUTED
  FREELORE, CONTACT US.  

We have a small amount of space (<1 MB) offered on
an interim basis by:

   server@hermes.acm.rpi.edu,

but need a donor for a mail server in the longer term.

---------------------------
**2.  HOW TO BECOME A MEMBER OF THE FREELORE
PROJECT

Anyone can write freelore.  Write something
useful, and "copyleft" it by placing a notice like
the one above on your work.  The copyleft notice
makes your work freely redistributable (FR).
Anyone can make fair use of it and copy it, but it
is not in the Public Domain.  For more details on
copylefting, see the FreeLore Whitepaper.

Next, tell us what your document is about, how to
get it, and what format it is in.  We will try to
track FR documents in a useful way.  More than
anything else, the project needs volunteers who
write FreeLore.

The FreeLore Project exists to promote the writing
of FreeLore by:

  o Commissioning and tracking FreeLore;

  o Providing software to make writing FreeLore
easy; and

  o Promoting the distribution of FreeLore.

To be really useful, the document should be coded
in a commonly accepted character set like U.S.
ASCII, ISO 646, or Latin-1.  It also needs to be
marked up with a formatting language like nroff or
TeX; or better, with a generalized markup language
like SGML.  Learn about SGML and get a Document
Type Definition suitable for what you are writing.
Joining the FreeLore Project is a good way to keep
in touch with new developments in SGML and find
out about information sources.

To join the FreeLore Project, join a mailing list
and actively participate.  Contact the moderator
of the mailing list or one of the members of the
steering committee to get on a list.

Finally, send a few lines (15 lines max.) of 50
column text for inclusion in the FreeLore Project
Directory.  Include your contact information,
background, and what you would like to do.  Logos,
pictures, and quotations will be stripped before
inclusion.  Please use only E-mail safe characters
(no tabs).  Your email sig will not be used for
this information.  You must write it up specially
and tell us that it is for inclusion in the
directory.  If you want us to know about you but
don't want to be listed in the public version, put
"do not list" on the line before your entry.

---------------------------
**3.  JOIN A MAILING LIST

Because the  FreeLore Project does not yet have a
listserver, mailing lists, are being handled by 
hand.  Send e-mail to jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov 
to join a mailing-list.

Valid commands:

   SUBSCRIBE FL-XWINDOWS
   UNSUBSCRIBE FL-BULLETIN
   GET FL-BULL-1
   GET INDEX, etc.

The human parser is very versitile and also
understands plain English and a few other
languages.  See article #6 for a list of documents
available.

Members are automatically added to FL-ANNOUNCE,
FL-BULLETIN, and FL-INFO.  In addition, if you
mentioned an interest in software, you have been
added to the FL-SOFTWARE list.  You should still
join a sublist.

One member from each list should consider
volunteering to handle the list's traffic for that
group. Initially the Project Moderator will act as
moderator for all lists.  You must subscribe to
the list in order to post to it.  Your initial
post should be a letter of introduction to the
group.  You will then get a list of subscribers,
i.e. the moderator will not act as an email
repeater, although he should receive a copy of all
letters.  Correspondence will not be archived.

WE WILL HAVE A MAIL SERVER AS SOON AS SOMEONE 
DONATES ONE.

   FL-ANNOUNCE

      The FL-ANNOUNCE list will be for press releases
and product announcements.

   FL-BULLETIN 

      This list is for members and other
interested persons who want to keep up with the
status of the FreeLore Project.

   FL-INFO

      General information on FreeLore Project
goals and resources; what is FreeLore; finding and
ordering FreeLore; Information on related
projects; what the FreeLore Project is about; how
can I find FreeLore on the Internet; what's out
there.

   FL-COPYRIGHT

      Discussion of copyright issues; moral and
political issues raised by the project; copyright
law, software patents; actions of groups like the
League for Programming Freedom.

   FL-AUTHORS

      This group is for authors writing FreeLore.
It will provide guidelines for markup and help
with our and other's SGML products.

   FL-CONNECTIVITY

      This is the group that will coordinate the
distribution of project materials to BBS and
E-journals.  We need contacts for this list to
"get the word out" about FreeLore.

   FL-TEXINFO

      Since we cannot wait for the SGML DTDs to be
fully defined to start creating FreeLore, we are
using TeX as the interim markup standard with
Texinfo encouraged for internal project documents
(same as the GNU project).  This group is for
writers of general interest material--Internet
FAQs, RFCs, Software Documentation, etc., who need
information about our use of Texinfo and
eventually conversion tools to SGML.

   FL-SOFTWARE

      If you said you wanted to write software, you are
on this list and one or more of the following
sublists:

   o FL-BROWSER sublist

      Join this list to help write the hypertext
Browser.  GNU Info is our interim browser.  If you
want to write the X windows version join
FL-XWINDOWS as well.

   o FL-DTD sublist

      These people will write the Texinfo Document
Type Definition (DTD) and other DTDs as needed.

   o FL-EDITOR sublist

      This group will write a WYSIWYG editor for
adding SGML markup to documents.

   FL-INFORMAION-RETRIEVAL sublist

      Cataloguing all the useful FR information in
the world is a hopeless task.  Eventually we will
need to provide a software system to decentralize
this task, so that anyone can maintain and provide
catalogues of their FR holdings.  We'll be lucky
if we can maintain a list of the libraries.  

      We need library scientists! This list will
discuss how to locate and catalogue FreeLore
material; how to make documents self-cataloguing;
and how to use FreeLore with WAIS or the World
Wide Web.

   o FL-MULTIMEDIA sublist

      The multimedia group will work on
implementing the Hytime standard in FR software
and on integrating multimedia and hypertext
capabilities into the FreeLore Project.

   o FL-SMALL-SYSTEMS sublist

      This group is for persons concerned with
porting the project software to small systems, and
representing the concerns of small system users to
the FreeLore Project.  Can our software be ported
to MS-DOS PCs, Amigas, or Linux?

   o FL-XWINDOWS sublist

      This group will discuss X Windows issues.
If you said you knew X in your request for
information, you are on this list.

----------------------------
**4.  THE FREELORE WHITEPAPER IS OUT

The FreeLore Whitepaper describes what freelore
is, how to make it, and how to join The FreeLore
Project.  This is our manifesto and general 
information source about the Project.

---------------------------
**5.  REQUEST FOR BBS AND E-JOURNAL POSTING

If you have access to a bulletin board, please
post our materials.  E-Journals: please tell your
readers about FreeLore.  Join the FL-CONNECTIVITY
list so that we can keep track of BBS and
E-Journals interested in the project.

---------------------------
**6.  GETTING FREELORE DOCUMENTS

The FreeLore Bulletin is posted to:

comp.txt.sgml
alt.hypertext
alt.uu.future

At present the only documents 
available are the Whitepaper
(enclosed), and back issues of
the Bulletin and Tracts.  

Documents may be requested from

jgoodwin@adcalc.fnal.gov
Newsgroups: alt.uu.announce