SEUL goals changed

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

This is something that probably should have been sent out earlier,
but we've been stalling in the hopes that we'd have more to say.

SEUL is no longer a project oriented towards a distribution. There
are enough distributions out there already, or at least there are
enough distribution projects out there already. And there's enough
that SEUL can work on apart from actually compiling a distribution.
That's not to mean that we might not move back to working on a
distribution later on, but hopefully other projects (eg FreeLinux,
Independence) will already have moved far enough (with our help)
that we won't have to.

This means we're working on things like end-user linux advocacy
(seul-pub), market/user research and testing (seul-seg), and
standardization efforts and coordination of other similar projects:

* FreeLinux, Independence, Stampede, ex-eLinux
* LDP, LAP, LUP (Linux Documentation Project, Linux Advocacy Project,
  Linux Usability Project)
* The LSB and Core/Layers spec
* Working closely with the Linux United project to make sure end-user
  concerns are fairly represented
* Supporting end-user application or usability oriented projects such
  as the gEDA project, the FreeHDL project, and the WXftp project

A better explanation of our goals and ideals can be found in our
Manifesto (http://www.seul.org/what/manifesto.html), which has remained
the same through this change.

Changes that will follow include a new web frontpage, a faq revision
(which needs to be done anyway -- that thing is far out of date), and
notifying people who keep linux link lists that we should be in a
different category. A good advantage of this change is that we can
now act as a more neutral project -- people will stop assuming that
we're trying to market a 'SEUL' distribution over other distributions,
so hopefully we'll be in a better position for coordination and
mediation.

Comments appreciated. Please direct any questions and comments to
seul@seul.org.

Thanks,
--Roger (SEUL Sysarch)