FSFLA/ blogs/ lxo/ 2007-11-05-jegnu.en

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This is Alexandre Oliva's personal blog, that does not necessarily represent the opinions held by FSFLA, LibrePlanet-BR, AdaCore or any other organization the author may be or may have been associated with, or even by myself, as of now or ever.

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Anti-piracy policy

Please do not attack ships, especially while visiting this site!

Have you ever heard of JeguePanel? I guess not. It's a great point-and-click, web-based Free Software tool for e-mail and Samba administrators, with support for OpenLDAP or SQL databases for user information, and compatibility with Active Directory that my friends Anahuac and Erlon developed a while ago.

The reason I mention it is that release 2.0 is now available, and it's looking great! See the press release and try it live.

If you know of anyone who'd like to, erhm, exchange part of their e-mail and network infrastructures for Free Software, but depends on point-and-click interfaces, please let them know about JeguePanel. I'm pretty sure Anahuac would be delighted to lend them a hand.

Now, do I use it? Nope. I have no need for Samba (it's for compatibility with MS-Windows, remember?), and I personally dislike point-and-click, web-based interfaces. But that's just me. I'm way outside its target audience. It's aimed at real people, not real programmers ;-) That said, webmail is useful at times. Maybe I should take a shot at it.

My only point of contention with Anahuac about this software is its name.

"Jegue" (pronounced as jaggy, but try to make it sound unlike djaggy, i.e., take out the leading 'd' if you can) stands for a very reliable and hard-working animal (donkey? jackass?). I should say that the term "jegue" doesn't carry in Portuguese the negative connotations of ass and donkey (= "burro", stupid); it's held as a very valuable and trustworthy animal. That's a great start, and it's funny on top of that.

But, come on, "Panel"? Yeah, I know it's meant as a joke, with hard self-criticism for the Brazilian culture of adoring foreign terms. And here I am writing this in English, heh.

But, still... Joke for joke, I'd much rather call it "JeGNU". Why? Well, first, because it's Free Software, and this other name would be promoting the GNU project. Second, because it's funnier: it would be read like "jegue nu", and "nu", that sounds like new, means "naked", which emphasizes a very big point about the animal that the software authors like to make with regards to the origin of the term, in an somewhat-explicit wordplay that I've unfortunately been unable to translate.

In spite of all the funny points (it wouldn't be Free Software otherwise, now would it?), Anahuac is running a business based on it. It's a personal quest to prove that it's possible to make a living out of Free Software, even in as remote a location as Brazil. And northeastern Brazil while at that (where jegues are very popular, no less). Take this into account when you ask him for help, and don't be surprised if he charges for his services. Remember: Free Software is Free as in freedom, as in free speech, not as in free beer. Although I'm sure if you give him enough free beer you'll free his speech as well ;-)

Run, JeGNU, run!

So blong...