[H-GEN] Room Bookings Update

[Robert Brockway]

On Wed, 14 Jan 2009, Paul Gearon wrote:

> While HUMBUG supports the latter two, I thought it was also a place
> for like-minded people to meet up, swap stories, expertise, etc. The
> danger in that is that it can alienate new people, so it has to be
> balanced.

Hi Paul.  This thread is seeing a lot of names pop up :)

> I've always been a little hazy on this policy at HUMBUG. Once upon a
> time it was decreed that Windows should not appear at a meeting, but I


Fairly early on the exec decided that a non-*nix OS (we meant MS-Windows 
but didn't say it) could be used at a meeting to assist in the 
installation or use of a *nix OS.  Examples given were booting MS-Windows 
to burn a cdrom, compare device behaviour in another OS, debug a network 
problem, etc.  Effectively MS-Windows wasn't meant to be run for its own 
sake.

I heard this position reiterated many times over the years after I left 
the exec so it seemed to have been a standard line for a long time.  The 
policy was aimed at preventing people coming along, booting MS-Win and 
sucking bandwidth when we had a comparatively large amount of it.

> always thought that the line between Windows an *nix systems to be a
> little blurry. For instance:
> 1. Setting up SAMBA to talk to a Windows machine. You need to be
> running your exact Windows configuration on the network to see if you
> really got it right.
> 2. Setting up dual boot systems.
> 3. Configuring Cygnus or U/Win, coLinux (or if you want to go back in
> time, Lin4Win), etc, on Windows. These create *nix-like environments
> in Windows.

So they'd all be ok by the above policy IMHO.

> Initially, I don't believe that HUMBUG was about open source software,
> though it seems to have evolved that way now, and I can see that you

I'm pretty sure that thanks to Nooks ...err... I mean Jason Parker the 
support of free software[1] was put in the original Constitution.

[1] The term "open source" wouldn't be developed for a couple of years.

Cheers,

Rob

-- 
I tried to change the world but they had a no-return policy