[H-GEN] Room Bookings Update

[Robert Brockway]

On Fri, 16 Jan 2009, Russell Stuart wrote:

> Perhaps it was a Unix club.  The reality I think is no one
> brings machines along that don't run Linux or Windows now.

Hi Russell.  Several active members are still heavily involved in BSD and 
Solaris.  Even if they only bring along boxes running Linux (which I'm not 
sure is true since a box could be running FreeBSD or Solaris and have the 
same GUI) they certainly use *nix OSes other than Linux.  We help out with 
OSes that aren't necessarily brought to meetings.

> Very occasionally someone mentions Solaris, usually in the
> same sentence as ZFS, and maybe DTrace.  But if we said it
> was open source only, we wouldn't loose much.  Times have

I think we'd lose some good people.  We don't need to be exclusionary like 
that.

In effect I see no reason to revise section 1c of the Constitution except 
to insert the words "open source" along with free software.

The prose could do with some improvement :)

> If you were here we probably could.  As it is, I am not sure
> that anyone who still attends Humbug on a regular basis knows
> what a "fest" is.  Not me anyway.  Unless it is a paddle pop

I was using the term fest to refer to what we in HUMBUG would
call a regular meeting.  Someone suggested this use earlier in the thread
and I quite like it.  It isn't an install fest - just a fest :)

If we are going to have talk meetings then we will need some term to 
distinguish the "bring your computer" meetings.

> In any case, have you installed Linux lately?  It is downright
> depressing.  My daughter could install Ubuntu.  I recon your
> average Windows sysadmin could install Debian and get it right
> the first time.  It is so easy now.  Whatever happened to the
> kudos's you could garner from getting Slackware going?  There
> is no respect for the old ways.  It is so sad.

:)

I like easy to install OSes :)  As a sysadmin it means I get to move on to 
far more interesting stuff.

> That's putting it mildly.  Right now we have a girl who was
> obviously uncomfortable with the porn screen saver, said so,
> and was ignored.  That simply isn't acceptable - not to me

Absolutely agreed.

> anyway.  Surely we all have enough empathy for our fellow
> humans to tell when we have put them in a difficult position,
> and enough respect for them to do something about it.  It is
> a simple rule: be nice.  It is not that much to ask.

Well said.

> On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 00:16 -0500, Robert Brockway wrote:
>> Agreed.  I am happy to help people out & informally tutor at a HUMBUG
>> meeting but that is different from free tech support (although on
>> occassion it can get close).
>
> I think we can all agree on that.  But at worst, I thought of this
> as a temporary risk.  In other words if it happened, it would die
> down within a month or so - two or three meetings.  The up side is
> that if is does happen we *will* have done magnificent job at promoting
> open source to the masses - better than all the Software Freedom
> Days we have been through so far.

Yeah fair enough.  You'd still need to find members prepared to do it 
though.  That's the thing - certain ideas to boost membership have been 
floated before but without people being prepared to give up their free 
time to help it won't go anywhere.

> That is not the idea of course.  They idea is essentially a bait
> and switch.  Make enough noise so the people who will be interested
> in Humbug may pay us a visit.
>
> Which brings us to ...
>
> On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 00:49 -0500, Robert Brockway wrote:
>> On Thu, 15 Jan 2009, Russell Stuart wrote:
>>> Put something on the CD along the lines of "Having trouble with
>>> this stuff or any other open source software?  Come along to
>>> Queenslands open source software club, Humbug and speak with the
>>
>> Let's at least say "Unix and Open Source club" :)
>
> No.  These words are not a declaration of what the club is.  This
> is an ad.  We put whatever words we think will attract the sort of
> person who would want to join Humbug.  I really don't have a clue
> what they should be.  All suggestions are welcome...  Really.

Fair enough but we need to be specific in the first instance to attract 
the right soft of people to turn up.  If someone turns up expecting to get 
help on OSS apps on MS-Windows week after week then they may be very 
disappointed to discover it is a Unix club.  Everyone's time will have 
been wasted.

A small minority of people are interested in running Linux at home.  A 
small minority of the entire community is still a lot of people.  The 
proportion would definitely be higher among Uni students.

Cheers,

Rob

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