[H-GEN] Who are we? What are we doing? How did it come to this?

[Benjamin Fowler]

On 16 May 2012 08:25, andrew laidlaw <aa_laidlaw at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

>
> ST wrote:
>
> Who are we? We're the Home Unix Machine Brisbane Users Group. This is
> very approximate, for various values of 'Unix', 'Home' and 'Brisbane'.
>
> ST wrote:
>
> Some questions I come to, with the dissonance I see from the earlier
> questions I pose, I come to this question:
> - Is it acceptable to expect the ideals of Open Source or Free
> Software to be followed by other members of our group?
>
> At face value, the points stephen is making are not entirely without
> merit.  Why should a member of a unix group adopt open principles?
>


The only message I really got out of chats with some of the founding
members of HUMBUG over the years, is that the intent of HUMBUG was for
people interested in tinkering with Unix-like operating systems at home,
free or proprietary, to come together to swap tips and stories and
socialize. There was nothing in our mission about advocating for Free, or
Open Source software, per se.

The fact that we have people who dabble in Open Source at all, is just a
byproduct of the fact that the most accessible unices to home users just
happen to be Free or Open Source. This does not (and never has) precluded
people from playing with proprietary OSs at all, and I know of at least a
couple of hardcore proprietary unix developers on these lists.

Cheers, Ben.
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