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

[Robert Brockway]

On Wed, 16 May 2012, Benjamin Fowler wrote:

> 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.

Hi all.  I was surprised that no one has referenced "the source" in this 
thread.

Section 1c of the HUMBUG constitution states:

"The aim of HUMBUG is to help people with unix like operating systems, to 
advance the cause of free software and open systems, and provide a social 
environment for people who enjoy using unix like operating systems to 
meet."

I believe that the wording has remained unchanged since the original 
constitution in 1995.  Notice how it doesn't mention 'open source' - the 
term as we normally use it wouldn't exist[1] until 1998.

So I agree with those who said that non-FOSS Unix was used/explored/etc at 
HUMBUG too but there was a definite pro-FOSS bias from the early days.  I 
seem to recall a young Jason Parker being particularly keen to include 
certain pro-free software statements :)

[1] The intelligence community has an entirely different definion of 'open 
source' that is quite a bit older I believe.

Cheers,

Rob

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