[BCLUG] Anonymous & Linux...

[Rick Moen]

Quoting BCLUG (admin at bclug.ca):

> Don't understand why a Linux (among other types of tech) enthusiast
> group would not want to DIY on as much infrastructure as they can.
> 
> Especially a group that's fairly stridently pro-FSF as opposed to
> just "I like Linux, open source software, DIY, and
> interoperability".
> 
> I fall a bit more into the latter camp, VanLUG is pretty strident
> about putting "Sent from IceWeasel on Debian" in their signature
> with their "President" titles.
> 
> And yet, nothing is self-hosted.

Way back in the late 1990s, I wrote "Recipe for a Successful Linux
User Group", a little piece that was also published in Usenix
Association's ;login magazine.
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Linux_PR/newlug.html

Excerpt:

   23. Walk the walk.

   It's painfully grotesque to see so-called Linux user groups mailing out
   announcements using MS-Outlook or Eudora for MS-Windows (or MacOS), or
   other proprietary mailers for legacy operating systems — and visibly
   maintaining their Web sites using MS Front Page, Adobe Page Mill, or
   other junkware — and hosting their LUG mailing lists on Yahoo Groups
   (formerly eGroups and Onelist, formerly MakeList) or Google Groups.
   Fortunately, these LUGs are in the minority, but they convey the message
   of Linux being suitable in neither desktop nor server roles.
   [...]

   2016 addendum: An even worse trend has been turning user groups into
   Meetup.com groups, about which ignominious failure I have a separate
   Meetup rant. [link]

   Don't volunteer to _look like losers_ in public: As the saying goes,
   a LUG needs to "eat its own dog food".

Especially after the pickup by ;login magazine, I kept being told this
essay was "too militant".  

Oh-kay.

(Note innovate licensing terms at the bottom, which my friend and former
_Embedded Linux Journal_ editor Don Marti dubs "bastard reverse copyleft".
Basically, I bless either mirroring, or stealing with all serial numbers
comprehensively removed and a claim to have written it yourself, but
nothing in-between.)