Notes from Wednesday's meeting

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Richard Royston wrote:
> >We discussed the activities of some of the other former BCS groups.
> >A number of people have independently begun efforts to form a "new"
> >BCS central umbrella group. ... I would be opposed to
> trying to set up an umbrella group until the individual groups are
> established

I concur that the failure of an umbrella group is highly likely, even if
it garners a six-figure endowment from a corporate sponsor (IMHO, a likely
scenario given the challenges a lot of fairly successful companies which
have backed the BCS in the past now face in terms of customer support and
educational services).

> >MIT has provided BCS with free meeting space. As I understand it, our
> >sponsors at MIT justified the BCS presence on campus as being of great 
> >benefit to the MIT community.

The group still offers plenty of benefits to MIT, and I believe there
are Linux/Unix group members who are part of the MIT community.  If
there is concern in this area, we should do a visibility drive on
campus.

> I would have thought that linux would also be of benefit to the MIT
> community.  Are we friends with Richard Stallman at present?  There's
> certainly quite a lot of synergy between us and the FSF.

The past has been spotty in this area.  RMS wants the group to use the Gnu
name, and consensus has been not to do so.  The group as it exists today
could not have existed without the past work of RMS and FSF, and I think
people recognize that debt, but future direction is the debated point.

> But evidently the BCS's costs were much too high for the benefit perceived by
> the members.

True, but this group will need to acquire certain resources in order to
continue attracting new members.  It could probably exist at the 20-member
local level for a fairly long time, but if it wants to grow and attract
interesting speakers and potentially sponsor new initiatives in Linux
development as well as educational outreach projects, then it will need to
acquire the basic accoutrements of a non-profit organization (publications
[electronic at a minimum, but I think the printed ones had a lot more value
than people might now believe], email list, membership list, advertising
outreach, a speakers' agenda, a volunteer coordinator, a modest bank account,
etc).  These things nominally cost about $20-40/year for most any non-profit
group, be it a member fee or subsidized corporate sponsorship, plus a lot
of hard work on the part of a core group of three to ten people.

A concern I have is that there is a concerted stampede toward NT away
from Unix by the corporate community.  If the academic community joins this
stampede, it may be very difficult to maintain a Unix-focused user group in
the short-term future.

This mailing list is still hosted on a BCS-owned computer on a
BCS-supplied network link.  My company has offered to host the web
site and DNS under the name www.blu.ci.net, but we still need a
volunteer to take over this mailing list before it goes dark.  Anyone
with a Linux box, a PPP/T1 or UUCP link, a commitment to daily
updates and responsiveness, and a working knowledge of Majordomo or
equivalent list server software can accomplish the task (yours truly
is burned out on list management...)

cheers,
-rich