🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Mar13.040211.11451@DIALix.oz.au> abcc@DIALix.oz.au (Adrian Booth Computing Consultants) writes:

[Comments on comments on the structure of AUUG]

>What you *should* do is print it out and snail mail it. If the committee
>is acting responsibly there is no way it can ignore a physical letter
>delivered to it with a request "To be presented to the committee
>at its next meeting". (The next committee meeting is real soon now,
>maybe a FAX would be better). I have written a letter in this form to the
>committee basically detailing the points you listed above; the more that
>they receive (especially all at once), the better.

You would be wrong to believe that the AUUG committee doesn't know
about these concerns or that it is deliberately ignoring them.
I am the longest serving Committee member, and this debate
(in one form or another) has been going on for years. I think the
commercialisation of UNIX (and its user groups) has always been
inevitable - we have held back the tide much more than you imagine.

That doesn't mean you can't be nostalgic about the great old
conferences where Robert Elz talked about tty drivers, but UNIX is
now so mainstream (read boring) that these papers are being presented
somewhere else. Also remember that in those days there was real
development work for UNIX going on in Australia; how many Universities
in OZ are working on operating systems now? Where is our Mach,
Andrew, bsd4.4 etc etc? USENIX holds intensely technical conferences
still (they're great to attend) and people from Berkeley, CMU, MIT etc
and the vendors give these sort of papers - clever country?

So, returning to the point of the posting above (and ignoring the
usual slurs), AUUG finds itself in a difficult position. It isn't a
large organisation (though it is large enough to split :-(), and it's
not too remote from its members. The committee doesn't ignore members
who have suggestions and the energy to do something with them.

The committee has been trying for a long time (with mixed success)
to retain a strong technical flavour and at the same time encourage
the commercial people.  We are hampered in this by almost complete
apathy from the membership - the most motivated are the commercial
leaning types. Why is this I wonder? It is even more strange when
you consider that AUUG has a fairly good annual budget which could
be applied to all sorts of good ideas which benefit the technical
membership - so where are the ideas and where is the effort to make
something of them? As always, occasional bursts of cheap criticism
and long periods of drowzy silence.

I'm quite happy to retire my position if it will encourage new
people with great ideas to revitalise AUUG; I will enjoy carping
at their inadequacies too!

Chris Maltby (AUUG Vice President)
-- 
Chris Maltby - Softway Pty Ltd	(chris@softway.sw.oz.au)

PHONE:	+61-2-698-2322		UUCP:		uunet!softway.sw.oz.au!chris
FAX:	+61-2-699-9174		INTERNET:	chris@softway.sw.oz.au