introducing metalug

[Scott Elcomb]

On 10/29/06, John Van Ostrand <john-Da48MpWaEp0CzWx7n4ubxQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> This is an extension of some ideas put forth by Richard Weait and Paul
> Nijjar. Richard has been cross pollinating lugs and FLOSS groups for
> quite a while now. He and Paul have ideas of meta mailing lists and have
> put prototypes in place without the need for a larger entity. The other
> initiative of theirs (please excuse me if I'm forgetting other
> contributors) was a combined calendar of events.
>
> I like the idea of having a large and demonstrably strong advocacy group
> for open source. But those currently exist in FSF, Linux International
> and OSDN, even the EFF counts to some degree. Can a metalug bring
> something new to this?

I believe so.  For my part, I think I can help on a web-based UI for a
metalug.  For me the single most exciting part of the Atomic OS is the
multi-user system, and this is a perfect opportunity to show why.

I won't describe what I see in detail at this point, it's too early,
but I think that metalug.* could provide several new things -
including YACF, Yet Another Canadian Flag.  Despite the "Yet Another"
component of the acronym, a new international/national/local
initiative should only increase Canada's profile (for better or worse)
in the FOSS world.  The closer it is tied to similar/related
initiatives the better because of the resulting concept-reinforcement
feedback loop.

> Off the top of my head I see that this would largely benefit small LUGs.
> Those lugs may not have the resources or man-power to build, develop and
> maintain a large web site. I could even see medium sized lugs taking
> advantage of this. The KWLug recently put in place a new web site and it
> was a tremendous effort. Some of the features that we wanted are still
> not in place. If there were a free hosting that provided what we needed
> we may have taken advantage of it. The big ones for us were
> comprehensive calendars, multi-lug announcements on mailing lists, and
> forum-email gateways. This would have to support domain name hosting as
> well.
>
> The simple form of providing a list of lugs and lug hosting efforts is
> feasible. There are lots of other small-lug issues a meta lug can solve
> by centralizing information.
>
> The more advanced form, corporate and government advocacy, I think is
> beyond the scope, at least for now. It's an endeavour that would require
> capital and lots of man-hours. This money would require a large effort
> to collect as donations, or it would require corporate sponsorship which
> could be undermining.

"Beyond the scope," should be communicated to other intiatives - to
the projects/organizations better equipped to deal with the issue(s)
at hand.  Communication is the biggest barrier here, and I think
that's what metalug would be trying to resolve.

I'd suggest that local/national SMB's (Small-Medium sized Business)
that make use of Linux/FOSS could help metalug out by sponsoring such
an undertaking.

Of course, some serious organization would have to occur first.

-- 
Scott Elcomb
http://atomos.sourceforge.net/
http://search.cpan.org/~selcomb/SAL-3.03/
http://psema4.googlepages.com/

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