On Wednesday 23 March 2005 07:23 pm, smitty wrote:
> Interesting. After FLALUG started, I received an email from a LEAP officer
> advising me that we would fail very soon. He told me about another lug
> that started in central Florida in "competition" with LEAP and it
> disbanded. He went on that forking a lug has never worked, et cetera. I
> replied that it was not an us or them proposition and we have no problem
> with the existence of slug. We only objected to the mailing list policies
> of the fellow in charge of it.
Forgive them, for they knew not what they did. I'm not sure if that LEAP
officer was me or somebody else, but back in early 2003 all LEAP officers
believed a small town like Orlando or Tampa could sustain only one LUG. This
belief was based on the expense of starting a LUG in the old days, and also
based on the ELUG/LEAP split, which made SLUG/FlaLUG and LEAP/GoLUG look like
mutual admiration societies.
In 1998 Jeff Rose formed ELUG (initially Eustus Linux User Group, but when he
moved it to Orlando it became Everyone's Linux User Group). Jeff was a top
notch evangelist, and within a few months ELUG had upward of 60 members, and
meetings of about 20 people. ELUG was very strongly connected to SVLUG, and
was one of the most famous LUGs in the country. ELUG created a board of
directors tasked with incorporating. There were 10 directors, of which I was
one.
An unfortunate mistake was made, which put ELUG in some degree of legal
jeopardy, so in the spring of 1999 the ELUG board of directors switched our
name to LEAP. In doing so, we were worried sick about creating a civil war,
but in June 1999 we started an ELUG meeting as ELUG, and ended it as LEAP,
and everyone accepted that. It looked like we had made the transition.
Then 5, countem 5 flamers created a flamewar to end all flamewars. That
flamewar inspired me to write this essay:
http://www.troubleshooters.cxm/linux/netiquette.htm
Jeff Rose withdrew from LEAP and recruited a whole new bunch for a reborn
ELUG. For several months, the new ELUG was more powerful than LEAP (which was
really the old ELUG).
The flame war and ensuing civil war came with a deep cost -- by late 2000 ELUG
was dead and LEAP was licking its wounds. I think it safe to say that every
LEAP officer wanted to make sure there would be only one LUG in Orlando's
future, and really believed that only one LUG could survive in a city of
Orlando's size.
I believe ELUG was the other LUG the LEAP officer who emailed you was talking
about, and with what was known in 2003, I think that officer was giving you
an honest opinion.
Although I was LEAP's president August 2001 to August 2002, I could not get
LEAP to enforce their mailing list rules. In February 2004, baraged by almost
constant personal insults, I became convinced that I could not work with
LEAP, and formed GoLUG. It was a very unpopular decision with the LEAP
executive committee, who I think still believed a small city like Orlando
could support only one LUG. Back in February 2004 I believed that also.
In February 2005 two new Orlando LUGs formed -- Marc Maxwell's Forensic Lug,
and a reconstituted UCF LUG (the original UCF LUG predated ELUG). This did
not in any way harm LEAP or GoLUG, and I think changed everyone's opinion on
the necessity of a single LUG.
Orlando now has 4 vital, functioning LUGs, and I expect to see more in the
future rather than less. Smitty, what the LEAP officer who emailed you hadn't
taken into account was the astonishly lower barrier to entry a new LUG faces
now than what it faced last century. $5.00/month gets you a mailing list, and
the rest is just a matter of leadership. FlaLUG was one of the first to
successfully break away without cannibalizing the other LUG. You guys were
way ahead of your time.
I expect to see this LUG specialization occur in other cities. With the
barrier to entry so low, it's easy for a few people to get together and start
the exact LUG they want, rather than having to adapt to a LUG that doesn't
meet their needs. It might take awhile, but I think the day of the superLUG
is rapidly drawing near, as smaller, specialized LUGs take over.
So now you have a pocket history of the LUG movement in Orlando.
SteveT
Steve Litt
Founder and acting president: GoLUG
http://www.golug.org
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