[Talk] A template for monthly meetings/talks. COMMENTS PLEASE

[Greg Black]

On 2004-01-19, Steve Jenkin top-posted and failed to suitably trim:

> In the context of the debate/discussion on AUUG's focus, 'proprietary'
> vs 'Open Source', I have only received ONE private response to this
> note, and that was a suggestion to place it before the chapters and the
> exec.

I was going to leave this alone, for reasons that will become
obvious; but this repeat has driven me to comment.

I think the proposal sucks.  It's badly thought out, poorly
expressed, and runs counter to what I would like to see from
AUUG.

Vendors don't need support from AUUG -- they have their own
methods for getting their message out wherever they want.  If
their products are so crappy that they don't make enough money
to be able to afford normal marketing, then they should die.

What AUUG should be focussing its energies on is stuff like open
standards and open software -- that's the domain that needs work
from all of us, and it's where we stand to gain.

Being locked into vendor stupidity in the form of proprietary
data formats and other stuff that might be illegal to reverse
engineer is the last thing rational people want to see.

This vendor stupidity afflicts the open source people too, of
course -- witness all the ridiculous incompatibilities that have
been inflicted on us in recent years by the GNU and Linux crowd.

Cheers, Greg