POSSUG News
December 01, 2004
The next POSSUG (PEI Open Source Software User Group) meeting will be Wednesday December 1st 6:45pm at UPEI, Cass Science Building.
Eveyone is welcome!
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Hello all.
Sorry for the short notice reminder..
The meeting IS on for tonight.
Note the time change - We can't get the room until 6:45 (there is a class before hand.)
Tonight we'll see if there is any discussion first (LTSP and Gov?) while we set up to for the SPECIAL screening of:
"REVOLUTION OS tells the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open Source movement."
Cody picked this up for us and even got official permission from the author (director?) to show it publicly to POSSUG.
See you there!
Iain
POSSUG welcomes users of open source,Linux, MAC, BSD, Gentoo and others.
No formal agenda this time, but if you have something to show or talk about please do. Let me know ahead of time if you need anything special. There is an overhead projector in the room. If you have questions - bring them, or post them first to the new POSSUG MAILING LIST
Suggestions or Comments welcome.
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November 08, 2004
This is a quick overview of the notes from POSSUG (PEI Open Source Software Users Group) meeting November 4th/ 2004.
If you have anything to add, please do, or email me at iain(at)engtech.ca.
This was our second meeting of POSSUG. It was held at UPEI Cass science building, and was well attended. We had 16 people at last count, and 3 people had emailed me their regrets. No doubt there were others that couldn't come, but didn't email me. (Not that I need an email, it's just nice to know what kind of numbers we're attracting.)
(For the serach engines: POSSUG, PLUG/OSS, PEI, Linux, LUG, PLUG, Users group, RedHat, Fedora, BSD, os x, Debian, Suse, uClinux.)
Being only our second meeting, the agenda was basically "what do we want POSSUG to do". A survey around the room yielded various results, but I think they all seem compatible goals. Some goals, wishes, comments that were expressed:
(This is all paraphrased - let me know if you think I got it wrong)
"I'd like to be able to get help for things that bug me about my system, like how to configure a pluggable external HDD so that it works."
"I just want to be able to know who's around, and who i can ask for advice."
"want to see who is interested. It would be good if people could present ideas. Like - 'Here's a new thing that no-one has heard of, here's why it's great."
"I'd just like to see more open source on PEI"
"talk about some of the myths about open source. 5/100 are gems. "
"Interested in advocacy to government."
"Interested in knowing what government is ALREADY involved in. This helps local small business owners take OSS seriously."
"Here are UPEI - Openoffice - no lab manual for it at UPEI but interested indeveloping one. The manual itself will be Opensourced."
Talked about Elearning software - moodle.
"Great tools, but may be too much for simpler teaching.
Province already does quite a bit in OSS. Many of the servers are Linux/Apache. There are a few other OSS items. We might be able to get a list or post, or maybe not. Depends on the department. and their willingness to make this public. Liability?
Generally like the idea of advocacy - changing attitudes and awareness. Support, quality.
It was noted that saying it's free is not the issue - Not the best approach. Cost is not always the deciding factor. Support is/can be.
maybe POSSUG can be seen/perceived to provide some of that support mechanism.
Just good to Network - see what are people doing.
Number of people are available for consulting, looking for subcontractors etc...
Interested in Group Profiles.. Announce our presence to peers.
Talked about the upcoming launch of the ITAP OSS website, and that we can use this as our home. Some concern raised about not wanting to "Pay to join a club. not necessarily an ITAP thing."
Iain suggested that he didn't think this was the idea behind the website, and that ITAP was genuinely interested in supporting and helping OSS in the province. Will Pate spoke to this in more detail, and answered some questions about the capability to email posts if individuals didn't like blog based communications.
The launch is on Monday the 15th, and we'll try using it then.
It was suggested we might be able to offer a Forum for basic questions. There was concern about free support vs paid support.
Talked about he "Try linux. disk" Install fests etc... no concrete plans at this point, but it's certainly a topic for future meetings.
Social aspects of open source software/ideals.
OSS principles - human genome project. - non software ideals.
Presentations - projects - Guerilla open source software. Community involvement. Art related stuff?
POSSUG may be interested in helping a non-profit organization.
Prof. David Leblanc spoke a bout a project where by they would send computers toCameroonn. These are typically P100's and up, student volunteers to configure. Ship toCameroonn. He was going to post a link to Dr Jean Ambassa, send links... he will go toCameroonn 4 -5 months, set up wifi. etc...
(David already posted links and info to the mailing list.)
The thought was POSSUG maybe could help configure. maybe we can help find a location to setup/prep these machines?
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It was generally agreed that most people could spend from 2 to 20 minutes talking about SOMETHING. So now we are looking for volunteers.
email with stating topic(s), length of time required.
***OR***
Post an email saying I could talk about these three things..what is most interesting to POSSUG people?
****OR***
email indicating something you would like to have covered.
I'll start a separate email thread for this, but some ideas that came up immediately were, talks/presentations on:
- What is FOAF.
- VOIP - Asterix, Skype, Softphones, SIP.
- Creative Commons License.
- PHP training.
- What you like about the distribution you are currently using.
- anything technical
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NEW suggested meeting time:
-First Wednesday of every month. That makes the next meeting Dec 1.
Possible new location as the seats in Cass are hard.
Maybe the Faculty lounge would work? Maybe Stratford town hall?
Maybe a restaurant has a good amount of space?
If we move to a new location - we may nee a portable projector?
-END!-
NOTE: Until the ITAP OSS website is runnign, discussion takes place on the mailing list.
http://lists.sysop.ca/mailman/listinfo/possug
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October 28, 2004
The next POSSUG (PEI Open Source Software User Group) meeting will be Thursday Nov 4th 6:30pm at UPEI, Cass Science Building.
Eveyone is welcome!
POSSUG welcomes users of open source,Linux, MAC, BSD, Gentoo and others.
No formal agenda this time, but if you have something to show or talk about please do. Let me know ahead of time if you need anything special. There is an overhead projector in the room. If you have questions - bring them, or post them first to the new POSSUG MAILING LIST
Suggestions or Comments welcome.
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October 19, 2004
At the first meeting of PLUG/OSS, we decided that a mailing list should be set up in order to plan for our next meeting.
Cody Swanson was kind enough to do this for us an he also suggested the name POSSUG(PEI Open Source Users Group).
Follow the instructions below and sign up!
(Any major decisions I'll try to post here as well.)
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Cody:I've setup the mailing list for the PEI open source users group. To subscribe to it visit
http://lists.sysop.ca/mailman/listinfo/possug
Cody: I've also setup some webspace for our group. Once we pick a proper name I'll register a domain and setup the webspace. I'm sure we won't have a problem putting together a little website seeing as the group has a lot of web guru's in it.
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October 08, 2004
Big thanks to everyone that attended the inaugural meeting of PLUG/OSS!
There were 21 people in attendance, in advance of the meeting I heard from an additional 7 people that would have like to have been there but couldn't make it.
This group represented a diverse range of individuals consisting of Developers, Network administrators, Programmers, Webdesigners, Engineers, Users, and Enthusiasts Representing Private industry, Holland college, UPEI, CBC, and Federal and Provincial Government.
One issue that wasn't resolved was a good name for the group that indicates it's inclusiveness, as Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Debian, Suse, Redahat, Fedora, and uClinux are all represented.
What was decided was...
What was decided was...
- That there was keen interest in on-going meetings
- Our next meeting would be at UPEI which had projector facilities.
- We would discuss things further online. via a mailing list.
(We'll work on that ASAP anyone volunteering to set it up?
For the moment we can use our corporate blog)
What needs to be determined is:
- Date for next meeting ? How about November 4th?
- People that are interested in presenting any topic to the group?
(The format is pretty open, and so you can have from 2 minutes to 20 minutes, as long as you let someone know in advance.)
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September 28, 2004
We've been talking about doing this for some time now... How about the inaugural meeting of - for lack of a better name - PLUG/OSS (PEI Linux Users Group). This name isn't entirely representative of what I'm thinking about, but at least people have some idea what a LUG is, and we could consider following a similar format.
The idea is to be inclusive of Linux, Open Source, BSD etc... and generally get to know each other and present technical topics to each other, simiar to the way MLUG operates.
I have reserved the back room at St. James Gate for Thursday Oct 7th after work at 5:30.
Any Takers, any thoughts or suggestions?
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