Re: Formal Member Registration

[Atul Chitnis <achitnis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Khader: it would have helped had you attended the last meet - a lot more
things would have become clearer. Your fear of "formality" is pretty
ridiculous.

Ravikant: Try attending one of our meets once, and you'll understand why
it is necessary for us to "regularise" membership. Sitting in judgement of
a proposal when you cannot understand the environment is a bit much.

All:

Back off with your arguments - in the light of what we actually have in
mind, you are unnecessarily getting yourself into a dizzy-spell with these
outrages.

ILUG-Bangalore is huge, and unlike some places (where an average meeting
might have 15-20 people) we are in danger of crossing the big-C soon, with
average attendance never being below 60. We have 300 people on the list,
and more and more of them are beginning to attend our meets. And then
there are the big events coming up, which draw in people from all over the
country....

Such huge numbers bring along their own problems - caterers need to be
told numbers *before* the event, sponsors would like to have an idea of
what they are dealing with and we (the coordinators of the LUG) need to
gauge the profile of the members and what would interest them at meets.

At Bang!inux, we had no way of telling the organisers who our members were
and how they could be identified - resulting in us not being able to
arrange for LUG members to attend some of the sessions.

Last year, at IT.COM, we also had no formal way of identifying members,
resulting in cheapskates trying to pass themselves off as Linux India
members in order to bypass the gate-fee for the exhibition.

These are all logistical issues, and for those of you merrily waving your
little red flags - big numbers bring big logistical problems, especially
for organisers, coordinators, etc.

My request for formal membership was based on this, not on the fervent
wish (as privately expressed by a few people) of politicising the LUG or
"taking advantage of my position" (as one of you so nastily wrote to me).

For those of you who did not attend the meet - I proposed a "membership
fee" (actually just a payment for covering the cost of printing membership
cards) of Rs.10. Yes - that is TEN Rupees, or about $0.25. One time.
Period. Any "student" who cannot afford this - I'll be glad to pay it for
you. Just let me have your application for financial support in triplicate
- each copy handwritten (since you cannot afford carbon paper or xerox).
Please note, however, that you will also have to explain to me how you can
afford doing any computing when you can't even afford the cost of a floppy
disk, let alone a computer.

Finally - the comment of "there is no movement" is silly and (frankly
speaking) in bad taste, considering the background. If you think that
Linux is making it big in India solely because of technical prowess (which
it doesn't lack), you really lost track of things. There are hundreds and
thousands of people who contribute to this, and if this doesn't justify
calling it a movement, I wonder what can. 

This comment is another example of one man's opinion being liberally
rammed down the throat of the others, and I (for one) object to it,
because it in one one quick rat-a-tat of words deliberately attempts to
marginalise everything that I (and an overwhelming number of others)  
feel about Linux and the way it is changing a lot of things around us.

Atul

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Atul Chitnis       | achitnis@xxxxxxxxxxx (PGP:6011BCB8)
Exocore Consulting | http://www.exocore.com
Bangalore, India   | +91(80)3440397 Fax +91(80)3341137
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