[LUGSB] Can we vote on this?

[Michael Graffam]

Hello everyone,

I know this is somewhere out of left field, but I'd like to suggest that
we come up with a new name for the group.

At many of our meetings, we have concerned ourselves with attracting new
membership to the LUG. I believe a name change can help with this, which
I'll explain later.

I've heard it said that SB uses FreeBSD in the computer science building.
Are students developing on FreeBSD? Do they know that they can freely
copy this software and have the same thing on their home PC, dual-booted
with Windows?

As a LUG, much of what we've talked about, for example KDE and GNOME, or
Emacs apply equally well to FreeBSD as they do to Linux. In fact, I doubt
anyone has done much talking about using the Linux system call API
directly. Even programmers don't use Linux very often :)

And non-programmers never touch Linux! They use GNOME, Emacs, bash and
other GNU software. There is no reason for us to restrict ourselves to
Linux, because for most potential users it is irrelevent, we're talking
about user-land software, not kernel-related stuff.

We're not a Linux user's group, we're a GNU/Linux user's group and while
we're at it, we may as well call ourselves a Free Software User's Group,
or something, because we should invite any people interested in BSD into
the group too. Especially since it is used it on campus.

Calling ourselves a Free Software Group would encompass a lot broader
range of options and users. And there is a marketing benefit for
attracting new users: some people would stop by just to see what free (as
in price) software they might get, like a pirated version of MS Office.

This is good, because we tell them what we REALLY mean by "Free Software"
and explain "free as in freedom." And then we offer a copy of OpenOffice
for Windows.

Later on, maybe we can get them to use OpenOffice on Linux or FreeBSD.

Instead of Windows users looking at "Linux User's Group" flyers and not
having a clue what they mean, they can look at a "Come get all the free
software you can copy; bring your own blanks" flyers and I'll bet people
show up.

By placing the emphasis of the group on Free Software, and not just Linux,
I think we can broaden the appeal and gain more GNU/Linux users in the
process.

What do you all think?