Working with the UKUUG and LUUG

[Steve Greenshaw]

My thoughts ...

I enjoy the friendly atmosphere in this group and find many of the
discussions very useful and helpful in my own struggle to get to grips with
all things FreeBSD. I personally think that bringing fees into the group
would *possibly* detract from the current atmosphere. Besides that, as
someone who lives in the wild North of the UK I currently miss all get
togethers and would find it difficult to attend any conferences (which would
inevitably be held in London). However, I think that getting more involved
with the UKUUG may be a good idea ... it would give us the chance to promote
FreeBSD more widely within the UNIX community (there's a tendancy for
everyone to assume you use Linux when you tell them your server is a UNIX
system).

An aside ...

At work (a UNI) we currently host two WWW servers for a charitable
organisation. They are both Linux, whereas our servers (DNS, WWW, Mail,
Proxy) are all FreeBSD (apart from one horrible MSExchange server that never
does anything you want it to). A Student with a bent for being kicked out
decided that 'hacking' our servers would be a good idea from one of our
labs. This individual happily waltzed into the Linux servers and installed a
root kit etc., but when they tried the FreeBSD boxes oh dear ... they
suddenly realised they couldn't do it quite so easily. They also realised
the next day that the server had trapped the attempt and logged it. They
realised this when they were 'visited' by security. I also know of one ISP
that has just decided to dump Linux in favour of FreeBSD due to the security
problems with Linux and the good reputation of FreeBSD's security.

Incidentally ... did anyone see the BBC interview with our friend Billy
Gates after the launch of Windoze 2000? I was impressed by his comment that
he wanted to provide users with a cheap server, rather than them having to
rely on "expensive UNIX boxes". I'm afraid that one had me screaming at my
telly. I mean, what planet is the guy on?

Steve.

Nik Clayton wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> One of the things we talked about on Thursday night was the UK Unix User
> Group, and the London Unix User Group (they've been discussed briefly on
> this list last year as well).
>
> A few of us thought it was a good idea to get more involved with the
> UKUUG and LUUG.  There's already a Linux SIG (Special Interest Group),
> and I'm sure we could form a FreeBSD SIG.
>
> I suspect what might happen if we did that is that the FreeBSD UK User
> Group would become the FreeBSD SIG, under the UKUUG umbrella, as it
> were.
>
> I don't have any problems with that, and think it could bring a lot of
> benefits.  But I think some discussion here first would definitely be
> appropriate.
>
> The one thing that might cause problems -- the UKUUG charge a membership
> fee.  IIRC it's GBP 35 for individuals (I can't check the web site at
> the moment) and FreeBSD UKUG membership is free.  Then again, we haven't
> actually done anything yet that costs money, whereas the UKUUG tends to
> organise conferences, guest speakers, discounts on O'Reilly books, and
> so on.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> N
> --
>     If you want to imagine the future, imagine a tennis shoe stamping
>     on a penguin's face forever.
>         --- with apologies to George Orwell
>
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