[wplug] NOTICE: Member Organizational Meeting

[Jonathan S Billings]

On Tue, 9 Jan 2001, Weber, Larry A wrote:

> I have been reading some of the replies sent in repsonse to your
> "Organizational ..." email and I cannot say I am surprised with them.  I
> have attended a couple wplug meetings and installfests and can say I got the
> impression that I was not welcomed to be there.  I made the mistake of
> questioning some Linux abilities (such as why it is so hard to get a printer
> to work with the op system and apps).  I got the impression that the wplug
> 'members' were basically techie children and don't want others playing in
> their sandbox.  They feel they can do great things but don't challenge them
> to accept responsibility.  This may be a characteristic of the open source
> community.  I see the same type of people at Perl conferences. 

I don't know if that's a good description of linux geeks, or geeks in
general.  I know if you complain to mac geeks, you'll get the same
attitude.  People defend their choice of OS (or religion or political
party, programming language, etc) and can be quite childish if they move
away from reason.  I wouldn't blame WPLUG, or it's supposed lack of
structure for such poor responses.

I'm sorry you felt unwelcome.  I know I try my hardest to be patient and
open-minded at meetings and install-fests, but I also try to advocate the
open-source movement, and I might sound argumentitive at times.

--jonathan "Linux Geek and Mac Geek at heart" billings