[PLUG] PLUG vs. PLUG

Eric Harrison eharrison at mail.mesd.k12.or.us
Sun Jan 18 10:43:02 UTC 2004


On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, Russell Evans wrote:

>On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 20:14:41 -0800
>"Wil Cooley" <wcooley at nakedape.cc> wrote:
>
>> The actual names, if you expand the acronyms, are:
>> PDXLUG - Portland Linux Users Group
>> PLUG - Portland Linux/UNIX Group, although we were "officially" the
>> Portland Linux Users Group until some time in the late 1990's, when
>> (IIRC) I requested we change the name to make it clear that discussion
>> about other UNIX systems was welcome.  Since "LUG" generally is used
>> to indicate Linux User Groups, most people assumed that PLUG stood for
>> Portland Linux Users Group, so we've also by default had that as an
>> alias.
>
>So the issue is the usage of "Portland Linux User Group" 

More or less. Perhaps it would be better summed up as an issue of
intentionally causing confusion and "pissing in the pool".

Forking the group is one thing. There are no shortage of LUGs in
the Portland area, BizNix & BLUE for example, there is no harm in
having yet another. PLUG itself has off-shoots with their own
meetings/lists, Advanced Topics and PLUG for Education for example.

Adding "Portland Linux/UNIX Group" was intended to make PLUG
more inclusive, rather than exclusive, after all. The more the
merrier.

But forking the group in such a way that was intended to cause as
much harm as possible to the original group (using the same name,
having meetings on the same day/time, posting a steady stream of
insults) has rubbed a few people the wrong way.

I, for one, am a bit confused why some of the PDXLUG organizers
feel the need to be so bitter and work so hard at generating bad
blood.

>If one where to do a grep on the web site, would Portland Linux User
>Group be found anywhere but in the mailing lists? 

A Google search for Portland Linux User Group is enlightening.

There is much more to PLUG than the web site. You will note, for
example, that the PLUG Linux Clinic has always used "Portland Linux
User's Group (PLUG)".  The PLUG clinics have been in continuous
operation since 1995. 

-Eric





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