Board meeting minutes: 2005-09-26

From GTALUG

Board Meeting Minutes: 2005-09-26

Board meeting at: LinuxCaffe, Sept 26, 2005, 7:30pm.

Attended by: Chris Browne, Seneca Cunningham, Gordon Chillcott, William Park, Joseph Kubik

Topic: Our response to MOSUG invitation.

1. Gordon pointed out that this is just preliminary get-to-know meeting. And, GTALUG should define "who we are" and "what we do". The question of what we can do for MOSUG should be put off until later, after we find out their problems.

2. As it seems that Hamilton is included in this mix, MOSUG may be more than just York region. He mentioned that municipals are probably going through the same IT consolidation that provincial and federal are going through.

3. Gordon said that Calgary experience (topic of presentation at the last Linux World trade show) was important and relevant to MOSUG.

4. William pointed out that Calgary went with HP. Once municipalities go with HP, IBM, and Novell, they would use their own people, and there would be no room for independents. Counter arguments were that HP/IBM/Novell staff engineers are too expensive to do the actual work, and they would outsource the work.

5. Joseph mentioned 3 points:

• GTALUG is the only verifiable grouping of Linux developers, consultants, and users in the Toronto area. We represent cross-section of Linux markets, spanning across many companies and market segments. There is really substantial depth of experience.

• List of TLUG presentations should be used as example of "what we do". Also, it would give good flavour of diverse interests that are found in GTALUG.

• GTALUG is gateway to possible contractors.

6. Chris suggested that Microsoft should fight tooth-and-nail against Linux as any government use represents a reusable precedent. Gordon pointed out that Ontario sales are immaterial, financially, to Microsoft. But, Gordon pointed out that South Korea, India, and State of Massachusetts (MA) are walking away from Microsoft.

A way of regarding the "depth" of GTALUG involvements in open source would be to consider three ways GTALUG people are involved:

• There is some minority of individuals involved with development of various OSS projects.

• Most GTALUG people been heavily involved with deploying OSS software whether for personal use or for employers or customers. This is the part likely to be particularly relevant to municipalities... There are hundreds if not thousands of people around who know how to install Linux, how to install and configure Apache, how to install and configure X, how to write scripts in Perl/Python/Bash/... Some work as consultants, which is particularly relevant to MOSUG...

• Amongst this group there is a small (but, since they are published, presumably influential) group of authors who have written about OSS software. We probably ought to try to collect up a page linking to publications by relevant Torontonians...

Administration:

1. was decided that positions of President, Secretary, and Treasurer must be filled soon. They can be selected within the Board, or selected from general membership.

2. was decided to meet with Edward Chin as soon as possible, to discuss the hand-over of corporate papers and financial books.

3. Next meeting will be held on Oct 6, 7:30pm (First Thursday).