Welcome, new members !

[Sriram N]

Hi all:

There've been lots of new members during the past few months. On behalf of the
rest of us, Welcome to BCSLUG !!

We're a group of students and working people who communicate on this list with
the following goals in mind:
1. Help Computer Science students understand Free and Open Source and how Free
and Open Source software might be used to study the Computer Science Syllabus.

2. Encourage each other to contribute to Open Source projects so that we all
learn from each other and from the process, help build for ourselves a
reputation that'll help during job searches and placements, and generally have
a good time.

3. Learn from each other.

Some of our list members are active on a few fronts:
1. Our most recent success story, Swapnil Kamble's effort at releasing a Linux
based library that'll folks perform their TurboC practicals on Linux. (Swapnil,
please step in to explain better).

2. CSLinux - A Linux distribution that is actively used, that works, and that's
useful to educational institutions. Archis can tell us more on this front.

So feel free to write in and ask questions on Free and Open Source Software, on
how you could cnotribute, on software development problems that you face, etc.
One of us will definitely help.

Most of the posts on this list are moderated. That means, when you send a mail
to the list, the mail will be delivered to other list members only after a
moderator clears the mail. This is to keep in check problems of spam, of off
topic conversation, of piracy, and of indecent language. Once the moderators
see that a list member is a consistently good poster who regulates himself or
herself, then that member's posts are unmoderated. This would be the only delay
in your posts reaching the list.

Welcome aboard, and have fun.

-- Sriram

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[Archis Gore]

I'm crafting a nice long compliment to this mail and
expect a very active thread on CSLinux soon. Its quite
different - it wont be a distro at all but a
distro-neutral set of scripts and packages but more on
this later.......

I'll just add a few more of our activities in pune
that mailing-list-only members are not actively aware
of (since they're mostly over the phone and personal
mail).

Post by Sriram N
There've been lots of new members during the past
few months. On behalf of the
rest of us, Welcome to BCSLUG !!

<snip/>

3. BCSLUG seminars: Amit and co. regularly conduct
seminars and demystification fests at colleges. These
are generally done by talking to college authorities
and during/near popular festivals or events thereby
expecting maximum turnout.

If you have a group of people interested in a certain
demo (how to handle Debian), or a certain discussion
just for kicks (for instance, what is different
between KDE and GNOME?), we can volunteer to organise
then. If say, a bunch of FY's are afraid to go out or
post on mailing lists, they can come together and ask
us to send a volunteer. One of us will go and talk to
them in person. This helps us target groups of
students towards FOSS.

This also means we can organise meets according to the
convenience of only those involved. Sort of like SIGs
(Special Interest Groups). Sometimes its difficult to
attend PLUG meetings since Saturday evenings are
cleanup day at labs (low traffic, low usage and lots
of free machines - ideal for cleaning up makefiles,
synchronizing backups, writing autoconf files, etc.).
I've been trying for past four weeks but something
always comes up.

4. Gappa-Tappa sessions (Amit's invention, a quite
cool concept): That reminds me of a fun issue: MENSA
people even have SIGs on smoking. A bunch of members
come together and smoke for an hour or so. We
generally do the same (similar nor _same_) at
someone's place once in a while. Just gather together
and talk about nothing in particular. If the newbies
just attend such a session, they wont be intimidated
by too many experts and techno-terminology and it will
help get through the first phase of fear of Linux.
Moving to Linux is more about dealing with your
initial apprehension rather than a technical
challenge.

And the secret to making a mailing list work: post
post post...... even if its small, even if its
apparently worthless, even if its not important. This
is a community. The first thing you need to do is
develop a nice sense of homeliness and belonging to
the group.

Post by Sriram N
So feel free to write in and ask questions on Free
and Open Source Software, on
how you could cnotribute, on software development
problems that you face, etc.
One of us will definitely help.

Ack. Some of our youngest members (second years) are
making quite a name for themselves by contributing to
FOSS. Even if you write a 50-line shell script at
home, send it in. Someone somewhere needs it. I just
downloaded a 20-line shell script to get my Tata
Indicom connection working. For all I care, it could
be 200 lines. So what's a 20-line shell script for
someone else, is of 200-line importance to me.

<snip/>

I think I'm one of the unmoderated members. My mails
always appear quite quickly. Cool. :-)

Post by Sriram N
Welcome aboard, and have fun.
-- Sriram
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[Abhishek]

Hi all ...
Thanks Archis and Sriram for your warm welcome to new comers ...

I am in FE VIT and we have a small group of people interested in Linux
...I myself have used Linux for 4-5 years and have some experience ..
but for having a forum, we need to start with the absolute grass root
basics ... can anyone suggest how we go about it ?

All suggestions are welcome.......


Regds,
Abhi.







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[Sriram N]

Post by Abhishek
Hi all ...
Thanks Archis and Sriram for your warm welcome to new comers ...
I am in FE VIT and we have a small group of people interested in Linux
...I myself have used Linux for 4-5 years and have some experience ..
but for having a forum, we need to start with the absolute grass root
basics ... can anyone suggest how we go about it ?

Some questions:

What would the forum do ?
Who, in your estimate, shoul dbe the members of this forum ?
How would they benefit, and why would they want to benefit, from joining this
forum ?
What are your goals ?
What would you like to accomplish ?

Most active members of the BCS Lug have thought together in person, over
telephone, over IM, and over email on the above questions. We've arrived at
some answers. Some of these answers are part of the welcome mail I'd recently
sent out.

Likewise, I strongly urge you to ask yourselves these few questions too, and to
keep the rest of us (you're part of this list, and a part of us too) informed
on how your answers are evolving.

Looking forward to seeing you again.

-- Sriram

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[sriramx_2000]

[sriramx_2000]