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Open Letter to Turkish LUG 59

Posted by justin++ from the eek! dept.
The Turkish Linux User Group decided to raise a yearly fee for memberships and email aliases due to the inability to get sponsors for their other projects. Read on for an open letter by Andreas Mueller.
On July 19th a small group from linux.org.tr (Linux-Tuerkiye) decided to raise an yearly fee for an e-mail alias/membership at linux.org.tr. They also decided to split the user group into 2 parts. I'm a member of Linux-Tuerkiye. Below please find two postings from TRLUUG officers, both of them are personal friends of mine. There were no discussion between users and officers regarding the upcoming fee before, the fee was simply dictated. The reason was to make money.

Here are my thoughts:

a) To hire a partime student. I know that there are many students who create webpages for free projects at no charge. (Look at http://www.debian.org/ for example)

There were three people offering help with the pages, keeping them up to date. Their offer was rejected. Help wasn't wanted.

b) In a free software community (like the Linux community) all email addresses have some "value". It doesn't make sense to create subdomains within such a linux. domain. We don't need a new two-level hierarchy.

c) Maybe comming soon, members.linux.org.tr will also be splitted into active and passive, stupid and clever.

d) Mr. Gorkem does his job at no charge. If he can't do this anymore, we have to look for somebody else. There are many people who would like to help. It is unacceptable to raise a fee for being an officer of such an organization.

e) Large membership. Mr. Gorkem said that running linux.org.tr depends on personal activity of the officers. It's said that there are 90 members. I'm unable to believe that none of these 90 people would like spend some time on it without charging anybody for it. Why would they want an email alias? Just for fun?

f) Support for Linux. There are three commercial companies at Tuerkiye, that provide professional support for Linux. One of them receives support from me in form of FREE bandwith, with a computer hosted in our network. The other one is the company I work for, we also give FREE support for Linux, including freebies for people who can't afford purchasing a CD.

A while time ago I started a new project to translate Debian into Turkish. This includes webpages as well, so I searched for peoples who can help. I found 40 (fourty) people who wanted to work on this this project FOR FREE. They spend their time thats all. I also invited the German Linux Community to Tuerkiye last year. 20 people have had very much fun time. The Sponsors were the airplane company Akdeniz, a local HighSchool, the German Unix User Group and myself. I even have paid for hotel and meal for the Turkish people out of my own pocket.

My personal activity for Linux at Tuerkiye is very, very HIGH. Richard Stallman visited Tuerkiye one month ago. Now linux.org.tr seems to act like a commercial company. Is this what we deserve?

I don't believe so. If your new plan to make Linux much more attractive, please walk around and ask people who would work for FREE. I'm sure you can find people. You can also find sponsors. For example, when Richard Stallman visited Turkiye, I asked my boss if we could provide him a car. He agreed.

It's also serious that there's no protocol about your meeting or other people don't know about this secret event. At least the situation very dim about what happend with linux.org.tr and I cannot accept this situation. Dont forget Linux is an operating system developed by many, many people and these people invested _their_ free time to develop it. I'll also say thanks that I'm able to choose to use this great product for FREE.

Maybe linux.org.tr needs new Ideas, but if you get money from individuals this is the wrong way. Other people replied to me with a "big thank" for my posting, but they hesitated to post themselves such a letter. Please think again about your ideas for linux.org.tr.

For more information, please see this web page.
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Open Letter to Turkish LUG More

Open Letter to Turkish LUG

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  • Ah, you show your true colours now. For a start, the concept of nationality with regard to websites is not particularly meaningful - it doesn't matter where the server is; what matters is what's on it. Not everyone reading this is from the US; why assume they are?
    For another thing, the topic of this article is concerned with Linux and the running of a user group, both items of interest to people frequenting /., if past topics are anything to go by.
    And thirdly, who nominated you for the post of chief censor? If you don't want to read something, pass on by; new articles pop up all the time, and I'm sure there'll be something among them that interests you.

    Just don't bitch when there's something here that you don't want to read; we're not all the same as you. Repeat this to yourself a few times.

    Oh, by the way, it looks like the guy who sent this in is the same person who wrote the open letter, so there's at least one Turkish Linux user reading Slashdot.
  • I am a member of ASSET(Astronomical Society of South East Texas) and we were told that if a visitor showed up and tripped over a telescope and got hurt, that he/she could sue everyone in the club, and that everyone would be responsible personally! IMHO this is stupid to the Nth degree, but that seems to be the law(in Texas at least.)
    Having telescopes set up in the dark is an intrinsically dangerous situation(it seems.) Nobody, it seems, can be held responsible for not being carefull when walking in the dark anymore.
    I suppose they would like us to have lights set up so our eyes could not dark adjust, after having just driven 60 miles just to get to a dark site!
    SIGHHHhhhhhh,,,,....

    James

  • Whether he's a racist pig or not is of no particular interest to me, but your comment has very clearly shown what kind of person YOU are.

    Take a few deep breaths and then dunk your head in a bucket or something. Please.

  • I think you're being a little unfair. I think its a pointless article, but I don't live in the US. In fact, the general consenus in these comments seem to suggest it was not a worthwile or relavent article to even a small proportion of the tens of thousands of Slashdot readers. Star Wars on the other hand was. Not everyone likes it. But I'd say it was at least 50/50. This story affects so few people, it really wasn't worth the bandwidth. Still, it's started a nice little argument... which we all seem to love so much...
  • Every club, organization or UG I have ever belonged to had a membership fee. Most of these groups had two tiers: paid members and unpaid guests. Unpaid guests did not get to attend business sessions or vote on any issues. Every group also had a set of bylaws.

    If the TLUG did not follow their bylaws when increasing their free, shame on them. But if the complaints are coming from the unpaid guests, and not members, then shame on the freeloaders.
  • What happen to the Turkish Linux Group seems to be a common problem. When I started my college LUG (Chico State Linux Users' Group) there was a big debate on whether to charge a membership fee. After a slightly heated debate raged, it was decided that a membership fee would not be required to be in the club or get help. Now with the benifit of hind sight, I think this was the best idea. No one feels imposed to give monies they might now have or spend in a LUG. We still help people, and it FREE! Just remember, how much did you pay for your Linux?

    College LUG's have the same problem as Third World LUG's (Mexico and Turkey come to mind). Members are not going to give monies in enough quanitities to make a BIG impact in the LUG. The real strenght in these LUGs is the desire of the members to work to make the club fun, and helpful. If any LUG depends on money before they get enough members to help out, then it is going to fail.

    What the Turkey LUG needs to do before they start demanding money from its members is listed below.
    1) Ask for members of the club to help out in various areas. If only a handful run and work for the club, then the LUG will fail.
    2) Re-Organize the club. There could persons in the power postions that are simply there to fluffy a resume, or love being in charge and telling others what to do (Power Effect).
    3) Re-Organize the structure of the club. The design of the club might not be right for its members or the culture of the area.
    4) Go after companies to help out. Our LUG has been very successful with getting companies to send CDROMs, books, and other items that us college people can't afford.
    5) Find people out in the local population that need Linux help. This is a great way for people to feel good about helping non-profit groups with Linux. Word gets out how much of great people you are. Companies dig that.
    Damn, I have more, but I got to split to Stats!

  • Actually, I have been actively developing Ottoman PC for a while now. I believe it's a good idea especially in the US, where ottomans are among the most important "appliances" in life since a significant portion of the people here tend to spend their lives on couches and ottomans watching Jerry Springer and the like.

  • Well, of the stories currently on /.'s main page, about a third of them count as "local issues". The arrest of a hacker in the U.S.? Australian censorship? Piracy in Europe? All "local issues" if you don't happen to be living there. Did you bitch about those? No. Did your comment add anything to the discussion here? No.

    Just remember, what's "local" depends on where you live. Not everyone here's an American.

  • It was a convoluted story, but apparently in order to have our meetings in O'Reilly's facility, they have to pay extra insurance costs.

    At one point this came up and somebody at O'Reilly and Associates wanted to make NBLUG have their own insurance card, or something like that. After a little bit of hassle, Tim O'Reilly (the head honcho) came back from his trip (an overseas vacation or something like that) and said "No, we'll cover that", and it hasn't been an issue since.

    Nonetheless, it does mean that O'Reilly, in addition to letting us use their facilities and donating books and T-shirts to give away, has a (probably small) increase in their own insurance costs.

    I agree that it would be ridiculous for a LUG to have to pay for insurance. Can't squeeze blood from a turnip, anyways. (Though, since our LUG isn't incorporated in any fashion, I suppose if something did happen to somebody (broken limb, whatever) in a way that the LUG was considered responsible, the individual people would be personally responsible. Unless it happens at O'Reilly, in which case their insurance will cover it.

    (In other words, we don't need any kind of insurance)

  • It's only a matter of time before the Turks dump Linux and adopt the Ottoman PC.

  • was this supposed to be a joke? if so, it's in horribly bad taste.
  • So you think local issues should be banned?

    What about Star Wars then? When Star Wars was release ONLY in the US, that qualifies it as a LOCAL ISSUE and should also therefore - according to your logic at least - be banned from /.

    Bollocks say I. You're just another American who thinks the world stops at the sea and that non-Americans are just a figment of someone's sick imagination. You people need to get your heads out of your arses and smell the fresh air for a change - there is a world outside of the US and it's a damn sight more interesting than you people think it is.
  • Moronus Maxiumus.

    American.

    Your doing a pretty good job of being that stereotypical American pig headed idiot. It makes us Europeans simply beleive that we are infact right about Americans. (Who the hell brought up racism anyway... oh yeah, it was you, funny that, wonder why America has some many racism problems). Get a brain. There is a big difference between showing interest in an article, and actively campaigning against it's being published. _you_ shut up and crawl back under whatever rock you clibmed out from under.

    I am intereseted in international issues, particularly when it comes to LUG users being troden on. If we can't even sort things out in our own community, what chance do we have of having a positive effect on the M$ dominated world around us?

    Quit flamming, and do something worthwhile with your time.
  • Look, idiot: The color of your skin does not make you superior or inferior to any other human being living on this planet. That said, I feel obliged to tell you that Turkish people are white. Wait, your local Aryan Nation officer did not tell you that? Oh, how stupid of him. And if you will continue trying to use our language in the titles of your posts, please do not bastardize it..You got it all wrong. Go look it up in a dictionary; and while you're at it; look up the word "OROSPU COCUGU", too..because that's what you exactly are.

    It's incredible Rob hasn't moderated this crap down to where it belongs...


  • Look...
    For example, let's say that people agree that a Linux Conference should be held in Turkey (or anywhere).
    - Who's going to organize it?
    - If a few people, then who gets the profit of the event? How does it get distributed? If there is a loss, who's going to pay for it?
    - If a company, then will he get the profit? Or a part of it?

    - If a company wants to give money to a Linux cause in the country, where can he go? What guarantees that his money will be handled properly? How can this company "account" for the money given? (This is important for taxation.)

    Okay, these require more than a few people's group with a membership. But an association can do the above mentioned pretty well...
  • This joke is getting old now
    Sos yer mom.
  • You are an idiot. Any white person who thinks he is in any way superior to a non white person is completely retarded.

    I'm guessing this was supposed to be a joke though... which still makes you a complete idiot.

    BTW, I'm white. What fucking difference does it make what color you are?

  • Yeah ... Andreas is german .
  • HAHAHAHA!! Mukemmelsin usta .
  • (sarcasm on) Well, I nominate you for the gas chamber, just like the 6 million Jews and 6 million other people who were gassed by the Aryian Nation. (sarcasm off)

    You are despicable. Who are you to judge who is better or worse than you? To my mind you are the one who deserves to be eliminated, although I would never advocate eliminating anybody (other than people convicted of crimes and sentenced to death by a legitimate court).
  • Sorry, but something in me jumps when someone starts using phrases like "you people". I live in America. New York as a matter of fact. Now I say NY and people will probably jump and think of NYC. That's a typical reaction of people who don't live in this general area. Actually, I live ~100 miles north of the city and there's a lot of open areas and even a few farms around here. Now being that the state I live in is the approximate size of some European countries, it bothers me a little when people start talking about and including me in a grouping with people who could live more than 2000-3000 miles from me. Why not just call the Spanish people Russian, because after all they live the same distance as I do from some "Americans". I happened to think this was a worthwhile story. And I happen to be "just another American". And so do the Canadians to the north of me, who're probably a hell of a lot closer than some of the closed-minded individuals writing their opinion in this open forum for the discusion of issues. I've always liked to think of Slashdot as a sort of grand-scale, modern version of an 18th century Parisian coffee house, where mostly intellectual people talk about things that seem interesting. Don't jump on me and my country, and I won't jump on you and yours. Maybe instead we can all stick to the issue. Granted, this guy might be pretty stupid to think that things like this won't filter across to affect him somehow, and I've never even read any other posts by him in the past (that I remember anyway) and so maybe he's just trying to push that web site that he so prominently linked in, but irregardless, if you don't like him and his opinion then provide some positive criticism, don't just knock a whole bunch of people because it's easy to do.

    As for my advice to this Poag fellow, Linux is a worldwide thing. This may only directly affect about 90 people, but being that it is the LUG for the whole country, it's actions and it's policies could directly affect linux usage there for a number of years to come. Raising fees, and by derivative closing out some less well to do members is a bad idea. Maybe splitting membership levels up would make more sense. That's my
  • two cents... sorry, hit submit instead of preview. Ohh well.
    -Mike
  • I remember reading in a post that one of several repetetive posts that drove Rob crazy was 'Is this really news for nerds?' Thanks for contributing to Robs continual mental demise.

    I'm sorry. What I meant to say was 'please excuse me.'
    what came out of my mouth was 'Move or I'll kill you!'

  • Re:Uhhhh... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How would you like it if your local LUG imposed a yearly membership fee without even asking you, especially if the reasons they gave for the fee were offset by lots of people willing to devote their time for free, meaning that the fee wasnt needed?
    That appears to be what's happening to the main Turkish LUG according to the letter (OK, the english is bad, but he's Turkish). For me, this is 'News for Nerds', and IMO, its 'Stuff that matters', which makes it just fine for /.

    Nick
    nives@jives.demon.co.uk
    in 'doze for the first time in a long while, and hence no automagical /. login (as I keep on forgetting to get my password =P)

  • ..Heh, well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. For me, this one ranks right up there with the infamous "Here's my caseless computer" post from about a year ago. :) For me, I could care less that a Turkish Linux users group has its membership fees increased.. Big deal. This news (if you could even call it that) is about something that affects >90 people , as stated in the post..Most of which i'd even venture to say don't care either!

    Lemmie try and explain my point, here.. We've got a Linux user's group here in town with about 4 times as many people. I suppose if the decision was made to order our pizza for the next meeting from Pizza Hut instead of Dominos, that it deserves mention on Slashdot as well? I can see it now..TUCSON FREE UNIX GROUP SWITCHES TO PIZZA HUT. Gimmie a break.

    No offense to the Turkish guys, but this sort of thing doesn't really qualify as "News for Nerds" nor "Stuff That Matters"..Its a local issue.
    Bowie J. Poag
  • well..if you are not interested in what's going on in the Linux community, how about posting your comments on msn.com?
    Sorry, I don't like arrogance.
  • I'd have to agree. The words barrel and scrape spring to mind.
  • I agree, though it does belong in the Eeek! file.

    Maybe it's time to disenfranchise the 'official' Turkish LUG, and only accept input from Turkish individuals.

    This might be appropriate for Russia too, btw.

  • No offense, but I would think that at this point in time in Turkey, people could be doing a lot more useful things with their time than worrying about computer user groups. Like maybe giving some assistance to the approximately one percent of Turkey's population that was left homeless because of the quake?

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • I completely agree. The Orlando, FL LUG recently split into two parts, but you don't see me whining about it on /.

    Join the one you like, start a new one, or shut the eff up. Linux goes on.
  • The link to core News For Nerds material is actually very strong because of the Linux angle and because it affects nerds in Turkey directly.

    It's certainly much more relevant than a lot of other stuff that was deemed acceptable -- the Blair Witch film comes to mind.
  • Good to see people come together under mutual interest and get stuff done. We have HUMBUG, the Home Unix Machine Brisbane User Group and we all hang around and play with linux/bsd/etc and people donate their time to do little talks about everything from installing linux, getting wine to work, setting up firewalling, coding kernel modules.. etc. We've had a number of guys who left uni to go and get jobs who keep comming back and talking about coding drivers and securing networks. No-one would ever think about charging money at this place, or asking for donations for that matter, because no-one is in charge. Except possibly the time. HUMBUG takes place every month on the same day (3rd saturday of the month or something) and there's always a post to the local newsgroup informing everyone. The post is done by whoever remembers in that week. The participates look forward to HUMBUG so no-one feels the need to take charge and ensure that it is promoted.

  • First off, I help to run a small LUG, NBLUG [nblug.org] in my area. We don't have a strict membership roster, but there are about 25 people that show up for just about every event and twice that many show up when we have something more interesting going on. I'm, basically, second in charge.

    Back when we first started, there were several people that said "Let's start a LUG". Of those, two, myself and Dustin (the main guy in charge) actually put enough energy into it to make it happen. We found a place to meet, decided on some basic "ground rules" and announced a bunch of places that we were having a meeting. The first meeting's topic was what to do with the LUG. And, of course, to solicit volunteers. Quite frankly, getting people to volunteer to help out simply hasn't been a problem. If anything, we've gotten more offers to help than we need helpers.

    Money: LUGs really shouldn't need very much money. In order to get resources I'd suggest trying a few different things:

    1. Try to get local companies to "sponsor" your LUG to some degree. O'Reilly and Associates basically does this for us -- though all that consists of is providing a nice place for us to meet at, covering the extra insurance costs and giving us a lot of books for free (as well as some t-shirts).
    2. Charge for something *optional*. Perhaps some web space or an email address or dinner (BALUG [balug.org] does this)
    3. Outright solicit donations. We did this when we wanted to sign up for SSC's LUG program. We just set a basket out (cheating by seeding with a dollar and a few bits of change in first, of course) during an InstallFest with a big sign and a printout explaining what it was for. We got more money than we needed.

      People to run it: There could be all sorts of cultural differences between the left coast of the USA and Turkey, but out here finding people willing to help run a LUG was really not a problem at all. If somebody is finding that they can't donate the time to run it, then somebody who is willing to donate time (or multiple somebodies) should be found. It couldn't be that hard.

      We have found it a little harder to get people good at making pretty graphics, but we found a few, even if we are bribing them with a few of the books and t-shirts that O'Reilly gave us.

      It's important that somebody be able to simple show up at a LUG meeting whenever it's supposed to happen and get some kind of useful information pertaining to Linux and a chance to talk to other people that are using Linux. Remember, a LUG should really be more of a grassroots campaign to get Linux (or FreeBSD or some other free Unix) onto the computers of people and to help out people that already have Linux on their computers. These kinds of things help to further the Linux meme in good ways. Trying to make a LUG into an exclusive club so that you can all be "cool" is a bad idea. (Though, of course, allowing it to be a good place for people that already run Linux and know it well to "Network" and socialize is a Good Thing®

  • Damn you for beating me to that joke! It's not fair!! I just woke up!!


  • No offense, but I would think that at this point in time in Turkey, people could be doing a lot more useful things with their time than worrying about computer user groups

    I guess people, even outside of Turkey, could be doing more useful things for those people than posting messages to slashdot...though I'm sure you've done a great deal for them already, since you wouldn't be criticising others otherwise....

    As was pointed out elsewhere, this was submitted before the earthquake.

    dylan_-


    --

  • Raising fee from LUG members counts as news for me. Who else does it? Wrong policy in a poor country IMHO.

    Nevermind that these ~90 members and people related but uncounted are the national LUG for a nation of, er, some 65 Million people.

    Turkiye does count as an especially interesting area since

    - computing expenses are high compared to average income, free beer would help

    - the nation struggles with human rights problems, examples of success through openness and sharing might help change that in long run

    - communication channels such as Internet might help the oppressed get their word out (note both above)

    - it is an extremely M$ish area.

    For my own part I hope /. would post more free software movement news outside US.

    BTW: It was somewhat interesting to get a server in Istanbul back online after hard disk damage due to earthquake, by phone from Finland. It was /not/ that exciting to hear about the overall damages though, praying for friends' and their relatives' lives. Best wishes for the rebuilding efforts.

  • Wrong time to worry? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 01, 1999 @11:49PM (#1710078)
    I guess it is important to let you know that this posting predates the earthquake in Turkey since it was written on July 24th but locked in the Slashdot Queue for a while. And well, at the moment there are more important things than this in Turkey, but these things get developed as well so they need to be worked on as well. Joey
  • This is offtopic and I have not lived in the US for a while. But WHY would you need extra insurance?? Shri

  • The taxes that I've paid have helped send relief over there to help out, and I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of the charities that I support helped out there, too. Perhaps less of my hard earned money would need to be transfered to Turkey if we didn't have the Linux users there griping about a measly membership fee instead of helping out their countrymen.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • And I wouldn't be surprised if only 90 people ever watched Wing Commander.....

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