I’ve never seen this being discussed, at least publicly, but I think it’s an important discussion to have. It’s the beginning of the academic year and I assume most GLUGs are trying to restart themselves now. Now would be a good time to have this discussion.

What are the goals of a GLUG?

I think the primary stakeholders/beneficiaries are -

1. The free software ideology and community at large
2. FSMK
3. The members of the GLUG

What, in your opinion, should be the benefits to each of these? Please be as specific as possible.

1. The purpose of a GLUG is to equip students with FOSS and make them understand how FOSS is developed and why is it done so. While doing that - how one can contribute back to FOSS.
2. Get them adapted to “critical thinking”. Here I want to be specific that, colleges do not appreciate their students being activists. The GLUG session’s should be apolitical. The students interested maybe informed about what FSMK does regarding this and they can carry out those discussions either here in discuss or in FSMK office.

I am sure I missed out one or two more points… but pretty sure someone will bring it up.

Thanks.

Free culture based community can have a perspective for the purpose of GLUG.
With deliberation, the community can reach even different perspectives and dimensions.

1. We have to start thinking about how a student looks at GLUG ?
2. GLUG’s mission must not implicitly mention anything related with Employment.
3. Philosophy & Political view has to be implicit and must not be explicit & there is no need to enforce them. New comers may come with their cups filled with ignorance. Letting the ships of Philosophy or politics on it will lead then to enhance their confusion and craziness. 🚢 🏊
4. GLUG has to embrace Diversity; Community Wisdom Assessment, Personal & Collective Knowledge Management strategies. (Use platforms like crabgrass folks - understand before using it 👿)
5. As @shashankmc mentioned, critical thinking is one of the pillars of Education & such thing can come only with deliberation, discussion, doing, applying, experimenting, exploring attitudes of the community where the students or any new comers inflowed into the GLUG.
6. Remember : Courage, Confidence, & Critical thinking are inseperable in an education model. 🎯
7. Activities are equally important to keepup the momentum of the GLUG. Frequent meetups (not virtual IRC, XMPP, or anyother shitty IM chats) have to be strategized democratically by the GLUG itself.
8. Don’t reduce GLUG to Come - Share - Go platform, instead Learn - Think - Do - Share - Apply platform. 🌱
9. Try to add life into any of the projects GLUG is involved with. Many initial projects do get shy, then slug, then die, then undertaken in github or gitlab itself. It happens because people start projects but have failed to blow life into it. It doesn’t mean that GLUG must not create adhoc projects for trying out and learning. If community is serious about the project, then blowing life into it is an art.
10. Make it Fun. Why so serious ?? 🃏

Free software is political. An apolitical free software movement cannot exist. That said, I understand that there are problems with many colleges (especially private colleges) and the draconian rules that they enforce. It is definitely wise to be cautious. But, we must find a way to subvert them. No institution that suppresses the freedom of man should get by unchallenged.

I don’t disagree at all.

Yes, that is why I mentioned “the interested students maybe informed” and “they can carry out those discussions either here in discuss or in FSMK office”

According to me GLUG should be conducting various activities that promote and propagate primarily free software philosophy and tools. In FSMK’s context GLUGs are where we connect with mass. You approach them and talk about your idea i.e “Free Software”. Generate new activists like you, who can generate new set of activists technically and politically strong. In other terms generate hactivists.

To be specific on your queries in broader perspective society should benefit out of it. The society where we all belong to, non English speaking people belongs to , farmers and workers belong to , people with different identities belongs to etc. Community in general, FSMK and every GLUG member should be contributing towards that. If you are talking about direct or indirect monitory benefits ; GLUG is not for that.

I am in full agreement with what others pointed out. I don’t want to repeat those.

A GLUG is the organic link between FSMK and a college. Without the GLUG, FSMK will not be able to gauge or engage with the student community.

An active GLUG brings about self-sustainability. No activity can be driven from outside the institution. Interest and motivation has to be generated from within the GLUG so that the hosting institution benefits. FSMK can only provide resources from outside. However, if self-sustainability cannot be generated then resources will have to be used for priority GLUGs

A GLUG is where ideas are generated. While FSMK promotes certain thought processes, it is within the GLUG where they are debated, critiqued, burnt until it takes on a whole new form and built into something that is useful to society.

A GLUG is not neutral. A GLUG takes sides. It is argumentative not simply for the sake of argument but because it is in a state of meaningful learning. It is a mini-university.

A GLUG creates leaders who then create more leaders. A GLUG is not simply a hacking club. It is more. It is designed to unleash the potential within a member so that we may fruitfully contribute to a better society in whatever way we can.

I think GLUG is a very shitty name for something that is not LINUX centric. The first thing that comes to the mind when someone hears GNU Linux Users Group is LINUX… and that is not what a GLUG is all about. A GLUG is more than just a bunch of humans using GNU LINUX (this is what the name suggests).

Clearly we have a PR problem here!!

I think we should stop using the term GLUG and use something that is more Free-Software philosophy centric and does a betterj ob at describing the true meaning of the thing we now call GLUGs !!!

I agree with this. This is why BMSIT GLUG was renamed to The Free Software Club. To elaborate on what made us change the name,

1. The term GNU/Linux Users Group makes the club seem very GNU/Linux-focused. Although that’s the operating system we tend to use and recommend, there is no reason to use a single OS’s name when the club’s scope is much wider.

2. Using GLUG as the name implies that GNU/Linux is so esoteric that there need to be dedicated groups for its users. This goes against the idea of GNU/Linux for the masses. We shouldn’t need GNU/Linux Users Groups any more than Windows users need Windows Users Groups, for instance.

Having said that, the terms LUG and GLUG have historical significance and are well known. This is why we still retain GLUG as an alternative name for the club.

Are there other reasons to use “GLUG”? Perhaps someone could shine some light on the historical perspective.

Perhaps something with the words “free culture” or “digital commons” in it. Maybe “FCC = Free Culture Community” or “DCC = Digital Commons Collective” … 😛

@kishangupta Would be nice if you can summarise the discussion into points under categories. Thanks

Similar efforts are already underway by some members of the EC. That should give us a much better consolidated document than any I could make using this post alone.

Is there a draft document already out for public consumption?

Here is a read-only version of the latest draft of our GLUG manifesto.

https://etherpad.fsmk.org/p/r.581321628e9cdb08a251754383748fd0

Can we put this on the website? More visibility, for one thing. Easy to share as well.

The source of fsmk website is here, you may report issue(s) here.

‘GLUG’ is an integration of technicality and hacktivism. It is a gathering of like minded people, where people speak about Freedom Software Philosophy and create awareness about the ‘usage’ of Freedom Software.
It should bring people together who believes in Free Software Movement, freedom includes all the people, no matter if one knows the technology or not! GNU/Linux Users Group should not be confined for teaching tech(as most of the people think), it should be an open room for free ideas, free speech and free thoughts. It should uplift the efforts and ideology of Freedom Software Foundation, and should contribute back to FOSS community. I don’t believe in collecting a large mass of people could form a community, GLUG needs like birds with same feather, people with concern and commitment. Like someone said, “Placing the bullet at the right person, at the right time can change the world! Holocaust never did any good to the world.😉” Mass maybe large or small, but GLUG should focus on its work rather than collecting masses. Speaking about technology, personally I feel everyone in the GLUG, especially who are completely into technology should ‘code daily and learn daily’, so that they can ‘teach daily’ :).
Meanwhile, community building is the one important thing that every GLUG should do. Community never comes handy, I would say that it is imperative to be technically strong to build a strong community in the college level. Contribution is another thing which is as important as community building, contributing to FOSS in one or the other way should be the goal of every individual in GLUG. This is my own perspective about the purpose of GLUG, enlighten me if I’ve missed out major ones. Thank you.