[EdLUG] EdLUG Maintainership

Wed May 5 17:08:49 UTC 2021

 Hello everyone,

It's been a fun time maintaining the group! We've seen a fair few speakers
come through on many topics, including makers, admins, gamers and even
digital rights representatives; and before everybody was forced into
hermit-mode, had grown the group to a thriving in-person meetup.

I feel however that it is time to bring in some change, and our collective
emergence from our homes once more would be an ideal point to mark the
transition.

As of this summer, I intend to stand down from the activities of Lead
Maintainer for the Edinburgh Linux User Group. I would like to pass the
flame on to someone new who can continue to ensure the group remains
relevant to the times we are in.

I first got involved in 2014, being new to Linux and ramping up at a
voracious pace. I volunteered fairly soon to help take on the meetup and
speakers organisation, and barring the hiatus I took in 2016-2017, have
been at it for a while. The group itself started, if memory serves, in 1998
and has been through a few hands, and is one of the longest active LUGs in
existence. We have maintained presence and relevance so far through the
continued interest of our community, and the gradual increase in prevalence
of the Free Software and Open Source movements

I have not been alone on this though - I would like to thank, in simply
alpahbetical order: John, Kris, Shehraz, and Thomas, for their support over
the past years.

A special thanks to Jan and Paul, who held the helm in years before us.

The general public has adopted the model of "gratis" as brought to them by
app stores, Cloud and SaaS companies, but the message of "libre" remains
just as important, if not more-so today than before.

As such, there are plenty of directions this group could go: there are
probably opportunities in organising gaming groups on self-hosted FOSS
games; modding and hackathons; activism on a political level with Open
Rights Group and Electronic Frontier Foundation; education partnerships
with maker spaces, local schools, and university groups; providing an
advisory group/service for companies to pivot to Internal-Open-Source, on
the path to full Open Source.... options abound! Or it could remain a safe
haven group for those whose interests align - the choices are out there,
and the options listed are by no means the only ones.

Therefore, I do think that the next maintainers should not be held to the
style of any previous maintainer. EdLUG should evolve, and any new ones
will have good lee-way to transform it to thrive into this decade. The only
Constant is Change!

Thank You, for everybody's contribution and presence in keeping the EdLUG
community alive and well :D

--

Main responsibilities for the Lead Maintainer/Maintainer Group are:

* establishing events or activities for the group
* ensuring events take place according to schedule
* announcing the events on the list
* finding a new space for in-person meetups if desired
* maintaining and moderating the mailing list

As for services, and access and permissions, I'm happy to keep the existing
items going, including the online BBB meeting server, until these are
transitioned off to somewhere under the new maintainers' control.

Services currently hosted by me:

* Big Blue Button online meeting server

Services hosted elsewhere:

* mailing list (lugs.org.uk)
* gitlab-based website (gitlab.io)
* gitlab repos and wikis (gitlab.com)
* meetup.com Meetup group (Meetup.com)

Let us know at maintainer at edlug.org.uk if you are interested in joining the
maintainership team - we would be most happy to welcome you!

And, I will remain a part of the group, so this is not farewell ;-)

All the bestest to all!

Tai

===
Tai Kedzierski

EdLUG Maintainer: https://edlug.gitlab.io/

Edinburgh Language Meetup Organiser
https://www.meetup.com/Edinburgh-Language-Exchange-Meetup-Group/

*Open Source Free Software is a matter of liberty, not price.*
https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
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