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Written by Site Administrator
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Monday, 10 October 2005 |
Introduction
The Linux Users Group of Miami (LUG of Miami) was formed of
participants in the previous LUG known as MiaLUG. After the departure
of MiaLUG's driving personality, loss of control over the domain name
(mialug.org), losing the website to a failed hosting company and
a preciptious decline in the number of people attending the meeting the
LUG was near death. With MiaLUG failing, Jordon Steele offered to host
a meeting of participants commited to reviving the LUG. Brett
Carrington, Felipe Vidal, Mark Warren, Erik Markum, Ariel
Batista, and Jeff Klagg participated over several Sunday meetings and
email exchanges adding their input and support to the creation of
the new organization. Two major decisions came of these meetings.
It was decided the name MiaLUG could not be used as the domains
related to it were out of our control and the name had lost its
following due to two months of website downtime. The other major
decision was to incorporate to make the organization tangible and with
a set of by-laws that govern its operation give it survivability beyond
any one leader's personality.
The incorporated entity is known as the 'Miami-Dade Open Source Group,
Inc.', a Florida non-profit corporation d/b/a Linux Users Group of
Miami. It's mission is to support and promote the use and
application of open source operating systems and software in the
Miami-Dade county area. A set of initial bylaws were created to
govern its operation. The domains lugmiami.org/net/com were
registered and a member of the group donated space on his webserver for
the official lugmiami.org website. The Sunday meetings continued
and slowly but surely it started to come together. First a basic
website (based on Joomla) then a couple of posts on the forum and a few
articles posted by contributors and a new IRC channel #lugmiami.
Now the hard part begins, attracting interested people to participate
at meetings and activities, in the forums and IRC channel, and to
spread the work out into the public. That is where you come in.
Modus Operandi
LUG of Miami exists to bring together people in South Florida interested in the Linux operating system and open source software
in general. The
organizations' decisions are informed by the following pricnciples.
These principles must be considered and met in all decisions and
bylaws implemented by the organization, its directors and members.
- The organization's general meetings will always be available to the public free of cost.
- No discrimination against persons or groups.
- No discrimination against fields of endeavor. All interests
may participate whether for business, personal, non-profit purposes.
- Access to the community on the LUG's website shall always remain free of cost.
- All organizational decisions will be made in the 'clear light of day'.
- The
organization shall promote the use of free and open source software and
principles in all that it does. It will make every effort to apply
free and open source software technologies to further its aims.
The organization is currently governed a small group of founders with
the aim to arrive at a formal organizational governing constitution
that expands the circle of participation and provides for growth. You
can
see our dialogue on the planning for LUG of Miami via the Mailman list
archive located here - lugmiami-core.
If you have any questions about what we are doin please feel free to
contact the siteadmin -at- lugmiami.org or post to the forums under the
'The Group' section.
"Purpose and principle, clearly understoood
and articulated, and commonly shared, are the genetic code of any
healthy organization. To the degree that you hold purpose and principles
in common among you, you can dispense with command and control.
People will know how to behave in accordance with them, and they'll
do it in thousands of unimaginable, creative ways. The organization
will become a vital, living set of beliefs."
- Dee Hock
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About the LUG 
