[sllug-members]: A sign of the end times?

[Joseph Hall]

On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Michael Heath
<mike.thomas.heath at gmail.com> wrote:
> Um, am I missing something?

I think so. I'll explain in a moment.

>  Its some random (although well known) nutcase running for office. This
>  happens every day - there are dozens of these types officially
>  registering to run in the Presidential election for example.

It seems to me that every person that runs for office does so for a
reason. They want something to change. I don't think they necessarily
want to be the person making the change, but they can see that nobody
else seems to be making the change or changes that they feel are
important.

>  There are lots of people already running against him. Starting some
>  kinds of grass roots effort to nominate  random SLLUG member won't
>  accomplish anything, and will waste a lot of peoples money.

The fact that Shaun, or any other SLLUG/PLUG/OALUG/etc member would
run for office tells me something. It doesn't tell me that they're
going to do a good job, but it tells me that they share some of my
same ideals. Maybe not all of them, but at least there is some common
ground between us: open source.

When somebody joins or subscribes to a group or list like this, it's
generally because they are interested in *nix and want to be connected
with others who are. They're joining a community. And sometimes that
community does big things.

Rep Brad Daw has received a lot of feedback from the LUGs over his
proposed wireless bill, because somebody let our community knows about
it. While I certainly don't think the bill will solve any problems, I
like what it was intended to solve. Rep Daw wants to protect children.
A noble goal, but poorly executed. I would like to think that many
members of our local LUGs have better ways to do what Daw wanted to
do. The difference is, Daw is actively trying to do it. It's just too
bad he doesn't know how. It's also too bad that instead of helping him
find out how, various members of the local LUGs spent their energy
telling him how awful it, and he, were.

>  Irish and Corroon are far more likely to get elected than he is, and
>  are certainly more likely to get elected than some random SLLUG
>  member.

That's not really the point, is it? When Pete Ashdown ran for office,
it was unlikely he would be elected. The fact that he got as many
votes as he did was nothing short of a miracle. He didn't care. He
wanted to make changes, and to protect us from bad changes being made.
He brought to light a lot of issues that we, as open source
enthusiasts, were already aware of, but that most people don't think
about. In that respect, his campaign was not a failure.

Maybe some random LUGger won't get elected. I don't know a whole lot
of geeks that really have the money to manage a campaign on any level.
The point is, somebody cared enough to consider running. I agree that
Dell is a nutcase, but at least Shaun was interested in standing up to
him. How about you?

-- 
Joseph
http://blog.josephhall.com/