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<title>Introduction to The Connecticut Free Unix Group</title>
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&quot;Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>&quot;
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An introduction to The Connecticut Free Unix Group
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<h4 align="center">by Lou Rinaldi
<a href="mailto:lou@cfug.org">lou@cfug.org</a>, CFUG Co-Founder
</h4><p><hr><p>
October of 1996 was when Nate Smith and I first began discussing the creation
of a local-area unix users' group here in Connecticut, something we felt the area
was desperately in need of. We bantered around some initial ideas; some great,
some not so great. Finally we decided on creating a group whose focus was on
the "free unix" community. CFUG, The Connecticut Free Unix Group, was born
in November of 1996. Both of us had very busy schedules, so all of the time we
were going to invest in this project came directly from our ever-decreasing
periods of leisure activity. We agreed upon three major goals for CFUG: The
first was the wide distribution and implementation of free, unix-like operating
systems and software. The second was educating the public about important
developments in the evolution of free operating systems. Finally, we strove to
provide an open, public forum for debate and discussion about issues related to
these topics. After writing to several major vendors and asking for donations of
their surplus stock and/or older software releases, the packages began rolling in.
(After all, we wanted to create some sort of incentive for people to come to the
first meeting)! We then got started doing some heavy advertising on the
newsgroups, in local computer stores and also on local college campuses.
Finally, after securing an honored guest speaker for our first meeting, (Lar
Kaufman, co-author of the seminal reference book "Running Linux"), we were
ready to set a date. December 9th, 1996 marked the first official CFUG
gathering, which took place at a local public library. We've held meetings on
the second Monday of each month ever since, and are now widely recognized as
Connecticut's only organization dedicated to the entire free unix community.
We've since lost Nate Smith to the lucrative wiles of Silicon Valley, but we
continue to carry on with our original goals. We have close relations with
companies such as Caldera Inc., InfoMagic Inc., and Red Hat Software, as well
as such non-commercial entities as The FreeBSD Project, Software In The
Public Interest (producers of Debian GNU/Linux), The OpenBSD Project and
The Free Software Foundation. We were also featured on the front page of
the Meriden Record-Journal, a major local newspaper, on May 26th of this
year. Our future plans include more guest speakers, as well as trips to
events of pertinence throughout New England.
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For more information, please check our website -
<a href="http://www.cfug.org">http://www.cfug.org</a>
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There is a one-way mailing list for announcements concerning CFUG.
You can sign up by emailing
<a href="mailto:cfug-announce-request@cfug.org">
cfug-announce-request@cfug.org</a> with
"subscribe" as the first line of the message body (without the quotes).
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<center><H5>Copyright &copy; 1997, Lou Rinaldi<BR>
Published in Issue 22 of the Linux Gazette, October 1997</H5></center>
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