[sf-lug] Ubuntu release ("back on-list" sub thread)

[Rick Moen]

Oh, by the way:

Quoting Kristian Erik Hermansen (kristian.hermansen at gmail.com):

> Oh, how I hope this list doesn't go the way of SVLUG :-) 

SVLUG's problem during 2007 was its aggressively incompetent and
alcohol-besotted then-president, who was rapidly driving it into the
ground, which its small core of active volunteers fully realised but its
collection of about a thousand mailing list members from all around the
world -- almost all of whom didn't give a damn about SVLUG as an
organisation, and only valued it as a mailing list -- were utterly
clueless about, (loudly) resented hearing about the problem, and were
inclined to piss on any and all volunteers who were aspiring to fix it.

(That effectively included itinerant pundit Christian Einfeldt, whose
contribution basically amounted to issuing random comments of no
conceivable use to anyone, such as directly addressing the core
volunteers at one crucial moment to advise them that the group is
"ungovernable" -- based on his absolutely complete lack of understanding
of the situation.  Yeah, thanks, Christian:  You're a really big help.)

Oddly enough, all of that nonsense ceased pretty much the moment the
then-president (finally) resigned.

(A one-time volunteer employed by Google, Inc., who is a personal friend
of the drunken ex-president, also makes occasional efforts to sabotage
SVLUG's operations out of sheer spite, but hasn't yet managed it.)

My own idea of being helpful resided in things like personally renewing
SVLUG's Internet domain at my own expense, at the last minute in
mid-2007, after its then-president willfully ignored my frequent private
warnings for several months that it was approaching expiration -- which
action I considered a bit more constructive than kicking the group's
volunteers with hit-and-run namecalling and then walking away.