Hi,
Sorry for the late reply, i was not available to read my mails and answer them over the week.
Well, I think I sparked off an unnecessary argument over "Commercialisation". Am with Trover. Generally LUGs are supposed be there, so that we can SHARE knowldge.
What I meant by Commercial interests in some LUGs is that, some of them are promoted and funded/aided by commercial organizations, with an optional internal MOTO. This is what I meant by "commercial LUG", and not charging for help mails.. Hey come on... even M$ gives FREE help over newsgroups...!!!!! (surprising, but it does give, SOMETIMES). Of course, if any one wants to go in person and help them, or have their own interests, in answering a question, they can do it in a commercial way.....
Cheers Natarajan
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----- Original Message ----- From: "Natarajan V" natarajv@rediffmail.com To: linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2002 10:54 AM Subject: [ILUG-BOM] Re: Commercial ILUG...
Hey come on... even M$ gives FREE help over newsgroups...!!!!! (surprising, but it does give, SOMETIMES).
You will be suprised to note how much of help M$ gives to developers and users. There are user groups in most cities, they have TechNet seminars (free) to cover technical topics and MSDN seminars (again free) for covering topics of interest of developers. In addition, they have special chat sessions where you can ask questions on specified topics (topics change each time) which are asnwered by experts on that topic. In addition, now they have helped the VB Developer community to set up a "User Group" where people meet every month to discuss problems they have faced, how it can be solved, etc. M$ provides only meeting place in the last case but in others sessions (above), they do spend massive quantum of money.
Actually, there is a community group attitude among users of MS products, which is pretty close to what we have in ILUG. Perhaps mutual help and assistance (as distinct from commercial motives) is universal.
Regards Saswata
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Natarajan V -
Saswata Banerjee & Associates