[ale] LOPSA - League of Professional System Administrators.

[Jeff Lightner]

AUUG is loosely affiliated with SAGE.  However it has no formal
membership or dues required.   It actually has its own list but for some
reason that has never had much traffic (perhaps due to the different
UNIX variants having lists of their own such as ITRC and Dutchworks for
HP-UX).

IMHO It isn't that there is a Sysadmin list void.  It is that there is
an enterprise Linux list void.  The issue seems to be the evolving
nature of Linux.  For a long time it was not used for enterprise
purposes (and even desktop use was typically limited in organizations to
UNIX admins and other techno-geeks and outside organizations by
hobbyists and those same techno-geeks.  Now it's starting to fill
business niches in enterprises so more and more "professional" admins
are using it in business.  They'd like to have a place to pose questions
regarding their enterprise use yet not wade through the hobbyists/newbie
posts.  

As I've said before - I'm a professional admin and haven't really been
bothered by such posts.  I rather enjoy them especially when I can
provide answers.  What I do find a dearth of however is enterprise
posts.  I've noted that although I've responded to many posts on
LinuxQuestions and even a few here I've never really gotten responses to
posts I've made that regarded enterprise usage.  This isn't to say I
haven't learned things from both sources but rather than specific
questions involving complex setups that probably have been encountered
by other admins go unanswered perhaps because they stay away from
general Linux lists.

What's worse is that even the hardware vendors such as Dell that say
they "support Linux" don't really have good support for Linux.   It
often leaves me with either spending lots of time figuring out a
solution or abandoning the idea of obtaining one.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Alex
To: ale at ale.org
LeDonne
Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 2:11 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: [ale] LOPSA - League of Professional System Administrators.

For professional sysadmins' consideration:

I recently learned of the existence of LOPSA (http://lopsa.org/) - the
League of Professional System Administrators. It's apparently the
non-Usenix successor to SAGE. It's $50/yr to join, but I would hope
most businesses would cover that cost for their sysadmins.

I don't think there's an Atlanta LOPSA chapter yet, nor can I find a
reference to an Atlanta SAGE chapter, but my understanding of the
recent ALE mailing list discussions is that such a local
chapter/organization would fill a void in the community. Between ALE
list members and recently surveyed non-list members at meetings of
multiple organizations, I expect that critical mass (3 members
provisionally, 12 ongoing) for a local chapter could easily be
achieved.

Tangentially, if at least two LOPSA members call themselves ALE
members, ALE could become a LOPSA "Affiliate" - not a part of LOPSA,
but a recognized sibling organization.

Best wishes to professional sysadmins and to linux dabblers, newbies,
home users, and enthusiasts alike,

Alex
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