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Article by David Mandel <dmandel AT pdxlinux DOT org>, July 2002.

Sean Utt founds PLUG in 1994

PLUG was founded in Spring of 1994 by Sean Utt. During those days the group met on the first Saturday of the month at Round Table Pizza at 6250 South East Foster Road. The meetings were very informal and generally attended by about a dozen people. The group had a mailing list, hosted by aseTT.com with about 20 members.

Most of the early members worked on Unix systems at their day jobs, and used Linux on their home computers at night. During the day they worked at companies like ADP Systems, Infotec Development, Portland State University, and the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon. At night they used Linux. Many of them were using it to start or run side businesses.

Sean was one of the people using Linux to start a business. In late 1994 he founded Autobahn Information Systems. Today Autobahn Information Systems has changed it's name to Strateja and does consulting work, but this company was originally started as a Linux based ISP using the NorthWest.com domain name. Autobahn Information Systems was successful and took more and more of Sean's time. By the end of the year, he needed to spend less time on PLUG and wanted to turn it over to someone else.

David Mandel takes over in 1995

Two early PLUG members, Dan Haskell and Mark Blum, asked me to take Sean's role with PLUG. I hadn't been involved with PLUG, but I was using Linux and had been doing OpenSource stuff for years; so I accepted the position. That was January 1995.

At that point, PLUG made a number of changes:

We moved the monthly meetings to the first Thursday of the month.
We moved the monthly meetings to Portland State University. We were able to do this because of the help we got from PSU staff, especially Mike Rudnick, Andy Fraser, and Dennis Gilbert.
We started having formal presentations at PLUG meetings.
Since we couldn't have beer at our meetings anymore, we instituted the post meeting meetings. For the first couple years, these were held at the Market Street McMenamin's After outgrowing McMenamin's, we moved to The Lucky Labrador.
We moved our mailing list to Autobahn Information Systems. Thus, the list became plug@NorthWest.com. Sean also set up the group's first web site, http://plug.NorthWest.com.

Membership continues to grow in 1996-97

Membership continued to grow as interest in Linux and Open Source Software grew. Our mailing list soon reached 150 members. Originally, we used a seminar room (PCAT-103) at Portland State University, but we quickly outgrew it and the university had to move us around. In October of 1996 we started meeting in room 160 of the PSU Millar Library (934 SW Harrison). This had desks for 40 people and standing space for 30 more, and gave us a regular meeting location for the next couple years.

We were growing in other ways as well:

In late 1995, Richard Rutledge, Dan Haskell, and others organized PLUG's monthly hands-on clinics. These were held on the third Saturday of the month at:

Archdiocesan Pastoral Center
2838 E. Burnside Street
Portland, OR 97214

By October 1997, Paul Nelson, Eric Harrison, and others became involved with the clinics, and they were moved to

Riverdale School
11733 SW Breyman Ave.
Portland, Oregon 97219
Other Linux groups were being formed in Oregon.
- John Sechrest of Peak Inc. and David Mandel founded the Mid-Willamette Linux Users Group in 1996. This was with the help of Luke Miller who actually coordinated the group for the first couple years. Peak provided the group with a mailing list, lug AT peak DOT org and web space at http://plug.peak.org/ for the group's web site.
- The Eugene Linux Group was founded.
- Ed Sawicki founded Biznix.
- Please beware, this isn't a complete list of Linux or Open Source groups in Oregon. It isn't even a complete list of the ones founded in 1996-97.
We had a number of special events and presentations by out-of-town speakers. These included:
- A presentation in May 1996 on CuSeeMe, by Rob Wehrli and Tony DeBone from Hawaii. They came to give a presentation which featured a live teleconference between PLUG and LUGs in Hawaii and Israel.
- A presentation in May 1997, "Linux as a Human Endevor" by Phil Hughes who is Publisher of the Linux Journal.

PLUG Matures in 1998-99

The computer industry started taking Linux seriously by 1998. Ingres, Informix, Oracle, DB2, and Sybase were all ported to Linux during the year. Intel also started taking Linux seriously. PLUG also continued to grow and became more visible. At times, the PLUG mailing list had over 500 subscribers. Terry Griffin started writing a regular column on Linux for Computer Bits.

PLUG activities and events included:

PLUG has always been more of an Open Source group than a Linux group with members using various BSDs and proprietary Unix OSs as well as Linux. In September 1998, PLUG changed it's name to reflect this reality. Thus, PLUG's official name was changed from the Portland Linux Users Group to the Portland Linux/Unix Group. At the time this discussion took place, it was agreed that both names would remain acceptable, and that usage pattern continues to this very day. For example, see Google.
In November of 1998 we were fortunate to have a presentation by Bob Young, cofounder and CEO of Red Hat Software, and Scott McNeil, who was president of SuSE-America. This was actually a two meetings. Bob and Scott were at Intel in the afternoon, and met with PLUG in the evening. As I recall, each meeting had about 250 people in attendance. Since few people were at both meetings, so the total audience was quite large.
Linux NorthWest didn't happen in 1998 or 1999 or 2000 or ... PLUG members, including Piet van Weel, Zot O'Connor, Ed Sawicki, Sheri Liddell, David Mandel, and others tried to put together a regional Linux conference similar to the Atlanta Linux Showcase. This was about the same time major conference companies started doing Linux World and Linux sections at Comdex and so on. We decided to cancel Linux Northwest due to the competition and lack of funding, but made many contacts and raised PLUG's visibility; and we attended and presented at a number of local computer conferences such as ITEC-Portland.
Plug for Education was founded by Paul Nelson, who had been using Linux very successfully at Riverdale school where he teaches. Along with other PLUG members, Paul started sharing these techniques with other schools by giving workshops and clinics as well as putting up web sites and mailing lists.
This work is widely recognized. Paul and Eric Harrison, another Plug for Education person, often speak at both education and Linux conferences. Paul has even testified before the US Senate on the role of Open Source software in education.
LinuxFund.org is founded in Oregon by Benjamin Cox. LinuxFund gives grants to worthy Open Source projects. It's funding comes from a variety of sources including a "Penguin Master Card" issued in cooperation with MBNA.
Many companies started using Linux internally during this period, and a few promoted Linux to their customers or even started building Linux products. In Portland, this included companies like:
- Pacific Solutions Computer Store
- Avalon Technology Group
- Axian Consultants
- White Knight Hackers
- Wirex
- Micro Sharp Technology
- Tripwire
- Webtrends
- ALC Press
- Computer Bits
- Powell's City of Books
- . . . and many independent consultants

Personal note

On a personal note, I left Infotec Development (and the BLM) in early 1999 to work with emerging Open Source companies. Since leaving Infotec, I've worked with a number of companies including Avalon Technology Group and Micro Sharp Technology.

PLUG Continues to grow in 2000-2001

By 2000, Large computer companies were all taking Linux very seriously. Intel was funding and promoting a lot of Open Source work, and much of this work was being done locally. Moreover, Intel, IBM, HP, Red Hat Software, SuSE, and others formed the Open Source Development Lab. Open Source developers use OSDL remotely from all over the world, but the lab is physically located in Beaverton, Oregon. IBM also formed their own Open Source development lab which they located in Beaverton as well. All of this made Oregon a hot bed for Open Source work and brought new members into the local Open Source community.

The community expanded in a number of ways:

PLUG's Advanced Topics Meetings, begun by Zot O'Connor started organizing Advanced Topics meeting for the third Wednesday of each month. These meetings are designed to be very interactive with lots of discussion. They often focus on topics which are too specialized or advanced for PLUG's general meetings.
A New PLUG web site and expanded mailing lists, rebuilt in 1999-2000 thanks in large part to Daniel Hedlund and Neil Anuskiewicz. Indeed, I was asked to write this history for the new pages.
PLUG's major means of communication has always been it's mailing lists, which we have generally managed with the help of majordomo. This system has grown along with PLUG. Finally in 2001, Karl Hegbloom moved PLUG's eMail discussion lists to a server running Mailman on Debian GNU/Linux. PLUG maintains several mailing lists on this server.
Oso Smyrf started a non-profit community technology center called FreeGeek.org, which is at 1731 SE 10th in Portland. This center operates five days a week and provides the community with computer recycling and a variety of educational and volunteer opportunities.
Linux-at-Night, offered by Kenneth Stephens and David Mandel offered an inexpensive evening help desk for a while during 1999, but discontinued this after FreeGeek got going.
Oregon has always had a number of Open Source groups such as Portland Area System Administrators Group (PASA) and CRIME; but the number of groups grew significantly in 2000 and 2001. One of the new groups is the Personal Telco Project started by Adam Shand and a number of other PLUGGERS. Another group is BLUE - Beginning Linux User's Education Group started by T.C. Holmes. Still another is The Clark Linux Users Group (CLUG) started by Marvin Kosmal.

Personal note

During 1999 and 2000, I helped Micro Sharp launch the Netule Project (See: Netule.com). This was originally a project to build thin server devices based on a combination of Open Source and proprietary software, but by the end of 2001, we were reorganizing the project as Netule.org. Netule.org will be a purely Open Source project aimed at building a family of special purpose Linux distributions.

Thanks to Everyone who contributes to PLUG

I'm sure I missed many people who have contributed to PLUG over the years. Indeed, I didn't even try to list our meeting speakers or our web developers or people who have been active on our mailings lists. If anyone feels slighted or feels I have missed someone or some event that really should be included, contact me at dmandel AT pdxLinux DOT org, and I will correct matters in the next update.

David Mandel