[uktug-committee-public] David Carlisle: UKTUG should be wound up

[Joseph Wright]

Forwarded at request of the author


-------- Forwarded Message --------
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2019 22:52:18 +0000
From: David Carlisle <d.p.carlisle at gmail.com>

I believe UKTUG should be wound up, and urge the committee to bring
forward a motion to the AGM to allow members to vote for dissolving
the group in accordance with its constitution.

UKTUG holds a not inconsiderable sum of money and has held it for many
years but appears structurally incapable of using it for the benefit
of the TeX community: engine developments, font developments, travel
support etc, have all gone unfunded.

More seriously it is totally disconnected from almost all TeX users.
TeX users have for decades gone to the internet (originally
comp.text.tex, these days more likely tex.stackexchange.com) for any
technical queries which leaves a national user group struggling to
find itself a purpose and struggling to get more than a hundred
members which is an insignificant fraction of the actual TeX
community.

If the group wound up, the committee would be charged with
distributing the funds. I am happy to leave it to their judgement but
giving some to DANTE to help cover CTAN costs and TUG to help cover
TugBoat costs would be two of my suggestions.

David Carlisle
Former UKTUG Committee member
LaTeX Project member, but speaking personally here.