Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!unix.cis.pitt.edu!pitt!willett!ForthNet
From: ForthNet@willett.pgh.pa.us (ForthNet articles from GEnie)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Feedback to the Forth Interest Group
Message-ID: <2581.UUL1.3#5129@willett.pgh.pa.us>
Date: 6 Apr 91 02:24:47 GMT
Organization: (n.) to be organized.  But that's not important right now.
Lines: 50

Category 1,  Topic 2
Message 142       Thu Apr 04, 1991
F.SERGEANT [Frank]           at 01:01 CST
 
 PK>After 5 years as a member of FIG and contributor to Forth
 PK>Dimensions, I have decided not to renew my membership.
 .
 Phil, congratulations on your new job.  I hope you get to use Forth.
 .
 I enjoyed reading your recent postings about FIG and think you have  some
excellent points.  (Though, if you'll rejoin when a complete  financial
statement is published in FD, how will you see it if you  aren't a member?) 
I've objected to various things connected with FIG,  including their losing
members, indifference (perhaps 'hostility' and  'insanity' would be better
terms) toward correcting chapter listings in  FD, and the poor (in my opinion,
with my limited knowledge of the  facts) handling of JAX.  There are two other
things I should perhaps  object to: lack of elections for a long time and lack
of publishing  financial statements.  I think those last are legitimate
complaints,  but they don't bother me like the first three.
 .
 At times I have considered dropping my membership in protest.  (As an  aside,
I think that should be of great interest to FIG management.  If  I, a
dedicated enthusiastic Forther, am annoyed, shouldn't it worry  them that many
others would also be annoyed?  Sure they can write me  off as being illogical,
so to hell with me.  But even so, shouldn't  they ask "gee, how many other
illogicals are we also annoying?"?)
 .
 Here are why I have not dropped my membership:  I enjoy FD, I love the  FIG
sponsored FORML conference at Asilomar, I like that FIG runs its  mail-order
bookstore, I like the FIG sponsored GEnie Forth Roundtable  upon which I'm
posting this note, I have some sympathy for the  difficulties of getting
anything done in a volunteer organization, and  inertia.  So far, these make
up for the irritations.
 .
 I don't want to lose *you* as a FIG member.  I hope the FIG management  will
*immediately* schedule that financial statement for the very next  issue, and
mail you an advance copy of the financial statement along  with a promise that
it will appear in the very next FD.
 .
 To FIG management: do you really want to lose a BYTE magazine author,  Stack
Machines book author, leader in Forth engine design, &  academician with ties
to industry (or is it industrialist with ties to  academia?)?  I hope you
won't dissapoint me on this.
 .
 -- Frank
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