Special Interest Groups

For some years now, Microsoft Windows has been the dominant desktop operating system in the world. Other operating systems have had to eke out market niches, usually comprising less than 10% of the total computing market. This means that users are under tremendous pressure to "use what everybody else is using." Software for less common operating systems is harder to find and can be more expensive, and, unless you are in an organisation which is bucking the trend, you can't turn to the person sitting at the next desk for help when you have questions.

This situation is troublesome in several ways. For one thing, the market is distorted: one company is in a near-monopoly situation, where they can charge what they like for sub-par software, because most users are too afraid to use anything else, and just suffer through the high prices and bugs. For another, we are close to becoming a "technological monoculture." Because everybody uses the same software, everybody has nearly identical systems in several important respects, right down to having the same security weaknesses. Therefore, when a new security loophole is discovered and exploited by hackers or virus writers, virtually everybody is susceptible. As the potato blight famine in Ireland during the 19^th century should have taught us, monocultures are prone to catastrophic failure when some unforeseen weakness shows up, because everybody is counting upon the same thing, and that same thing can fail for everybody at once.

Therefore, in an attempt to foster technological diversity, CAMsoc is gathering together resources to assist users who are using non-dominant operating systems. You can find some of these resources in the Church Related Software Index, but web sites, mailing lists, and other non-software links are gathered here in these pages for Spcial Interest Groups (SIGs). As enough users gather into each SIG to reach the 25 user minimum threshold to launch a mailing list on Associate.com, there will be a mailing list and associated forum launched for that SIG. Therefore, over time, each SIG should accumulate more knowledge and resources, and become that much more useful to the users of that particular operating system. If you want to join a SIG, please contact me and let me know which SIG you want to join. I will collect E-mail addresses until each SIG reaches the 25 user threshold, and then create the mailing list on Associate.com.

SIGs:

• AmiSIG: Resources for the Amiga, from the original version marketed by Commodore, through the variants sold by various subsequent owners, to the currently shipping models.
• AtariSIG: Resources for the Atari ST, TT, and Falcon computer systems.
• SIGix: Resources for Linux, UNIX, FreeBSD, and other UNIX-descended operating systems.
• MacSIG: Resources for the Apple Macintosh (and compatibles), either in "Classic" (MacOS 9 and earlier) or OS/X.
• WarpSIG: Resources for IBM's OS/2 operating system.

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