\centerline{\bf TUG worldwide}
\smallskip
\noindent
Although TUG has embraced its international role, it has
perhaps done so a little late. It is difficult to say why
that has happened. There is clearly a chicken and egg
problem here. TUG, with a massively US membership was
hardly likely to spend lots of effort on European (or
Asian, or Australian, etc) activities when these groups
represent a very small part of the membership. Equally,
these other members (or potential members) can hardly
have felt that TUG membership was particularly valuable
when so much attention was focussed on the US activities.

The adoption of the European and Japanese representatives
as TUG Vice-Presidents is one useful step, although none
of the `new' Vice-Presidents have received any guidelines
specifying how their duties are in any way different from
an ordinary board member of TUG. They are certainly not
of the same status as the TUG Vice President (no
hyphen!).  

The creation of a TUG `shop' at Aston
University as a way of speeding up and simplifying
processing of orders for TUG materials may also be a
useful step, although it is unclear just how this will
operate.\looseness-1

Within Europe there appear to be (at least) two possible
directions for TUG. 

On the one hand, TUG could provide an
umbrella organisation for all \TeX\ users. To do this
successfully would probably require a different board
with much more international representation. It still
feels very US-oriented. The very fact that the
organisation is sited in Providence means that it will
always be felt to be `American'. The alternative of
re-establishing an ITUG (International-TUG) in (say)
Luxembourg or Brussels (about the only two locations
in Europe politically acceptable to the French and
Germans) hardly seems credible. Part of the
problem revolves around TUG income. Of TUG's \$660,000
income, only about one quarter  derives from
membership subscriptions, while the remainder derives
principally from US-generated income: about equally
from courses\slash conferences and sales. 
Naturally most of the sales are within the US, just as
most of the courses and conferences occur in the US. I
suspect that there is an effective discouragement to
putting resource into expanding membership, since it
brings in very little extra income.


 It is therefore
difficult to see how such an `international' operation
could ever be funded, except by each `constituent'
organization paying a `levy' to the ITUG. Unless the
benefits were manifest and universal, this would be an
enormous task.  The other alternative is that the
constituent organizations go ahead and organize themselves
into some sort of free-wheeling federal structure. It
would not be unreasonable to have a European federal
structure with {\dante}, GUTenburg, NTG, the Nordic group,
Hun\TeX, the Czechoslovakian group and the UK \TeX\ Users
Group. Most of these groups already organise their own
conferences and meetings, have various degrees of user
services and activities, and have grown up in reponse to
TUG's apparent inability, or indifference to assist in the
organisation of European groups. If TUG does not clearly
define its position with regard to other user groups, I
can (sadly) see this parallel structure developing.

Some local user groups appear to be forming in the US,
but this has never been  actively pursued by TUG, as far as
I can see. They seem to be there despite TUG.

\section{A solution}
The simplest and most direct way for TUG to circumvent
these problems is to demonstrate that TUG is concerned
with the long term development of \TeX; that membership
of TUG ensures involvement in that development; that
there are real and tangible advantages to TUG membership,
wherever in the world you live. I suggest the following
program for TUG:
\item{$\bullet$}Offer discounts on books and software to
members; \item{$\bullet$}Provide an electronic archive to the \TeX\
sources;
\item{$\bullet$}Distribute public domain \TeX ware software
for the popular types of personal computers;
\item{$\bullet$}Be seen to be involved in typesetting from \TeX;
\item{$\bullet$}Unequivocally embrace \LaTeX;
\item{$\bullet$}Support local groups,  regional meetings and small
conferences; 
\item{$\bullet$}Secure the future by 
\itemitem{$\triangleright$}providing a forum for proposals
for \TeX\ enhancement; 
\itemitem{$\triangleright$}addressing the wider issues of
electronic document interchange;
\itemitem{$\triangleright$}being involved in internal and external
standards.
\bigskip
\noindent Adoption of such a program is in some ways an
extension of what already occurs, but does have some more
radical departures from the status quo. The most
important thing is that it is a statement of intent which
can be nailed to the cathedral door.
\author{\mwc}