[Linux-aus] Linux Australia AGM Held

[Anthony Towns]

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 10:26:23AM +1100, Terry Dawson wrote:
> To this 
> day I've no idea why people are so quick to mistrust people trying to 
> establish a benevolent volunteer-based organisation to promote Linux in 
> Australia.

To contribute a rounded-down 2c, and to continue beating a horse "just
in case"; my guess would be because outside of a reasonably select
few, no one really has a handle on Linux Australia: what it is, who it
represents, how to make sure it doesn't do something stupid, how to get
it to do something useful. Mostly, we don't know the committee members,
don't get much of an idea of what LA's doing, if anything, in advance,
don't really have a way of participating in much of anything, and so on.

Which basically means you have a shadowy organisation (ie, one you don't
know anything about), with a relatively large sum of money, that claims to
represent your interests but not you (or something), that tends not to act
in a particularly above board manner, and wants to take over the country.

Personally, I'd be surprised if people _didn't_ instinctively mistrust it.

Hopefully the current ctte will remove the shadows, spend the money,
work out a good answer to the representation question, and start keeping
its house in order. We'll call it fair enough if they do all that and
take over the country.

Cheers,
aj

PS: Oh, flogging the equine: if you were guaranteed to have someone local
    on the board, you'd have a grounding point for mistrust. Not only can
    you go up to whoever it is and find out what's _really_ going on,
    but if you think LA's behaving badly, then you can talk to someone
    with the power to *do* something about it, rather than just talk to
    someone else.

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

  ``Dear Anthony Towns: [...] Congratulations -- 
        you are now certified as a Red Hat Certified Engineer!''
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