[Linux-aus] Goodbye AUUG, hello phoenix

[Michael Still]

Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> - I don't believe that Australia is big enough for two organizations
>   which cover so much common ground.

Aren't there a lot more than two at the moment though? I can think of 
AUUG, LA, SAGE-AU, ACS off the top of my head.

> - It confuses the Establishment.  We've heard several times from
>   AGIMO, for example, that they'd far rather deal with only one open
>   source group.

I have expressed my opinion of that argument in an earlier email.

> - It also makes it easier to get sponsors for conferences and things.

LA doesn't appear to have any troubles getting sponsors though. I wonder 
if this is more of a process issue revolving around the _perceived_ 
worth of the two events in the minds of potential sponsors. AUUG used to 
do quite well with sponsors, and I'm not clear on what has changed. Can 
I have a hint please?

> - (only now) AUUG no longer seems capable of surviving by itself.

This seems to be the real motivation here.

[snip]

> - AUUG caters for proprietary UNIX.
> 
> This last one is the real issue.  I personally think it's a thing that
> a successor organization could handle.  You only need to look at the
> conference programmes for the last few years to see that just about
> everything has been Open Source.  About the only exception has been
> MacOS X.  What do people think of that?

Well, there was push back to OS X at several Linux events I attended 
last year. It's not free software, and that was the defining argument at 
the time.

Mikal