[Linux-aus] AUUG to close? Will there be a rush of new members to Linux Australia?

[Andrew Cowie]

On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 12:30 +1030, Glen Turner wrote:
>  - AUUG membership to be offered LA membership.

Due to the generosity of LCA conference sponsors & attendees, and as a
means of lowering the bar to entry, Membership in Linux Australia is
free of charge and has deliberately been so for 6+ years. People who
have an interest can just "join".

That said, there's not much to join. As with all other areas of Open
Source, active participation in the community is what is important, not
whether you are formally a Member of some umbrella organization off to
the side.

And, no, I'm not dissing LA. Or AUUG for that matter - but I encourage
people to acknowledge that both organizations are somewhere between
notional and virtual. Expecting "AUUG to have an opinion" or "LA to take
a stand" on something is a bit ridiculous. Individuals take action and
invest the effort to do so; It is only when an organization like Linux
Australia can back such an initiative with its name, and likewise
benefit from an individual's effort on their behalf, that the
organization grows to be more.

>  - LA to host AUUG's online history -- web site, mail archive.

This would be an excellent initiative if someone can be found who is
willing to execute on it.

>  - LA to acquire AUUG history ("acquire" in the library sense,
>    so funding for a oral history of UNIX in Australia, promote
>    loan of photos for scanning, etc) 

Uh. I guess. If people are that fanatical about it, they can submit
materials to the National Archives of Australia.

>  - UNSW Library to be asked to host AUUG's documents (full
>    set of conference proceedings, etc)

This, on the other hand, is a rich body of material. Something the AUUG
people wanted to do for years was digitize their proceedings and journal
archives and present it online. [Their hope was to find a way of
monetizing it - nothing wrong with that, but it didn't work out]

While much of the material is dated, it certainly represents a
significant snapshot into the early Unix & early Internet period which
were one of the foundations of modern software freedom.

Again, I'm not sure that LA needs to brow beat anyone into doing this
(lord knows AUUG couldn't find anyone to do it). People have better
things to do...

... but we could definitely contribute simply by ensuring that this
material (in paper or digital form) is not lost and is transferred to
the Archives along with any other interested parties. That's all
assuming it hasn't already been lost.

And if there *is* someone who can manage to a) get ahold of and b)
re-process their materials into some sort of hostable form, well, that
would be terrific and something worthy of mirroring by LA.

[Incidentally, the collected proceedings and materials of SAGE-AU also
fall into the same category, but they too are busy trying to monetize
it]

>  - Funds remaining after windup of AUUG to go to UNSW Lions Chair.

Well, that's up to their (current financial) Members at the act of
Dissolution if they choose to do so, but were I to be asked for a
fiduciary opinion I would certainly commend the Lions Chair as an
appropriate cause to contribute any remaining funds towards.

AfC
Sydney

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