[Linux-aus] Linux Australia values statement

[Mary Gardiner]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2011, Russell Coker wrote:
> Is LA limited in scope to Australia?  We have had some LCAs in NZ which seems 
> to indicate a slightly broader scope.

This is probably a discussion worth having.

Evidence in favour of scope being primarily Australia:
 - it's in the name of our organisation!

 - the most likely other jurisdiction, New Zealand, already has the New Zealand
   Open Source Society http://nzoss.org.nz/ From their About page: "NZOSS
   represents Free and Open Source users, creators and contributors in New
   Zealand by promoting software, representing the interests of the community
   to Government and the education sector. It also supports community user
   groups." which sounds similar in nature to this values statement.

 - IIRC almost all our political advocacy etc has been to the Australian government

(Possible) evidence against:

 - we've held two major events in New Zealand

 - some of our active members are in New Zealand, and a (smaller?) number in
   other countries

If I was personally wording something about scope I'd probably say something
like "Linux Australia focusses on Australia, and also on regional partnerships
and events where they are of benefit to the Australian community." (Again, open
to debate, but I at least suspect that LA would be less likely to award LCA to
an NZ city if it wasn't clear that so many Australians are happy to attend.)

> If LA is to be focused on Australia then I think that a stronger statement 
> about free formats for documentation from the public sector would be good.  
> There is a heap of data on the abs.gov.au site that is in non-free formats 
> which decreases it's usefulness to people who don't use MS-Windows as well as 
> to people who use MS-Windows in 10 years time.

There's probably a tradeoff somewhere between "values" and "campaigns", where
campaigns are specific actions/requests/causes that we undertake because of our
values. I know the draft Values crosses into specific actions/stances on
particular issues already a bit, but I wonder if this isn't more of a
campaign/call kind of thing.

-Mary