[Linux-aus] Council Meeting 2011-02-17

[Anthony Towns]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 00:36, Silvia Pfeiffer <silvia at silvia-pfeiffer.de>wrote:

> Basically, as it stands right now, they are allowed to do anything -
> and in fact they have always made the decision to donate $10K to the
> LCA dinner cause without ever needing to ask membership to be allowed
> to do so.


The first time that was done was in 2006, where the deal was that LA would
match a bid of up to $10k, and those funds and some other donations were
then combined and matched by USENIX and went towards establishing the John
Lions chair at UNSW [0]. That particular decision was made on the spur of
the moment at the dinner, and while I'm happy with the outcome, it's not
really a precedent I'd recommend repeating if it's avoidable. There's
obviously been plenty of time since then for the membership to comment on
further donations, and ttbomk I've only seen people supporting it.

(That said, the Lions Chair was and is a pretty easy sell for meeting LA's
goals, both on the "Linux" front and on the "Australia" front)


> Committees in the past have likely made many more monetary
> decisions without consulting the membership. But I, too, agree that
> there should be some process/policy for such things.


I'm not sure a formal process/policy is necessarily a good idea -- if we'd
had one of those and stuck to it, the $10k lca donations probably wouldn't
have happened, for instance. On the other hand, if a policy like "If at all
possible, talk to the community first -- by mailing list, blog, public
spectacle, whatever" counts, that might work.

Cheers,
aj

[0]
http://www.unsw.edu.au/news/pad/articles/2007/jan/Linux_donation_2007.html

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at erisian.com.au>
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