[Linux-aus] Should Linux Australia change its name

[Peter Lieverdink]

----- Original Message -----
> On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:42:56 +1000 (EST)
> Peter Lieverdink <peter at cc.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > I very much doubt that's going to happen either ;-)
> >
> > > nor have their reasons for not wanting to support Linux.
> >
> > Well, that's quite easy. Say I'm a Drupal shop. I have a bunch of
> > computers that my team use, they're all Macs. My clients run their
> > Drupal sites on their own servers, which may run Linux. I don't
> > actually care. I care about Drupal. Which is an open source project,
> > but has nothing whatsoever to do with Linux, except that *some*
> > Drupal sites happen to run on Linux.
> 
> A name change isn't going to fix that problem though is it?
> 
> Eg. a potential sponsor or company looking at sending delegates to the
> Drupal conference looks up $NEW_ORG_NAME and realises that the money
> they spend may also go to help fund WordCamp. That may end up being
> more of a disincentive than it going Linux activities ;-)
>
> If there are significant numbers of sponsors and companies who fund
> delegates who are that concerned about some of the profits from
> the conference they sponsor going to other open source projects,
> perhaps completely separate legal entities for these conferences are
> needed rather than just a name change.

I don't think the problem is that the event profits fund events related to (other) open source projects, the problem is that the name of the organisation that allocates these profits to those other events doesn't currently reflect that. At all.

Setting up a separate legal entity for each of these events is *precisely* what we're trying to avoid. That creates administrative overhead, extra costs and I expect leaves you with a fractured community anyway.

I would much rather the separate open source communities work together and off-load the boring admin bits to an entity that already has processes, suppliers and relationships to deal with them.

> Otherwise sponsors are going to have to be comfortable with the fact
> that the money they send may eventually end up going to help open
> source projects which potentially compete with the one they want to support.

Leaving aside whether open source projects actually compete with each other (or should), that's technically the case now anyway. Except the name makes it appear that this other project sounds like it might be only "linux". Having a more general free/libre/open source/software/hardware technology/community[1] name I think makes this more transparent than it is now. I certainly don't think it is or should be a reason to *not* change.

- P.

[1] Totally not an official suggestion for a new name ;-)