[Linux-aus] Should Linux Australia cast PyCon adrift?

[Jamezpolley]

On 26/04/2012, at 9:28 PM, Russell Coker <russell at coker.com.au> wrote:

> On Thu, 26 Apr 2012, David Newall <david at davidnewall.com> wrote:
>> If the Python community are put out by our unashamed attachment to our 
>> Linux roots, might we not be better to cut them loose and use our 
>> energies (and finances) to support a more grateful and less embarrassed 
>> group?  Might sound harsh, but give it fair thought.
> 
> The LA membership is not a Borg collective.  Some people are really attached 
> to the way things are, some aren't.
> 
> Most LA members do things other than just Linux.  There was a joke that 
> circulated ~1994 about what people did with various OSs and for Linux it was 
> "compiling kernels", which was something that took an unreasonable amount of 
> people's time and effort.  Nowdays the vast majority of Linux users couldn't 
> compile a kernel if their life depended on it and even the people who could do 
> so generally don't.
> 
> The base OS part of Linux and the GNU environment work pretty well nowadays so 
> people are moving up the stack.  This means that some people who used to be 
> totally into Linux will now be interested in things like Python, this is fine 
> and there's no reason why the community structures put in place to support 
> free software conferences etc shouldn't adjust to the changes in user 
> requirements.
> 
> My suggestion is to have a SPI like organisation to manage insurance, money, 
> etc and then having Linux Australia as a sub-committee on an equal status to 
> PyCon et al.  Linux Australia would keep the same DNS name, use the same 
> servers, run the same web sites, and keep promoting Linux.  This means that 
> people who are only interested in Linux wouldn't miss out in any way.  In fact 
> having people who aren't so focussed on Linux but who have relevant skills 
> managing all the administrative tasks that aren't directly related to Linux 
> advocacy could be a good thing.

There's no reason for this to wait for a name change (that might not even happen) before we set this up. This is a good idea, and it would work just fine right now.

All it would take is a few people stepping up and asking the Council to create a new sub-committee. They'd need to have a charter so that the council and the community are clear on the responsibilities of the subcommittee - but that only needs to be a few sentences (look at http://linux.org.au/sub-committees to see what the existing sub-committees have).

It would also be good to have some evidence of some community support for the makeup of the subcomittee. The two LUGs had members elected by local communities - for this particular subcommittee, an election on MemberDB probably might make sense, but discussion on the lists might work too

> 
> PyCon and all the other FOSS conferences are important.  But there are lots of 
> people who aren't interested in such things who would be good at the Linux 
> advocacy side.
> 
> -- 
> My Main Blog         http://etbe.coker.com.au/
> My Documents Blog    http://doc.coker.com.au/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/listinfo/linux-aus