[Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux Australia

[Anthony Towns]

On Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 01:31:33PM +1100, David Bell wrote:
> I have nominated many of the contributors to this thread for OCM for the
> 2016 Council Election and I encourage you to do the same. If I have missed
> anyone, feel free to nominate yourself on this basis.

I think this is a bit backwards; the council has over the years repeatedly
tried to emphasise that the people "doing stuff" in the organisation
shouldn't be limited to the people on the council -- if for no other
reason than that it puts too much burden on too few people. Being elected
or not shouldn't really make any difference on whether you're "doing"
or just talking.

Me, though, I'm just talking. I'm very reticent to do anything for LA
because I'm not really sure its values actually match my own anymore. As
is presumably clear, I value building and using free software, perhaps to
unreasonable extremes. When I was last on the council I worked on building
an expenses tracking tool out of free software. I thought it was working
pretty well for the final year I was treasurer, and I was optimistic the
new council would get some value out of it; but they decided to replace
it with Xero basically asap. That narrative probably dictates that I
should be more angry about it than I am, but I'm actually a bit fond of
Xero as an antipodean software startup... But either way, I think it was
a step backwards, and I really would like to see the two steps forward
that are meant to go with. Instead there just seem to be more steps
backwards. It's enough to make you think you might be in the wrong line...

There are other ways I think LA could move forward -- I've got some
ideas on how co-branding could be made to work, that I think would be
interesting, for instance. But all the evidence that I see points to
the doers already knowing what they want to do, and any efforts to try
different compromises to bring more people into the fold would just
be wasted -- at best, they'd be ignored, at worst the doers would stop
doing in protest.

So, like I said, I'm just talking. And this is a mailing list, and
Kathy did say she wanted to start a conversation when she posted the
link to the Google doc, so despite the mocking on IRC and Facebook,
I don't really think it's *that* horrible a thing to be doing...

Cheers,
aj