[Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
tleeuwenburg at gmail.com
Sat Jan 9 21:30:55 AEDT 2016
Genius post, Anthony. I don't have the bandwidth to provide a response in
detail, but +2 to your suggestions here. Other than shaking out the
details, I think you have proposed a super-constructive way forward.
On 9 January 2016 at 00:47, Anthony Towns <aj at erisian.com.au> wrote:
> G'day world,
>
> I thought it might be interesting to write up my idea for an alternative
> to rebranding LA as something more like an action plan, rather than just
> a concept [0].
>
> I think the motivation for rebranding LA as "Open Source Australia" or
> similar, is that:
>
> a) "open source" / "free software" ideals broadly are what's interesting
> and motivating about Linux, and have always been much closer to the
> heart of what "Linux Australia" has been about than just the Linux
> kernel or Linux distributions per se
>
> b) a bunch of people do interesting "open source" things outside of
> Linux, such as developing open source software on and for Windows or
> Mac, or building open source hardware that doesn't actually run Linux,
> or promoting open data that's completely OS agnostic. Those are all
> things that fit well together with what "LA" has done in the past,
> but since they don't involve "Linux" directly, it can be confusing
> to people as to why a group called "Linux Australia" is involved
>
> Maybe those are the same reason? Maybe someone could phrase them better
> too. *shrug* I'm assuming the above is close enough for non-profit work.
>
> I'm going to add in a couple of other things that I think matter:
>
> c) changing the organisation name is hard and risky -- there's a whole
> legal process to go through, and it's not totally obvious that there's
> a name out there which actually works better in every way than the
> one we've got anyway. getting a name change wrong would cause a lot
> of confusion and be a lot of additional work to fix. ("hard and risky"
> doesn't mean we shouldn't do it anyway, of course)
>
> d) having "LA" do things is generally a bad idea; having subteams
> working on projects (like individual LCA or PyCon teams) with LA
> just doing administrative support and oversight works much better.
>
> I don't think the above is controversial; but I think a clear statement
> of assumptions makes it easier to resolve disagreements, so the above's
> hopefully a clear statement of my assumptions.
>
> Anyway, add that up and here's what I propose:
>
> 1) we form a new sub-committee focussing on "promotion of open source",
> called either "opensource.org.au" (which LA has control of already,
> AIUI), or, purely as an interim measure, "that bunch of rabid
> fanatics"
>
> 2) the new sub-committee gets some or all of the following goals
> along with a mandate to make them happen:
>
> a) setup and register a new trademark and trading name for LA
> to use, eg "Open Source Australia" (after consulting on wtf that
> name should actually be). Once registered, conferences under
> the LA umbrella, such as PyCon AU can opt to say they're being
> run by "Open Source Australia" rather than "Linux Australia"
> if they prefer. if there's no good consensus on a single name,
> possibly create two.
>
> b) resurrect the opensource.org.au website and make use of it
>
> c) experiment with membership levels, eg accepting annual donations,
> either as nothing more than a donation, or in return for minor
> benefits like PDF certificate or an "@opensource.org.au" forwarding
> address. maybe accept corporate memberships?
>
> d) experiment with providing endorsements like "command line user",
> "bug reporter", "scripter", "bug fixer", "kernel hacker",
> "hardware hacker", "published documenter" that LA members can
> earn to acknowledge and encourage personal development and
> contributions to open source. (maybe do the same for corporate
> members, like "publishes source code", "complies with the GPL",
> "uses open source", "hires hackers and doesn't claim copyright
> on what they do in their own time"...)
>
> e) run/promote small scale hackfests where people learn
> open source related skills or contribute to open source projects
>
> f) track and promote open source alternatives to proprietary
> technology, eg "instead of google docs, try ....", documenting
> benefits and drawbacks. the "rabid fanatics" subctte and LA
> council should both make sure any non-free software they use
> is covered by this list, and regularly look into whether the
> drawbacks have shrunk to a point where shifting is reasonable;
> other sub-cttes should be encouraged to do likewise
>
> g) write up the effects of existing and proposed legislation and
> regulation on open source use/hacking, and make suggestions on
> improvements
>
> h) write up and promote example contracts for hiring open source
> people?
>
> i) ...?
>
> 3) the LA *council* should not do any of the above however! instead
> they should just monitor the "rabid fanatics" subctte like they
> would any other -- making sure they don't do anything that harms the
> organisation, don't spend crazy amounts of money, aren't being totally
> dysfunctional, etc. Providing financial support should be similar
> to a LUG or LCA, etc -- ability to get reimbursements and dealing
> with tax, definitely; but no huge commitment of funds. Likewise for
> sysadmin support.
>
> 4) if folks who might otherwise want to contribute content to the LA
> website think "promoting open source" matches what they're trying
> to do, they should totally be part of the subctte if they want
> to. *maybe* that means the "media" subctte ends up getting subsumed;
> or becomes more of a "SIG", eg a mailing list/irc channel/wiki where
> people doing media work for LCA, PyCon, opensource.org.au, etc share
> advice/tips/leads and retweet each other. (or maybe something else
> entirely)
>
> 5) *if* any of the goals work out, that's great! they should be
> continued next year. if not, no big deal. depending on how things go,
> maybe the subctte should be split -- perhaps you could have separate
> subcttes for "running and promoting open source related hackfests" and
> "promoting membership and involvement in LA", eg. all of that should
> be pretty straightforward under LA's existing subctte policy, I think.
>
> 6) *maybe*, *eventually*, if a bunch of the goals work out, the
> opensource.org.au site becomes much more interesting than the
> linux.org.au site, and the "Open Source Australia" (or whatever)
> name becomes better known than "Linux Australia", in which case the
> council might officially rename the organisation and turn linux.org.au
> into just a redirect
>
> 7) *maybe* if the approach above works out, and people are
> interested in practice, and not just rhetorically, we could create a
> "Linux 4 life" subctte (aka "that other bunch of rabid fanatics"?),
> with goals along the lines of "encouraging *Linux* use and hacking",
> and give them control of the linux.org.au website, with the mandate to
> fill it up with interesting content related to use/development/... of
> Linux (kernel, distributions, ...) in Australia; again with the same
> constraints on the subctte described above in (3)
>
> I think there's three big benefits of taking this sort of approach:
>
> - it allows progress despite disagreement about whether the name change
> is a good idea, and provides more evidence either way. if it turns
> out it was a good idea all along, great, see step (5); if it turns
> out it wasn't, it's easy to just disband a subctte and stop renewing
> a name registration. and in the meantime none of LA's existing events
> has to care about it if they don't want to.
>
> - it provides a good example of how to do cool stuff in LA outside of
> being on the council, other than running a conference; conversely it
> gives the council a good example on how to promote forward progress,
> while at the same time not committing to doing extra work themselves.
> [1]
>
> - it mostly puts the focus on the fun/cool/rewarding bits (ie, promoting
> open source, helping people learn, switching away from non-free stuff,
> ...) rather than the administrative bits (let's get a new name,
> reorganise subcttes, update the constitution, import all our data
> into different software that hopefully sucks less, etc)
>
> Cheers,
> aj
>
> [0] Historical references:
>
> -
> http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2013-January/020319.html
> -
> http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2013-January/020330.html
>
> AFAIK the idea of just setting up a separate trading name never went
> any further from that point; corrections appreciated.
>
> [1] I guess I'm distinguishing the council and the subctte's roles
> as something like this: LA's purpose as an organisation is to
> "assist groups/individuals who make up the free software and open
> source communities in Australia" [2], so the LA council should be
> focussed on making it easy for groups to do cool things (like run
> conferences). Meanwhile, the "rabit fanatics" is one such group,
> and the stuff they do should mostly be "cool things" -- promoting
> open source, running hackfests, telling people how great it is that
> they learnt how to rebase or bisect in git, eg. I think that's a
> useful split to maintain if it ends up with an "Open Source Australia
> Council" and an "promoting open source subctte".
>
> [2] https://linux.org.au/values
>
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>
--
--------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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