Merging Linux Australia and AUUG: [Linux-aus] Nomination

[Kimberly Shelt]

On the strength of Stewarts post previously..
(left in below)
and the great effort he has put in over the last year..

I would like to nominate him for the position of President 
I have seen his nomination post..but would like to encourage
him to take a leadership position either Pres or VP.. 

Thus I second the nomination of VP.. and put forward one
for Pres.

Rock on Stewart ! :)

Regards
Kimberly Shelt

On Mon, Jan 05, 2004 at 02:12:02PM +1100, Stewart Smith wrote:
> CC to LUG list added to try and spur on more co-operation :)
> 
> On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 12:02, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> > > Agreed. I would agrue however that all people are open to a conflict of
> > > interest -- for instance the president of a group of people like LA could
> > > quite easily manipulate things for their own financial benefit.
> > 
> > This is what we have constitutions for.
> 
> Also - esp with the openness of LA - you can see (in our minutes) people
> declaring any conflict of interest, often stepping out of the discussion
> or proceeding with everybody else knowing their position. Plus, our
> community monitors us more stringently than most net admins monitor
> their own networks - so it'd be hard for anyone to get away with much :)
> 
> > Correct, but there are still a number of reasons to merge:
> > 
> > 1.  There's a lot of work involved in running an organization, as you
> >     know (and apparently can handle :-).  By merging the
> >     organizations, we could reduce that level of work.
> 
> This would probably be the biggest argument - admin takes time, and
> effort - and lots of it.
> 
> > 2.  Having two mainly overlapping organizations confuses lots of
> >     people, including many people on this list.  It makes it more
> >     difficult for either of us to make our mark.
> > 
> > From my personal point of view, (1) is the bigger issue.  People on
> > both boards drop action items because they don't have time.  The
> > membership of each group is not large enough to do all the things we
> > want.  When did either AUUG or LA last hold an installfest?  Why?
> 
> Andrew Chalmers (among others, including myself) is a big pusher of the
> sharing of information and code that orgs use to help run themselves.
> This could benefit both AUUG, LA and the LUGs - things like online
> election code, online nominations, online membership stuff can take a
> load off committee members and make it really quite easy to do some
> things. Maybe (like Andrew Chalmers is advocating) being more pro-active
> in this sharing and contributing is something we should do - maybe a
> good thing for co-operation between AUUG and LA?
> 
> Our membership db stuff will be open sourced (parts are already
> available - and the PHP code is available from me on request)
> 
> > * AUUG is an organization of predominantly professional people
> >   involved with all flavours of UNIX, very much including Linux.
> 
> (at least my perception is of) AUUG being more professionally oriented -
> I could be wrong.
> 
> > * LA is an organization of professional people and hobbyists, involved
> >   with Linux and related free software, but excluding proprietary
> >   UNIX.
> > 
> > * Some LA people see AUUG as the Evil One, out to swallow up LA.
> 
> I don't :)
> 
> > So, what does the LA membership think?  There's a lot of effort and
> > expense involved in running a user organization.  What speaks against
> > merging?  Potential answers that I can see are:
> > 
> > * LA is strongly opposed to proprietary software.  AUUG covers both
> >   free and proprietary software.
> 
> Some members are definately opposed - while others take a neutral stance
> - as an org - the focus is on Linux - but no objections to other cool
> things that are related/in the same spirit - and i'm sure others would
> agree.
> 
> But it is a good point - that AUUG does have a base of proprietary unix
> people, while LA does not.
> 
> > I think we're cooperating a lot better.  Is that enough?
> 
> Very much agreed - I think LA and AUUG relationships are growing
> stronger - and this could be the best course of action to take - maybe
> in a year or two it will feel like a natural move to have the orgs
> merge, or maybe not - or maybe parts will start becoming indivisible -
> who knows.
> 
> I guess there is a lot to loose however if the merger didn't work (for
> whatever reason), so there'd be nervousness (on both sides). Losing AUUG
> or LA would be bad, both catostrophic.
> 
> I'd love for such a thing to come as a general feeling as a "common
> sense" move - and one that was impossible to make fail.
> -- 
> Stewart Smith <stewart at linux.org.au>
> Linux Australia Inc
> 
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