[Linux-aus] Linux Australia member services

Fri Sep 29 08:37:04 UTC 2006

On Tue, Sep 26, 2006 at 08:31:30PM +0930, Tim Ansell wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-09-26 at 18:13 +1000, James Purser wrote:
>> On Tue, 2006-09-26 at 09:44 +1000, Peter Miller wrote:
> >> Does Linux Australia provide member services?
> >> 
> >> In the maelstrom around the AUUG discussions, it was mentioned that
> >> Linux Australia owns the opensource.org.au domain.
> >> 
> >> Is it possible for me to obtain
> >> - a pmiller at opensource.org.au email address?
> >> - a miller.opensource.org.au domain delegation for my own use? 
> >> 
> >> These are services for which I would happily pay real money.  Basically,
> >> this is in large part the value I see in my AUUG membership fees.

>> Okay lets run with this. If LA was to provide services to members in
>> return for fees (and there is nothing, not even a suggestion of a hint
>> of a clue that we are going to do this), what would the members see as
>> something that LA could do for them?

>> As I have already stated this is a run up the flagpole exercise, off my
>> own bat without any input from the ctte or anyone else. I'm on my own
>> here :)

> Currently as a student, any fees to be part of a LA would be a major
> disincentive.

Given the strong level of poor student involvement (I consider myself a
rather well-paid poor student, so you know which side of any theoretical
debate we may or may not have on this topic) I would expect that we're
talking about service fees, not membership fees... I would strongly
oppose a have/have-not^w tiering system of membership.

On the other hand, I think such a fees-for-services area would be a good
thing, given sufficient compelling services to make it worth the
organisational overhead. I would _expect_, as a LA member and supporter,
that such things would be exclusively for the use of things promoting
Linux and/or Free Software and/or Open Source and/or... etc. (Like SF
only accepts open-source projects)

On the gripping hand, not many such services come to mind... Email
and DNS redirection services seem only marginally chargeable for,
but hard to keep... I hate to say it, but on-mission. You can't exactly
go reading people's email to verify they're using @opensource.org.au for
open-source stuff.

Some immediate ideas that do come to mind include

- Internet access services. A Linux Australia ISP: Expertise isn't a
  problem, and I'm sure we'd have here somewhere good contacts to get
  good wholesale rates. I'm not sure this is on-mission though.

  It does have the immediately advantage of abbreviating to LAI,
  providing humour potentional enough to offend all comers. [1]

- Project hosting services. Like sourceforge but... Well, we'd need to
  be offering something compelling that
  sourceforge/berlios/nongnu/alioth and their ilk isn't, doubly so to
  actually charge for it.

- Hardware certification labs. Oh, I think that's off-topic for this
  discussion, but that's the danger of brainstorms.

- Some kind of annual conference? Oh, wait, that one's a good idea.
  Someone should do some research on that one...

- "Member services" in the traditional sense... Discounted insurance,
  hotel rates, gold credit cards, etc. [2] I'm not sure that's really
  what we do...

  Are we a professional organisation (ie do we hold a conference, carry
  cards, are we a recognised body by other bodies, do we reasonably
  expect that any professional in our area will be a member) or a
  community organisation (ie are we cheap to join, have a strong
  hobbyist basis, has anyone every proposed a name change to something
  with the word 'community' in it) or something else entirely?

- Open-source related "Member services"? 20% off access to
  mirror.linux.org.au? Free subscription to Open Source On The Air?
  apt on every desktop?

- Maybe some kind of colocation and/or virtual server setup... Like the
  ISP idea, is this really directly related to what we do? This one
  might be better processed as a grant proposal.

- Discounted access to a modern massively multiplayer online game with a
  Linux client (on the assumption that people will be _using_ the Linux
  client). A worldforge server in the linux.org.au domain, and people
  can bum around on that instead of IRC... Some kind of worldforge/IRC
  gateway? (Oh, man, if I didn't suspect it'd be a professional
  conflict, I'd go look now and see if worldforge is as
  user-programmable as I remember PennMUSH being...)

I think this post is long enough at this point that I should stop, yet
long enough that my signature doesn't dwarf my text for a change.

[1] http://perkypants.org/blog/2006/09/14/goodbye-auug-hello-phoenix/#comment-565
[2] http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=show&conID=acsmyrew

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Paul "TBBle" Hampson, B.Sc, LPI, MCSE
On-hiatus Asian Studies student, ANU
The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361)
Paul.Hampson at Pobox.Com

Of course Pacman didn't influence us as kids. If it did,
we'd be running around in darkened rooms, popping pills and
listening to repetitive music.
 -- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.1/au/
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