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@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@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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