[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia member services



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/
-----------------------------------------------------------

Attachment: pgpdC3SrlHzTW.pgp
Description: PGP signature