From josh at nitrotech.org Sat Jan 2 16:16:17 2016
From: josh at nitrotech.org (Joshua Hesketh)
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2016 16:16:17 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] [Announce] Declaration of Council Election and call
for Nominations
In-Reply-To: <56793476.4020005@linux.org.au>
References: <56793476.4020005@linux.org.au>
Message-ID: <56875D21.9030305@nitrotech.org>
Hey all,
TL;DR: Elections are open. Please nominate and/or stand.
Just a reminder that there are only a few days left until the nomination
period for next year's council closes. If you haven't already, please
head over to https://www.linux.org.au/membership/ and get nominating. If
anybody is considering running and would like to know more about what is
involved I'd be more than happy to have a chat and answer any questions
you might have.
As a lot of you may already know, I do not intend on re-standing for
council this year. I have been on the council for 6 years now (and
involved with LA for even longer) and I think it's time for some fresh
blood, so to speak.
It has been an honour to be trusted by the community to lead this
organisation for such a long time. While I haven't achieved as much as I
had planned, it has been a privilege to be involved and to do what I
could. I hope that I have been able to improve and continue the
organisation's success during this time. Thank you all for this opportunity.
Linux Australia has a lot of challenges ahead of itself for the coming
few years. I touched on a lot of these during my 2014 Presidents report,
and I expect them to be present again in my 2015 report as they are
large and ongoing concerns.
I would like to see the community thinking about some bigger questions.
The organisation has been successful in recent years in running events
but less so in lobbying to the government or advocating for policy
changes etc.
Linux and open source are generally well received technologies and don?t
require advocating for in the same way that they may have been 10-15
years ago. This raises a question of how do we stay relevant as Linux
Australia. In fact, it is pretty obvious that we aren?t relevant as
"Linux" Australia since we?re much more about being an open source
organisation.
A name change for our organisation has been discussed many times before,
but I believe it to still be an important discussion. However, extending
even further from that are more fundamental questions to the
organisation. For example, with open source being so mainstream, what
does that mean for us? Or what does the popularity of mobile and web
platforms mean for open source? Are there opportunities or a need for
advocacy in those areas? How do we extend our ideals to open web, open
data, open government, open hardware and open culture? How do we ensure
that our values[0] are upheld in our industries?
I would like to encourage and challenge our membership to be discussing
these types of issues in a large picture sense and to be giving thought
as to how we might be able to address some of them. Clearly these types
of questions are very difficult to tackle purely at a Council level -
especially when they are concerned with the administration and ongoing
running of the organisation - so it is imperative that the community
attempts to gain a consolidated voice in these areas.
A lot of these challenges are reflected in the 2013 membership survey[1]
where our brand and purpose was often mis-identified by members not
understanding what we do. Addressing these systemic questions will help
guide the direction of the organisation and also lead towards addressing
issues such as our poor communication to membership.
Of course with not standing for the 2016 council myself, that doesn't
mean I will be disappearing altogether. I intend to help the new council
on these challenges in any way I can. I also want to make sure that I'm
available to consult and offer advice where possible should the new
council wish to reach out.
Thank you all for a wonderful 6 years. I look forward to watching this
organisation continue to grow to its full potential.
Warm regards,
Joshua Hesketh
[0] http://linux.org.au/values
[1] http://linux.org.au/news/news/linux-australia-member-survey-2013
On 22/12/15 22:31, Linux Australia Secretary wrote:
> *
>
> Dear Linux Australia Community,
>
>
> Pursuant to clause (15) of the Linux Australia constitution [1] we
> hereby declare an election open and call for nominations to the Linux
> Australia Council for the term February 2016 to January 2017.
>
>
> All office bearer and ordinary committee member positions are open for
> election.
>
>
> * Nominations will open from 22 December 2015 until 10 January 2016
>
> * Voting will open 11 January until 31 January 2016
>
> * Results will be announced at the AGM in Geelong at linux.conf.au
> on or after 01 February
>
>
> The election can be viewed here:
>
> https://www.linux.org.au/membership/index.php?page=view-election&id=22
>
>
> *What do I need to do?*
>
>
> First of all, make sure your details are correct in MemberDB [2]
>
>
> If you wish to nominate, identify the positions you wish to nominate
> for and get an understanding of what they involve. Think about what
> you might bring to the role and prepare a short pitch. Then, accept the
>
> nomination you've been given by clicking the 'Accept nomination' link.
>
>
> If you wish to nominate another person for a position, you may wish to
> contact them first and have a chat to make sure they're happy being
> nominated. Then follow the 'Nominate' link to nominate them.
>
>
> Once voting is open, you will be able to vote for candidates. Results
> will be announced at the AGM at linux.conf.au .
>
>
> *Why should I nominate?*
>
>
> Being a member of Linux Australia Council is a fun way to meet new
> people, work on exciting projects and expand your skill base. It gives
> you excellent transferable skills to help build your career, and allows
>
> you to grow your professional network. It looks great on a CV, and is
> also a chance to give back to the vibrant Linux and open source
> ecosystem in Australia and globally. If you're passionate about Linux
> and open source, it's a great opportunity to help drive and steer
> Australia's contribution in this field.
>
>
> The roles do require a time commitment - a minimum of 2-3 hours per
> week for an Ordinary Council Member; for office bearers 8-12 hours per
> week - so please consider this with your nomination.
>
>
> *Why should I run?*
>
> If you?ve been nominated, or are thinking of nominating yourself, you
> should give the opportunity serious consideration. Being on the
> council is both hard and often thankless work, but it is also
> incredibly rewarding. Linux Australia can only achieve what it does by
> its members and helping out with the council responsibilities is a
> great way to ensure Linux Australia continues to be successful. It is
> also an opportunity to help the organisation grow, reach into new
> areas and to succeed on important topics of national relevance.
>
>
>
> [1]http://www.linux.org.au/constitution
>
> [2]http://www.linux.org.au/membership
>
>
> As always, your feedback and questions are warmly welcomed. If you'd
> like to have a chat with anyone on Council around what it involves,
> please do make contact.
>
>
> With kind regards,
>
>
> Sae Ra
>
> *
> --
>
> Sae Ra Germaine
> Secretary
> Linux Australia
>
> secretary at linux.org.au
> http://linux.org.au
>
> Linux Australia Inc
> GPO Box 4788
> Sydney NSW 2001
> Australia
>
> ABN 56 987 117 479
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> announce mailing list
> announce at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/announce
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From _ at chrisjrn.com Sat Jan 2 21:15:36 2016
From: _ at chrisjrn.com (Christopher Neugebauer)
Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2016 10:15:36 +0000
Subject: [Linux-aus] [Announce] Declaration of Council Election and call
for Nominations
In-Reply-To: <56875D21.9030305@nitrotech.org>
References: <56793476.4020005@linux.org.au> <56875D21.9030305@nitrotech.org>
Message-ID:
Hi all,
I will also not be standing for re-election this year, and I will not
accept any nominations for my re-election. I'm doing this so that I
can focus my time on organisation of linux.conf.au 2017. Doing this
properly would mean that I couldn't effectively do my duties as an
ordinary committee member.
I've deeply enjoyed my two years as an ordinary committee member, and
wish to thank everyone who has nominated and voted for me over the
last few years. It's been a real pleasure to represent the Free
Software and Open Technology communities in Australia, and I look
forward to taking a strong interest in the future growth of Linux
Australia.
If you've got any questions about what it's like to serve on Council,
please feel free to get in contact with me, I'm happy to share
everything I know.
See you all at LCA!
--Chris
On 2 January 2016 at 16:16, Joshua Hesketh wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> TL;DR: Elections are open. Please nominate and/or stand.
>
> Just a reminder that there are only a few days left until the nomination
> period for next year's council closes. If you haven't already, please head
> over to https://www.linux.org.au/membership/ and get nominating. If anybody
> is considering running and would like to know more about what is involved
> I'd be more than happy to have a chat and answer any questions you might
> have.
--
--Christopher Neugebauer
Jabber: chrisjrn at gmail.com -- IRC: chrisjrn on irc.freenode.net --
WWW: http://chrisjrn.com -- Twitter: @chrisjrn
From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Sun Jan 3 14:38:36 2016
From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 14:38:36 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux Australia
Message-ID: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
Hi everyone,
As Joshua and Christopher have noted, nominations and election to
Council for 2016 are now underway. The time is right to consider what
sort of organisation Linux Australia wants to be, and what its
priorities should be as we head towards 2020.
To this end, I've put together the below document to start a
conversation - hopefully a fruitful one - about what the community
would like Linux Australia as an organisation to be working towards. It
outlines our strategic environment and outlines a number of responses,
then prioritises actions required to realise those responses. The
Council has seen the document, and I'd like to thank Joshua Hesketh for
taking the time to add comments and thoughts to get the conversation
started.
You may not agree with the analysis or actions outlined in the document
- which is great - it means you have an opinion and can contribute to
refining and shaping Linux Australia's strategy by sharing your
thoughts, opinions and alternative viewpoints and recommended actions.
Everyone with the link is able to comment on the document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WFeIm-TWVJX-u3gIM9K-hy-91-WFRrs4VVeDDIXCIQo/edit?usp=sharing
My intention is that this document - 'Inflection Point' - will spur a
conversation and debate within the community. It will then be Council's
decision whether they choose to accept and/or adopt the recommended
actions in this document.
Please understand this is not a 'pitch' or similar for a nomination to
Council - I'm undecided about whether to stand next year due to other
life commitments in 2016.
As always, your feedback and comments are warmly welcomed.
Kind regards,
Kathy
From neill at ingenious.com.au Sun Jan 3 18:16:24 2016
From: neill at ingenious.com.au (Neill Cox)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 18:16:24 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID:
Kathy,
Thank you for investing the time and effort it took you to write this, it's
good to see someone thinking about the future of LA and I think your
document is a good starting point for a discussion.
My opinions on a number of points differ from yours, but I do think a
respectful discussion about LA's future would be a good thing.
I've made a couple of small comments on the document already, but I'm going
to go away and think about the rest of your suggestions before addressing
them.
Cheers,
Neill
On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 2:38 PM, Kathy Reid wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> As Joshua and Christopher have noted, nominations and election to Council
> for 2016 are now underway. The time is right to consider what sort of
> organisation Linux Australia wants to be, and what its priorities should be
> as we head towards 2020.
>
> To this end, I've put together the below document to start a conversation
> - hopefully a fruitful one - about what the community would like Linux
> Australia as an organisation to be working towards. It outlines our
> strategic environment and outlines a number of responses, then prioritises
> actions required to realise those responses. The Council has seen the
> document, and I'd like to thank Joshua Hesketh for taking the time to add
> comments and thoughts to get the conversation started.
>
> You may not agree with the analysis or actions outlined in the document -
> which is great - it means you have an opinion and can contribute to
> refining and shaping Linux Australia's strategy by sharing your thoughts,
> opinions and alternative viewpoints and recommended actions.
>
> Everyone with the link is able to comment on the document.
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WFeIm-TWVJX-u3gIM9K-hy-91-WFRrs4VVeDDIXCIQo/edit?usp=sharing
>
> My intention is that this document - 'Inflection Point' - will spur a
> conversation and debate within the community. It will then be Council's
> decision whether they choose to accept and/or adopt the recommended actions
> in this document.
>
> Please understand this is not a 'pitch' or similar for a nomination to
> Council - I'm undecided about whether to stand next year due to other life
> commitments in 2016.
>
> As always, your feedback and comments are warmly welcomed.
>
> Kind regards,
> Kathy
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
--
Neill Cox
Ingenious Software
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From silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com Mon Jan 4 08:25:35 2016
From: silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com (Silvia Pfeiffer)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 08:25:35 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID:
Hi Kathy,
I just read your strategic plan document. It's very well thought through
and reflects a lot of challenges that have been brought up repeatedly over
the years. Your proposed steps forward make a lot of sense. In many
respects, it's about maturing the organisation and giving it more ability
to make an impact in the Australian context. I'm in support of making it
happen and would hope you can stay around to help see it through. It's a
good plan and it needs a good execution.
Best Regards,
Silvia.
On 3 Jan 2016 3:12 PM, "Kathy Reid" wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> As Joshua and Christopher have noted, nominations and election to Council
> for 2016 are now underway. The time is right to consider what sort of
> organisation Linux Australia wants to be, and what its priorities should be
> as we head towards 2020.
>
> To this end, I've put together the below document to start a conversation
> - hopefully a fruitful one - about what the community would like Linux
> Australia as an organisation to be working towards. It outlines our
> strategic environment and outlines a number of responses, then prioritises
> actions required to realise those responses. The Council has seen the
> document, and I'd like to thank Joshua Hesketh for taking the time to add
> comments and thoughts to get the conversation started.
>
> You may not agree with the analysis or actions outlined in the document -
> which is great - it means you have an opinion and can contribute to
> refining and shaping Linux Australia's strategy by sharing your thoughts,
> opinions and alternative viewpoints and recommended actions.
>
> Everyone with the link is able to comment on the document.
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WFeIm-TWVJX-u3gIM9K-hy-91-WFRrs4VVeDDIXCIQo/edit?usp=sharing
>
> My intention is that this document - 'Inflection Point' - will spur a
> conversation and debate within the community. It will then be Council's
> decision whether they choose to accept and/or adopt the recommended actions
> in this document.
>
> Please understand this is not a 'pitch' or similar for a nomination to
> Council - I'm undecided about whether to stand next year due to other life
> commitments in 2016.
>
> As always, your feedback and comments are warmly welcomed.
>
> Kind regards,
> Kathy
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
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From craige at mcwhirter.com.au Mon Jan 4 13:51:35 2016
From: craige at mcwhirter.com.au (Craige McWhirter)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 12:51:35 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] [Announce] Declaration of Council Election and call
for Nominations
In-Reply-To: <56875D21.9030305@nitrotech.org>
References: <56793476.4020005@linux.org.au> <56875D21.9030305@nitrotech.org>
Message-ID: <5689DE37.3080907@mcwhirter.com.au>
On 02/01/16 15:16, Joshua Hesketh wrote:
> TL;DR: Elections are open. Please nominate and/or stand.
I've been a Council Member this last 12 months and I intend to stand
again as a Council Member for the next 12.
What's become crystal clear to me over not only the last 12 months on
the LA council but over the last 20+ years of my involvement with Linux
User Groups in Australia is:
* How much work is borne by too few
* The high barrier of entry contributing work to LA and LUGs to help
"the few" and spread the load.
* The nature of the way contributions are currently gated makes change
slow and contributes additional workload for "the few".
* How new enthusiasm sweeps in, brings much needed fresh change but the
absence of long term planning makes today's "cool thing" tomorrow's
maintenance burden.
We have a large community of highly skilled people who would like to
contribute more but are inadvertently locked out or discouraged by the
current processes and the required restrictions around server access etc.
For example, a member who is skilled in their field, should not have to
send an email to an already busy council / sub-committee to have their
patch / fix / content change approved and then applied by the council.
It should be sufficient for the LA community to have a review service
(such as Gerrit) where a patch is applied for a configuration / content
change.
This change could then be tested by a testing tool, such as Jenkins and
reviewed by acknowledged peers in our community who "know their stuff".
When $ENOUGH peers have approved the change, it is applied
automatically, hands free.
What I've described is neither new nor revolutionary as many of us
already work this way in our professional lives, using the Gerrit and
Jenkins combination which I've listed as an example or other tools, such
as Phabricator, which fill the same role(s).
I see this as the way forward for Linux Australia to not only manage our
infrastructure securely, enable broader contribution to both
configuration, patching and content management (website) but also as a
service that could be offered to the broader FOSS community once we have
it working for us.
I think that such a review / testing service offers the Linux Australia
community:
* Lower barrier of entry to contribution.
* More eyes on changes and a broader number of approvers.
* Facilitate a migration to managing our web services better.
* Enable a maintenance and change culture that will endure beyond
current bursts of enthusiasm.
* Provide a service infrastructure that could be utilised by LUGs and
other groups.
* Learning opportunities for inexperienced contributors to learn from peers.
* An experience in professional practices for those that may not
otherwise get to use such systems.
While I am 2iC for LCA2017, the Director of LCA2017, Chris Neugebauer
supports my bid for re-election as OCM to engage in this particular body
of work, should the community and incoming committee believe this is a
worthwhile endeavour.
If you think this is a worthwhile effort, please free to nominate and
second me for the position of Council Member:
https://www.linux.org.au/membership/index.php?page=election-nominate&id=22
See you in Geelong :-)
--
Craige McWhirter
M: +61 4685 91819
W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
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From jwoithe at atrad.com.au Mon Jan 4 15:18:33 2016
From: jwoithe at atrad.com.au (Jonathan Woithe)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 14:48:33 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] Reminder: LCA2016 Multimedia and Music miniconf CfP
still open
Message-ID: <20160104041833.GA16388@marvin.atrad.com.au>
Hi everyone
This is a reminder that the CfP for the LCA2016 edition of the Multimedia
and Music Miniconf, being held on Monday 1 Feb 2016, is still open. We've
had some great submissions so far but have room for more. Detailed
information about the call for papers can be found at
http://www.annodex.org/events/lca2016_mmm/index.php/Main/CallForPapers
Presentations which use Open Source Software for any task related to
Multimedia and Music are welcome. Submissions for the jam/demo session are
also invited.
For further information or to make a submission please email
jwoithe (at) atrad.com.au.
Jonathan Woithe and Silvia Pfeiffer
LCA2016 Multimedia and Music Miniconf organisers
From nate at polynate.net Mon Jan 4 10:25:28 2016
From: nate at polynate.net (Nathan Bailey)
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 10:25:28 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID:
Excellent effort Kathy. Your experience and considered and balanced views
are well-reflected in this document.
LA elections attract many voters; can we get that same group of committed
people to contribute to this doc?
-N
On 4 January 2016 at 08:25, Silvia Pfeiffer
wrote:
> Hi Kathy,
>
> I just read your strategic plan document. It's very well thought through
> and reflects a lot of challenges that have been brought up repeatedly over
> the years. Your proposed steps forward make a lot of sense. In many
> respects, it's about maturing the organisation and giving it more ability
> to make an impact in the Australian context. I'm in support of making it
> happen and would hope you can stay around to help see it through. It's a
> good plan and it needs a good execution.
>
> Best Regards,
> Silvia.
> On 3 Jan 2016 3:12 PM, "Kathy Reid" wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> As Joshua and Christopher have noted, nominations and election to Council
>> for 2016 are now underway. The time is right to consider what sort of
>> organisation Linux Australia wants to be, and what its priorities should be
>> as we head towards 2020.
>>
>> To this end, I've put together the below document to start a conversation
>> - hopefully a fruitful one - about what the community would like Linux
>> Australia as an organisation to be working towards. It outlines our
>> strategic environment and outlines a number of responses, then prioritises
>> actions required to realise those responses. The Council has seen the
>> document, and I'd like to thank Joshua Hesketh for taking the time to add
>> comments and thoughts to get the conversation started.
>>
>> You may not agree with the analysis or actions outlined in the document -
>> which is great - it means you have an opinion and can contribute to
>> refining and shaping Linux Australia's strategy by sharing your thoughts,
>> opinions and alternative viewpoints and recommended actions.
>>
>> Everyone with the link is able to comment on the document.
>>
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WFeIm-TWVJX-u3gIM9K-hy-91-WFRrs4VVeDDIXCIQo/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>> My intention is that this document - 'Inflection Point' - will spur a
>> conversation and debate within the community. It will then be Council's
>> decision whether they choose to accept and/or adopt the recommended actions
>> in this document.
>>
>> Please understand this is not a 'pitch' or similar for a nomination to
>> Council - I'm undecided about whether to stand next year due to other life
>> commitments in 2016.
>>
>> As always, your feedback and comments are warmly welcomed.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Kathy
>> _______________________________________________
>> linux-aus mailing list
>> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
>> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
>
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From francois at fmarier.org Mon Jan 4 17:58:40 2016
From: francois at fmarier.org (Francois Marier)
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 22:58:40 -0800
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <20160104065840.GE5013@akranes.dyndns.org>
On 2016-01-03 at 14:38:36, Kathy Reid wrote:
> As always, your feedback and comments are warmly welcomed.
Thank you for putting together such a well-thought out in-depth analysis.
It's a great reflection of the level of professionalism you have brought to
the organisation during your two terms on the Council.
I have one suggestion and one question for you.
My suggestion, and I realise this will likely be an area of considerable
bikeshedding, would to consider a more inclusive name that reflects the
diversity of our community. In the English-speaking world, it seems that
most have settled on "FOSS" to include people of both Open Source and Free
Software leanings.
The question I have has to do with your observation that LA is lacking
volunteers in key areas and your suggestion that LA pays for some of its
core functions. Bringing paid contributors into a volunteer project is a
challenging problem. Do you have any thoughts as to how LA can do this
successfully? (i.e. without alienating its existing volunteer base)
Again, thanks not just for the detailed bug report but also for a well-done
patch :)
Francois
--
http://fmarier.org/
From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Tue Jan 5 11:05:33 2016
From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 11:05:33 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
Message-ID: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
Thanks everyone for your feedback on the document. I'm delighted to see
the meaningful, intelligent and mature discussion that is unfolding in
the document commentary.
In terms of next steps for Inflection Point, I'd like to propose the
following;
- We provide until Sunday 10th January for commentary on the document
(another five days)
- I'll then take another pass at synthesising or adding sections to the
document based on the commentary
- Clearly indicating which pieces will need to go to formal vote, either
at Council or by Special General Meeting
- And then issue another version of the document to the Community for
feedback
- And then formally submit the document to Council as a set of
Recommendations, upon which they can choose to endorse or reject
Does this seem like an appropriate way forward?
Regarding specific questions and suggestions that have been raised;
1 - A more inclusive name (raised by Fran?ois Marier)
My suggestion, and I realise this will likely be an area of considerable
bikeshedding, would to consider a more inclusive name that reflects the
diversity of our community. In the English-speaking world, it seems that
most have settled on "FOSS" to include people of both Open Source and Free
Software leanings.
Firstly thanks for raising this suggestion. In suggesting the name "Open
Source Australia" there were a number of considerations. Within the
Australian context, the concept of 'open' is more widely recognised I
feel than 'free' (libre). While I don't seek to detract at all from the
merits of the free software movement, the name should clearly position
us and allow us to strongly market the organisation. A name with "FOSS"
in the title, or a name which is too long makes this more difficult.
Open Source Australia is close to a number of other names - Open
Australia Foundation (*dips lid to Henare Degan and his amazing
colleagues for their excellent work here*), Open Source Industry
Association etc. However, I feel that it most accurately reflects what
it is that we do and want to be doing.
Is there a way to broaden the name to be inclusive of FOSS while still
making it accessible to a broad audience?
2 - Paid contributors in a voluntary project and the challenges this
presents (raised by Fran?ois Marier)
The question I have has to do with your observation that LA is lacking
volunteers in key areas and your suggestion that LA pays for some of its
core functions. Bringing paid contributors into a volunteer project is a
challenging problem. Do you have any thoughts as to how LA can do this
successfully? (i.e. without alienating its existing volunteer base)
Again, an excellent point. Bringing paid contributors in to an
organisation or project does represent a number of risks and challenges,
however I feel that with the current level of volunteer capacity and
capability it's the only viable way to advance the organisation. So,
here's how to mitigate those risks.
* *Alienation of volunteers:* Firstly it's useful to outline
expectations. A paid employee is contracted to carry out a set of
responsibilities to an expected standard. If they don't, they are
performance managed, and worst case, they are dismissed from
employment. Volunteers give what they can, when they can, to the
performance standard they are able to. In many cases this is equal
to (or better) than paid employment. In some cases however, it
isn't. To avoid alienating volunteers, the accountabilities,
objectives and performance standards for roles (Volunteer and Paid)
need to be well defined, and pay scales transparent. The added
benefit to volunteers is that by having paid employees, or by
outsourcing some tasks, it can help prevent volunteer burnout.
Indeed, if a volunteer consistently demonstrates high levels of
commitment and achievement, it would make them an ideal candidate
for a role. The other aspect here is that I think we need a
Volunteer Charter - that outlines the rights and responsibilities of
Volunteers - and there are some things that we could be doing better
here such as inductions [1]. Having a more structured approach to
Volunteering with the organisation, along with a more formalised
Volunteer Recognition programme, would also mitigate the risk of
alienation.
*
*
* *Additional overhead: *Having paid employees adds a level of
complexity to managing the organisation, as we become responsible
(and liable) for things like payroll, insurance, Workcover,
supervision, performance management and so on. By having only
Volunteers, some of this risk and responsibility is mitigated (our
insurance for instance covers Volunteers). So, the point I'm making
is that paid employees incur additional overheads than just expenses
- so we want to make sure that the structure and role they're hired
into is well thought through.
3 - Mentoring programmes and student outreach (Nathan Baily and others
within the document)
These are great suggestions, and would be projects in their own right.
My concern here is that as an organisation we don't currently have the
capability or capacity to execute them - not without significant
additional volunteer involvement. They are strong projects, and would
add significant value - but we're not resourced to make them happen.
4 - Paid tier of membership (Tennessee Leeuwenburg and others within the
document)
My feeling on this is that the overhead to collect the revenue would
outweigh the value it would provide - but clearly there are other
viewpoints here. I think this point would definitely benefit from
broader community reflection and discussion.
The link to the document again;
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WFeIm-TWVJX-u3gIM9K-hy-91-WFRrs4VVeDDIXCIQo/edit?usp=sharing
Kind regards,
Kathy
[1]
https://www.volunteer.vic.gov.au/information-for-volunteers/volunteer-rights-and-responsibilities
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From craige at mcwhirter.com.au Tue Jan 5 12:52:57 2016
From: craige at mcwhirter.com.au (Craige McWhirter)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 11:52:57 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au>
On 05/01/16 10:05, Kathy Reid wrote:
> - We provide until Sunday 10th January for commentary on the document
> (another five days)
Why such a tight time frame?
> - I'll then take another pass at synthesising or adding sections to the
> document based on the commentary
> - Clearly indicating which pieces will need to go to formal vote, either
> at Council or by Special General Meeting
> - And then issue another version of the document to the Community for
> feedback
> - And then formally submit the document to Council as a set of
> Recommendations, upon which they can choose to endorse or reject
>
> Does this seem like an appropriate way forward?
Thanks for getting that work down in a document. I have a minor suggestion.
Is it possible to convert the document to ReStructured text and post it
to a git repo, such as Github, Bitbucket or similar services, where
patches can be suggested and discussed more collaboratively?
I may be alone but I find the cathedral method using Google Docs makes
it quite hard to follow, track and contribute.
Thanks :-D
--
Craige McWhirter
M: +61 4685 91819
W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
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From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Tue Jan 5 13:15:39 2016
From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 13:15:39 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au>
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au>
Message-ID: <568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
On 05/01/16 12:52, Craige McWhirter wrote:
> On 05/01/16 10:05, Kathy Reid wrote:
>
>> - We provide until Sunday 10th January for commentary on the document
>> (another five days)
> Why such a tight time frame?
Council nominations end on Sunday. Given that none of the Nominees have
(as yet) emailed this list articulating what direction specifically they
would like to take LA in, and what their positions are on key issues (as
opposed to providing their credentials for standing - none of which I
dispute at all), this document helps to draw out the key decision points
and key strategic questions Council 2016 faces.
>
>> - I'll then take another pass at synthesising or adding sections to the
>> document based on the commentary
>> - Clearly indicating which pieces will need to go to formal vote, either
>> at Council or by Special General Meeting
>> - And then issue another version of the document to the Community for
>> feedback
>> - And then formally submit the document to Council as a set of
>> Recommendations, upon which they can choose to endorse or reject
>>
>> Does this seem like an appropriate way forward?
> Thanks for getting that work down in a document. I have a minor suggestion.
>
> Is it possible to convert the document to ReStructured text and post it
> to a git repo, such as Github, Bitbucket or similar services, where
> patches can be suggested and discussed more collaboratively?
>
> I may be alone but I find the cathedral method using Google Docs makes
> it quite hard to follow, track and contribute.
Happy to be guided by what the community wants here - if most people
want an .md file in a Git repo, very happy to oblige.
>
> Thanks :-D
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
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From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Tue Jan 5 14:01:11 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 14:01:11 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au>
<568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID:
To be honest, I am quite happy with the Google Docs option, although it can
get crowded at times. I like seeing the conversation and the material all
in one place.
On 5 January 2016 at 13:15, Kathy Reid wrote:
> On 05/01/16 12:52, Craige McWhirter wrote:
>
> On 05/01/16 10:05, Kathy Reid wrote:
>
>
> - We provide until Sunday 10th January for commentary on the document
> (another five days)
>
> Why such a tight time frame?
>
> Council nominations end on Sunday. Given that none of the Nominees have
> (as yet) emailed this list articulating what direction specifically they
> would like to take LA in, and what their positions are on key issues (as
> opposed to providing their credentials for standing - none of which I
> dispute at all), this document helps to draw out the key decision points
> and key strategic questions Council 2016 faces.
>
> - I'll then take another pass at synthesising or adding sections to the
> document based on the commentary
> - Clearly indicating which pieces will need to go to formal vote, either
> at Council or by Special General Meeting
> - And then issue another version of the document to the Community for
> feedback
> - And then formally submit the document to Council as a set of
> Recommendations, upon which they can choose to endorse or reject
>
> Does this seem like an appropriate way forward?
>
> Thanks for getting that work down in a document. I have a minor suggestion.
>
> Is it possible to convert the document to ReStructured text and post it
> to a git repo, such as Github, Bitbucket or similar services, where
> patches can be suggested and discussed more collaboratively?
>
> I may be alone but I find the cathedral method using Google Docs makes
> it quite hard to follow, track and contribute.
>
> Happy to be guided by what the community wants here - if most people want
> an .md file in a Git repo, very happy to oblige.
>
>
> Thanks :-D
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing listlinux-aus at lists.linux.org.auhttp://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
>
--
--------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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From craige at mcwhirter.com.au Tue Jan 5 14:28:30 2016
From: craige at mcwhirter.com.au (Craige McWhirter)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 13:28:30 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au> <568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <568B385E.2090800@mcwhirter.com.au>
On 05/01/16 12:15, Kathy Reid wrote:
> On 05/01/16 12:52, Craige McWhirter wrote:
>> On 05/01/16 10:05, Kathy Reid wrote:
>>
>>> - We provide until Sunday 10th January for commentary on the document
>>> (another five days)
>> Why such a tight time frame?
> Council nominations end on Sunday. Given that none of the Nominees have
> (as yet) emailed this list articulating what direction specifically they
> would like to take LA in, and what their positions are on key issues (as
> opposed to providing their credentials for standing - none of which I
> dispute at all), this document helps to draw out the key decision points
> and key strategic questions Council 2016 faces.
I appear to have mis-interpreted the document as a call to collaborate
on a strategic plan. Such a document will take months of community
consultation to get right (in some commercial organisations they take
years).
The document is much needed and raises many good points but also reaches
some conclusions where the case for the conclusion has not yet been
articulated (in the document) or the conclusion clashes with other
groups / issues.
I think these are excellent issues to be raised, discussed and resolved.
I think we need to articulate the "why" in some of these conclusions and
move on them (see my nomination email). We also need to review some of
the conclusions that don't quite line up and get them right too.
If this document's intention is to be a collaborative strategic plan for
Linux Australia, then a short deadline does not really fit with that
intention (and over time Google Docs will become more of a hindrance
than a help).
Especially as much of the community are quite probably still on holidays :-)
--
Craige McWhirter
M: +61 4685 91819
W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
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From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Tue Jan 5 15:38:13 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 15:38:13 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568B385E.2090800@mcwhirter.com.au>
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au>
<568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B385E.2090800@mcwhirter.com.au>
Message-ID:
Hi Craige,
Great points. I think some of the document falls into "Strat plan / action
targets" territory, while some is "mission and vision" stuff. I wonder if
the scope should be tightened to "mission and vision" for the purposes of
the approving at the AGM, with a "suggested actions" section to fall under
the consideration of the new committee?
On 5 January 2016 at 14:28, Craige McWhirter
wrote:
> On 05/01/16 12:15, Kathy Reid wrote:
> > On 05/01/16 12:52, Craige McWhirter wrote:
> >> On 05/01/16 10:05, Kathy Reid wrote:
> >>
> >>> - We provide until Sunday 10th January for commentary on the document
> >>> (another five days)
>
> >> Why such a tight time frame?
>
> > Council nominations end on Sunday. Given that none of the Nominees have
> > (as yet) emailed this list articulating what direction specifically they
> > would like to take LA in, and what their positions are on key issues (as
> > opposed to providing their credentials for standing - none of which I
> > dispute at all), this document helps to draw out the key decision points
> > and key strategic questions Council 2016 faces.
>
> I appear to have mis-interpreted the document as a call to collaborate
> on a strategic plan. Such a document will take months of community
> consultation to get right (in some commercial organisations they take
> years).
>
> The document is much needed and raises many good points but also reaches
> some conclusions where the case for the conclusion has not yet been
> articulated (in the document) or the conclusion clashes with other
> groups / issues.
>
> I think these are excellent issues to be raised, discussed and resolved.
>
> I think we need to articulate the "why" in some of these conclusions and
> move on them (see my nomination email). We also need to review some of
> the conclusions that don't quite line up and get them right too.
>
> If this document's intention is to be a collaborative strategic plan for
> Linux Australia, then a short deadline does not really fit with that
> intention (and over time Google Docs will become more of a hindrance
> than a help).
>
> Especially as much of the community are quite probably still on holidays
> :-)
>
> --
> Craige McWhirter
> M: +61 4685 91819
> W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
>
--
--------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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From stewart at flamingspork.com Tue Jan 5 15:36:02 2016
From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith)
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2016 15:36:02 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <87y4c44p8t.fsf@flamingspork.com>
Kathy Reid writes:
> 1 - A more inclusive name (raised by Fran?ois Marier)
>
> My suggestion, and I realise this will likely be an area of considerable
> bikeshedding, would to consider a more inclusive name that reflects the
> diversity of our community. In the English-speaking world, it seems that
> most have settled on "FOSS" to include people of both Open Source and Free
> Software leanings.
It's been the source of considerable bike shedding over the years. When
I was more directly involved with the runnin of LA, my answer was
typically just "no" as there was always enough actual things to be
accomplished, and the Linux name had about 10,000% more brand
recognition in the general populus than *any* alternative.
Besides - when was the last time you saw a rebranding of *anything* and
went "yes, that makes complete sense and was worth all the money and
time spent on it" compared to the 32,767 times that it wasn't the case?
> 2 - Paid contributors in a voluntary project and the challenges this
> presents (raised by Fran?ois Marier)
>
> The question I have has to do with your observation that LA is lacking
> volunteers in key areas and your suggestion that LA pays for some of its
> core functions. Bringing paid contributors into a volunteer project is a
> challenging problem. Do you have any thoughts as to how LA can do this
> successfully? (i.e. without alienating its existing volunteer base)
>
>
> Again, an excellent point. Bringing paid contributors in to an
> organisation or project does represent a number of risks and challenges,
> however I feel that with the current level of volunteer capacity and
> capability it's the only viable way to advance the organisation. So,
> here's how to mitigate those risks.
I think it's possible - and this is *much* more prominent in the wider
FOSS community than it was back in 2003 with the revitalisation of Linux
Australia.
> * *Alienation of volunteers:* Firstly it's useful to outline
> expectations. A paid employee is contracted to carry out a set of
> responsibilities to an expected standard. If they don't, they are
> performance managed, and worst case, they are dismissed from
> employment. Volunteers give what they can, when they can, to the
> performance standard they are able to. In many cases this is equal
> to (or better) than paid employment. In some cases however, it
> isn't. To avoid alienating volunteers, the accountabilities,
> objectives and performance standards for roles (Volunteer and Paid)
> need to be well defined, and pay scales transparent. The added
> benefit to volunteers is that by having paid employees, or by
> outsourcing some tasks, it can help prevent volunteer burnout.
> Indeed, if a volunteer consistently demonstrates high levels of
> commitment and achievement, it would make them an ideal candidate
> for a role. The other aspect here is that I think we need a
> Volunteer Charter - that outlines the rights and responsibilities of
> Volunteers - and there are some things that we could be doing better
> here such as inductions [1]. Having a more structured approach to
> Volunteering with the organisation, along with a more formalised
> Volunteer Recognition programme, would also mitigate the risk of
> alienation.
It may not be a problem at all - a bunch of the things that LA would
have to pay people to do there simply aren't enough volunteer hours
for in our community - or it's their day job and they don't want to also
do it on their downtime.
> * *Additional overhead: *Having paid employees adds a level of
> complexity to managing the organisation, as we become responsible
> (and liable) for things like payroll, insurance, Workcover,
> supervision, performance management and so on. By having only
> Volunteers, some of this risk and responsibility is mitigated (our
> insurance for instance covers Volunteers). So, the point I'm making
> is that paid employees incur additional overheads than just expenses
> - so we want to make sure that the structure and role they're hired
> into is well thought through.
This can be solved by contracting out things more rather than directly
hiring, like we've done in the past.
--
Stewart Smith
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From craige at mcwhirter.com.au Tue Jan 5 15:52:20 2016
From: craige at mcwhirter.com.au (Craige McWhirter)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 14:52:20 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au> <568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B385E.2090800@mcwhirter.com.au>
Message-ID: <568B4C04.2060102@mcwhirter.com.au>
On 05/01/16 14:38, Tennessee Leeuwenburg wrote:
> Great points. I think some of the document falls into "Strat plan /
> action targets" territory, while some is "mission and vision" stuff. I
> wonder if the scope should be tightened to "mission and vision" for the
> purposes of the approving at the AGM, with a "suggested actions" section
> to fall under the consideration of the new committee?
I think the document is a great foundation for a strategic plan but it's
nowhere near ready, contains some community flash points that as they
stand I don't expect will be accepted.
There are also many action points contained within the document that are
well within the Council's remit to act on during their term and don't
require AGM approval.
You would not want to bundle, say approval of membership management
changes with approval of suggested orgnaisation name and mission changes.
In the time frame that's being considered, it makes a great platform
statement for a candidate for whom all those items ring as true.
However as a strategic plan, it needs much more development and I think
some issues will need more community consultation to be accepted.
--
Craige McWhirter
M: +61 4685 91819
W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
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From lev at levlafayette.com Tue Jan 5 15:45:52 2016
From: lev at levlafayette.com (Lev Lafayette)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 15:45:52 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au>
<568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID:
On Tue, January 5, 2016 1:15 pm, Kathy Reid wrote:
> Happy to be guided by what the community wants here - if most people
> want an .md file in a Git repo, very happy to oblige.
I'd prefer that.
All the best,
--
Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech
Mngmnt) (Chifley)
mobile: 0432 255 208
RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt
From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Tue Jan 5 17:13:50 2016
From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 17:13:50 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia (Google or Git .md)
In-Reply-To:
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au> <568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <568B5F1E.7080100@kathyreid.id.au>
Given that we have votes for both options, I'll leave as is until a
majority emerges.
Alternatively, if you prefer to review in Markdown you might want to run
this script;
http://lifehacker.com/this-script-converts-google-documents-to-markdown-for-e-511746113
Regards,
K.
>> Happy to be guided by what the community wants here - if most people
>> want an .md file in a Git repo, very happy to oblige.
> I'd prefer that.
>
> All the best,
>
From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Tue Jan 5 17:20:12 2016
From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 17:20:12 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568B4C04.2060102@mcwhirter.com.au>
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au> <568B274B.8040909@kathyreid.id.au>
<568B385E.2090800@mcwhirter.com.au>
<568B4C04.2060102@mcwhirter.com.au>
Message-ID: <568B609C.2040200@kathyreid.id.au>
> I think the document is a great foundation for a strategic plan but it's
> nowhere near ready, contains some community flash points that as they
> stand I don't expect will be accepted.
Fair point - do you see an alternative way of progressing the
development or consultant of the document?
> There are also many action points contained within the document that are
> well within the Council's remit to act on during their term and don't
> require AGM approval.
Agreed - do we need to separate out in the document those pieces which
need AGM versus Council approval?
> You would not want to bundle, say approval of membership management
> changes with approval of suggested orgnaisation name and mission changes.
>
> In the time frame that's being considered, it makes a great platform
> statement for a candidate for whom all those items ring as true.
True, as previously stated I'm undecided about whether to run. If I were
to run, it would be to seek a mandate to effect the changes outlined in
the document.
> However as a strategic plan, it needs much more development and I think
> some issues will need more community consultation to be accepted.
Fair point - what sort of shape or structure do you propose for that
consultation?
Regards,
Kathy
From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Tue Jan 5 19:02:21 2016
From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 19:02:21 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <87y4c44p8t.fsf@flamingspork.com>
References: <568B08CD.2020902@kathyreid.id.au>
<87y4c44p8t.fsf@flamingspork.com>
Message-ID: <568B788D.6060301@kathyreid.id.au>
On 05/01/16 15:36, Stewart Smith wrote:
> Kathy Reid writes:
>> 1 - A more inclusive name (raised by Fran?ois Marier)
>>
>> My suggestion, and I realise this will likely be an area of considerable
>> bikeshedding, would to consider a more inclusive name that reflects the
>> diversity of our community. In the English-speaking world, it seems that
>> most have settled on "FOSS" to include people of both Open Source and Free
>> Software leanings.
> It's been the source of considerable bike shedding over the years. When
> I was more directly involved with the runnin of LA, my answer was
> typically just "no" as there was always enough actual things to be
> accomplished, and the Linux name had about 10,000% more brand
> recognition in the general populus than *any* alternative.
>
> Besides - when was the last time you saw a rebranding of *anything* and
> went "yes, that makes complete sense and was worth all the money and
> time spent on it" compared to the 32,767 times that it wasn't the case?
Doing nothing around rebranding or repositioning is one possible
strategic response - ie maintaining the status quo. We *could* do that,
but I don't think it's the right response. LA has change, the Members we
serve have changed, our objectives have changed, and the organisation
needs to change.
>> 2 - Paid contributors in a voluntary project and the challenges this
>> presents (raised by Fran?ois Marier)
>>
>> The question I have has to do with your observation that LA is lacking
>> volunteers in key areas and your suggestion that LA pays for some of its
>> core functions. Bringing paid contributors into a volunteer project is a
>> challenging problem. Do you have any thoughts as to how LA can do this
>> successfully? (i.e. without alienating its existing volunteer base)
>>
>>
>> Again, an excellent point. Bringing paid contributors in to an
>> organisation or project does represent a number of risks and challenges,
>> however I feel that with the current level of volunteer capacity and
>> capability it's the only viable way to advance the organisation. So,
>> here's how to mitigate those risks.
> I think it's possible - and this is *much* more prominent in the wider
> FOSS community than it was back in 2003 with the revitalisation of Linux
> Australia.
Agreed
>
>> * *Alienation of volunteers:* Firstly it's useful to outline
>> expectations. A paid employee is contracted to carry out a set of
>> responsibilities to an expected standard. If they don't, they are
>> performance managed, and worst case, they are dismissed from
>> employment. Volunteers give what they can, when they can, to the
>> performance standard they are able to. In many cases this is equal
>> to (or better) than paid employment. In some cases however, it
>> isn't. To avoid alienating volunteers, the accountabilities,
>> objectives and performance standards for roles (Volunteer and Paid)
>> need to be well defined, and pay scales transparent. The added
>> benefit to volunteers is that by having paid employees, or by
>> outsourcing some tasks, it can help prevent volunteer burnout.
>> Indeed, if a volunteer consistently demonstrates high levels of
>> commitment and achievement, it would make them an ideal candidate
>> for a role. The other aspect here is that I think we need a
>> Volunteer Charter - that outlines the rights and responsibilities of
>> Volunteers - and there are some things that we could be doing better
>> here such as inductions [1]. Having a more structured approach to
>> Volunteering with the organisation, along with a more formalised
>> Volunteer Recognition programme, would also mitigate the risk of
>> alienation.
> It may not be a problem at all - a bunch of the things that LA would
> have to pay people to do there simply aren't enough volunteer hours
> for in our community - or it's their day job and they don't want to also
> do it on their downtime.
Agreed
>
>> * *Additional overhead: *Having paid employees adds a level of
>> complexity to managing the organisation, as we become responsible
>> (and liable) for things like payroll, insurance, Workcover,
>> supervision, performance management and so on. By having only
>> Volunteers, some of this risk and responsibility is mitigated (our
>> insurance for instance covers Volunteers). So, the point I'm making
>> is that paid employees incur additional overheads than just expenses
>> - so we want to make sure that the structure and role they're hired
>> into is well thought through.
> This can be solved by contracting out things more rather than directly
> hiring, like we've done in the past.
Also agreed
>
From aj at erisian.com.au Wed Jan 6 02:41:25 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 01:41:25 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <20160104065840.GE5013@akranes.dyndns.org>
<568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au>
<568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
On Sun, Jan 03, 2016 at 02:38:36PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote:
> To this end, I've put together the below document to start a conversation -
> You may not agree with the analysis or actions outlined in the document -
> which is great - ...
...
> Everyone with the link is able to comment on the document.
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WFeIm-TWVJX-u3gIM9K-hy-91-WFRrs4VVeDDIXCIQo/edit?usp=sharing
So this irks me a bit -- how does it make sense to talk about rebranding
as "Open Source Australia" or being a community/volunteer organisation
while using closed-source, commercial, proprietary tools when free and
open solutions to the same problem exist?
I understand the counter-argument -- google docs is so easy compared to
using git or setting up an etherpad, and the LA admin team is already too
busy, and it doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things anyway,
etc, etc.
But... I got into Linux Australia back in the days when all the same
arguments applied to using Linux versus Windows, and just not using open
source at all. And I don't really think my views have changed much --
I still find it more fun and valuable to be struggling with leading
edge technology that's obscure but free, compared to just using the same
stuff pre-packaged stuff everyone else uses.
I mean isn't that kind-of the point? Do we build our own tools, and send
patches around to each other debating the merits of different ways of
doing things, and thereby building new and better things? Or do we just
use whatever's state of the art, without it mattering how it works or
how we might change it?
There's a good argument for the latter: it's a lot easier, and a
lot friendlier to people who aren't great programmers who still want
to contribute to the organisation. And no matter how good you are at
programming, it definitely gets tedious having to use second rate systems
for everything.
I guess it's whether you take "advocating for open source" to mean
"everyone should use open source" versus "everyone should be able to take
their software and tweak it until it works how they want". Granted, it's
totally unrealistic to expect everyone to be able or even interested in
hacking on every bit of software they use. But I guess when I was thinking
of an open source utopia, I imagined a lot more hacking, rather than
just sticking "Libre" in front of "Office" and not having to pay for it.
If LA isn't about building cool things to scratch your own itches and
writing cool software and passing around patches; I'm not sure what it's
really about anymore? Maybe it just becomes an industry advocacy group
like the Linux Foundation, except that the "industry" being represented
is made up of open source projects (like Python and Linux) rather than
actual companies? But is that really different to OSIA? It certainly
doesn't capture the spirit of linux.conf.au or what interests me.
But if LA *is* about building cool things to scratch your own itch,
and passing around patches, and whatnot, basing its processes around
closed, proprietary systems like Google Docs or Xero or whatever else
(Slack? Trello?) is effectively saying "well sure, open source and home
hackery is cool, but not for important stuff like managing your finances
or running an organisation".
If LA isn't willing to change how it runs a tiny organisation with a few
thousand members and a couple of moderate sized conferences to be in line
with open source principles, why should a huge company with thousands
of employees and millions in revenue listen to LA suggesting it change
its business model for the sake of open source principles? Why should a
government listen to LA opposing laws to support those businesses models?
It just seems to be a very compromised position to try to take, and I
have a lot of trouble supporting it.
But hey, maybe I was just wrong all this time saying "free software"
and "open source" are different ways of talking about the same thing,
and this sort of compromise really is what "open source" is about,
and I should just wish y'all well and write an apology to RMS...
On Tue, Jan 05, 2016 at 11:52:57AM +1000, Craige McWhirter wrote:
> Is it possible to convert the document to ReStructured text and post it
> to a git repo, such as Github, Bitbucket or similar services, where
> patches can be suggested and discussed more collaboratively?
Anyway +1 to this.
On Sun, Jan 03, 2016 at 10:58:40PM -0800, Francois Marier wrote:
> My suggestion, and I realise this will likely be an area of considerable
> bikeshedding, would to consider a more inclusive name that reflects the
> diversity of our community. In the English-speaking world, it seems that
> most have settled on "FOSS" to include people of both Open Source and Free
> Software leanings.
There was a member vote on which name to use, with "Linux Australia"
winning by outright majority, iirc (37 1st preference no name change,
versus 35 votes with a different first preference [0]).
I don't really think anything's changed since that vote (Kathy's opinion
hasn't for instance!) so rehashing it doesn't really seem productive.
Co-branding still seems like a viable alternative approach to me though:
don't try to rename LA, just have a separate trademark to use where
that's appropriate. After a few years, if that trademark gets as much
(or more) mindshare as "Linux Australia", change the name then.
(As I said at the time, I think "opensource.org.au" would be a better
mark to use for this effort than "Open Source Australia" (and I'm still
miffed that it wasn't on the ballot). Of course, that's for the goals *I*
care about -- so "opensource.org.au" seeming a bit weird and hackery is
a positive, not a negative)
> Bringing paid contributors into a volunteer project is a
> challenging problem. Do you have any thoughts as to how LA can do this
> successfully? (i.e. without alienating its existing volunteer base)
A simple policy for this might be: quarantine all existing funds, and any
future funds from volunteer run events such that they're not used to pay
salaries (directly or by hiring a contractor or whatever). That at least
avoids the salaried folks profiting off the unpaid labours of volunteers.
Personally, my biggest concern isn't in having a paid executive officer
to do cool stuff, but rather having syadmins with enough time to keep
the old (and current) lca sites up available.
Some comments on things from the document:
> Moreover, Linux Australia?s original reasons for existence -
> supporting Linux User Groups, promoting Linux and free/open source
> software (FOSS) are less valid in an era of [...]
I don't understand why anyone would think "promoting Linux and free/open
source software" is "less valid" but still care about Linux Australia
at all.
> Australia?s technology policy is becoming ever more conservative, with
> mandatory metadata retention and facial recognition capabilities being
> deployed.
There is nothing "conservative" about metadata retention or facial
recognition capabilities. They're both fundamentally new policies only
possible because of recent technology breakthroughs, and they're supported
by both "progressive" and "conservative" governments.
(I note in the comments, Tennessee suggests "apolitical image" as a
strength of the organisation. If so, honestly I think it's a strength
that's pretty threatened...)
> The existing Membership management tool, MemberDB is end of life and a
> replacement is sorely needed. Some discussion has occurred towards this
> goal, but momentum toward an outcome has not been sustained.
I would say the momentum that was there was to set some criteria on what
the replacement should do, then evaluate alternatives. Proposing CiviCRM
as the right solution rather than doing that is exactly what killed the
momentum, from my perspective...
I think "end of life" is just standing in for a value judgement, not
that there's an actual time limit on how long it can kept being used;
ie it would be more accurate to just write "MemberDB is pretty crap in
the author's opinion". Evaluating it against actual criteria would be
better, of course...
> The behaviour of some Members exhibited on mailing lists is appalling,
> and unbecoming of an organisation of Linux Australia?s otherwise high
> professionalism.
I have no idea what this is even talking about. Apparently it's a
dog-whistle since from the comments on the document, it's clear to
others. I guess that means I'm on the opposing side of the debate and
should feel attacked.
(I also don't know why you'd go from telling Members that they're
appalling, unbecoming and unprofessional, then expect additional volunteer
contributions...)
> Several other organisations run profitable technical events, making
> for a very full Linux, open source and technical conference and event
> calendar nationally. This has the potential to limit attendance, and
> therefore profitability of Linux Australia events in the future.
I don't think this is even a threat [1] -- LA is a non-profit, so
not making a profit isn't a problem in and of itself; and if, eg,
linux.conf.au doesn't run anymore because there are just *too many*
Linux conferences in Australia, that's not a problem either -- it's a
MASSIVE success.
Now, LA's conferences being badly run, that would be a threat, sure. If
there were things LA was doing with the return from conferences that would
be hard to live without, then losing that return would be a threat too,
but I don't think there are any such things?
I don't really think "multiple open source organisations" is a threat
to LA's goals either; "lots of people caring about open source" is also
a success condition, not a failure. It could be a threat if the other
organisations had different goals that were actually inimical to open
source somehow, but I don't think that's the case either.
(I guess it's a threat to how impressive "Linux Australia council member"
sounds on a resume, or to KPIs like "how many people pay attention to us"
or "how much money do we have", but I don't think any of those are LA's
actual *goals*)
Actually, I don't really understand why LA's conferences like LCA,
PyCon.au etc aren't headlining the list of strengths, and worse are
kind-of referenced as a weakness in so far as "Some events in the Linux
Australia stable have questionable viability in the long term". Those
conferences are LA's foremost contribution towards its goals as an
organisation and its key strength as far as I'm concerned. Maybe the
author, as one of the volunteers making one of those conferences happen,
is just trying to be modest [2]?
I guess I'd say:
- strengths:
a) successful stable of conferences/events
b) tradition of functional/good governance
c) good financial handling (presuming that's still the case)
d) good will of volunteers, members, and community
- weaknesses:
e) exploited/offline systems
f) membership management
g) communication with members
h) administrative load on volunteers
i) media participation/public awareness/publicity?
j) "Linux" still turns some people off?
- opportunities:
* back/endorse/suport existing and new conferences/events
(enhancing (a))
* grass-roots influence of industry/government policy development
related to open source (enabled by (d) but prevented by (f,g,i))
* develop/deploy better membership management tools (resolving
(f,g))
* pay for (hire/outsource) maintenance tasks (sysadmin? video?)
(resolving (e,h))
* co-brand as "opensource.org.au" (resolving (j), enhancing (a)
but effect on (d) could be -ve)
- threats:
* good will may be lost quickly if decision making degrades
(eg, lists full of flamewars, non-consultative decision making;
(b) vs (d))
* running conferences might be harder if good will is lost, or
financial management becomes poor ((a) vs (c,d))
* each conference adds more systems to maintain for the admin and
mirror teams ((e,h) vs (a))
(strengths/weaknesses ordered most to least, at least IMO;
opportunities/threats just in the order I thought of them while going
down the strengths/weaknesses)
Cheers,
aj
[0] http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2013-January/020276.html
[1] Is "threats" rather than "challenges" old-fashioned or something?
Internally focussed vs externally focussed seems odd too; "How things
are at present (strengths/weaknesses)" versus "How things might change
(opportunities/threats)" seems more useful to me.
[2] Wow, maybe the whole lca 2016 team is being modest? No names listed
under https://linux.conf.au/about/team ?
From lev at levlafayette.com Wed Jan 6 09:04:30 2016
From: lev at levlafayette.com (Lev Lafayette)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 09:04:30 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID:
On Wed, January 6, 2016 2:41 am, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 03, 2016 at 02:38:36PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote:
>
>> To this end, I've put together the below document to start a
>> conversation - You may not agree with the analysis or actions outlined
>> in the document - which is great - ...
>
>> Everyone with the link is able to comment on the document.
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WFeIm-TWVJX-u3gIM9K-hy-91-WFRrs4VVeD
>> DIXCIQo/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>
> So this irks me a bit -- how does it make sense to talk about rebranding
> as "Open Source Australia" or being a community/volunteer organisation
> while using closed-source, commercial, proprietary tools when free and
> open solutions to the same problem exist?
You're certainly not the only one who has thought this.
At the very least we should have the courage of our convictions to eat our
own dogfood.
On another matter, it's pretty odd that Linux Users of Victoria, Inc.,
isn't mentioned at all in the document. I certainly thought it (or other
independent LUGs) would be included under:
"There are a number of other related Linux, digital rights and open source
organisations in Australia and internationally, and Linux Australia needs
to consider the nature of its relationship (if any) with these. They
include;...."
All the best,
--
Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech
Mngmnt) (Chifley)
mobile: 0432 255 208
RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt
From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Wed Jan 6 10:06:55 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 10:06:55 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID:
Personally, I think when you need to get a job done, it's perfectly fine to
use whatever you want to achieve that. We all contribute to open source in
various ways and I think that's more than sufficient.
On 6 January 2016 at 09:04, Lev Lafayette wrote:
> On Wed, January 6, 2016 2:41 am, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 03, 2016 at 02:38:36PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote:
> >
> >> To this end, I've put together the below document to start a
> >> conversation - You may not agree with the analysis or actions outlined
> >> in the document - which is great - ...
> >
> >> Everyone with the link is able to comment on the document.
> >>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WFeIm-TWVJX-u3gIM9K-hy-91-WFRrs4VVeD
> >> DIXCIQo/edit?usp=sharing
> >>
> >
> > So this irks me a bit -- how does it make sense to talk about rebranding
> > as "Open Source Australia" or being a community/volunteer organisation
> > while using closed-source, commercial, proprietary tools when free and
> > open solutions to the same problem exist?
>
> You're certainly not the only one who has thought this.
>
> At the very least we should have the courage of our convictions to eat our
> own dogfood.
>
> On another matter, it's pretty odd that Linux Users of Victoria, Inc.,
> isn't mentioned at all in the document. I certainly thought it (or other
> independent LUGs) would be included under:
>
> "There are a number of other related Linux, digital rights and open source
> organisations in Australia and internationally, and Linux Australia needs
> to consider the nature of its relationship (if any) with these. They
> include;...."
>
> All the best,
>
>
> --
> Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech
> Mngmnt) (Chifley)
> mobile: 0432 255 208
> RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines
> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
--
--------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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From stewart at flamingspork.com Wed Jan 6 10:19:14 2016
From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith)
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2016 10:19:14 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
Anthony Towns writes:
>> Everyone with the link is able to comment on the document.
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WFeIm-TWVJX-u3gIM9K-hy-91-WFRrs4VVeDDIXCIQo/edit?usp=sharing
>
> So this irks me a bit -- how does it make sense to talk about rebranding
> as "Open Source Australia" or being a community/volunteer organisation
> while using closed-source, commercial, proprietary tools when free and
> open solutions to the same problem exist?
>
> I understand the counter-argument -- google docs is so easy compared to
> using git or setting up an etherpad, and the LA admin team is already too
> busy, and it doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things anyway,
> etc, etc.
This could be solved by throwing money at the problem to make the open
source tools adequate to be used by the organisation, and would probably
be a worthwhile and widley supported use of LA funds. It's not
unprecedented either.
>> Australia?s technology policy is becoming ever more conservative, with
>> mandatory metadata retention and facial recognition capabilities being
>> deployed.
>
> There is nothing "conservative" about metadata retention or facial
> recognition capabilities. They're both fundamentally new policies only
> possible because of recent technology breakthroughs, and they're supported
> by both "progressive" and "conservative" governments.
+1
We've seen governments and PMs change many times of the existance of LA,
and things haven't gotten fundamentally better - although I believe at
least we're not all going to jail for using VCRs now.
>> The existing Membership management tool, MemberDB is end of life and a
>> replacement is sorely needed. Some discussion has occurred towards this
>> goal, but momentum toward an outcome has not been sustained.
>
> I would say the momentum that was there was to set some criteria on what
> the replacement should do, then evaluate alternatives. Proposing CiviCRM
> as the right solution rather than doing that is exactly what killed the
> momentum, from my perspective...
>
> I think "end of life" is just standing in for a value judgement, not
> that there's an actual time limit on how long it can kept being used;
> ie it would be more accurate to just write "MemberDB is pretty crap in
> the author's opinion". Evaluating it against actual criteria would be
> better, of course...
or someone starting to make some small incremental improvements. Every
attempt at rewriting from scratch has gone nowhere, largely because
that's a whole bunch of extra effort.
> I guess I'd say:
>
> - strengths:
> a) successful stable of conferences/events
> b) tradition of functional/good governance
> c) good financial handling (presuming that's still the case)
> d) good will of volunteers, members, and community
>
> - weaknesses:
> e) exploited/offline systems
> f) membership management
> g) communication with members
> h) administrative load on volunteers
> i) media participation/public awareness/publicity?
> j) "Linux" still turns some people off?
Maybe the word "linux" does turn some people off - but I'd make the
argument that we just shouldn't care about that. There's what, about 1
billion linux users across the globe? Number who care about Linux vs
FOSS so hard who aren't RMS? 0.00000000001% maybe?
--
Stewart Smith
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From stewart at flamingspork.com Wed Jan 6 10:21:29 2016
From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith)
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2016 10:21:29 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <87k2nn4npi.fsf@flamingspork.com>
Lev Lafayette writes:
> On another matter, it's pretty odd that Linux Users of Victoria, Inc.,
> isn't mentioned at all in the document. I certainly thought it (or other
> independent LUGs) would be included under:
I like the idea of LA being an org that can help local user groups,
especially with all the overhead that goes with running a user group.
--
Stewart Smith
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From noel.butler at ausics.net Wed Jan 6 10:33:57 2016
From: noel.butler at ausics.net (Noel Butler)
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2016 09:33:57 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID:
On 06/01/2016 01:41, Anthony Towns wrote:
>
>
> There was a member vote on which name to use, with "Linux Australia"
> winning by outright majority, iirc (37 1st preference no name change,
> versus 35 votes with a different first preference [0]).
It's kinda like Queensland and daylight saving, a vote was called, the
people voted an overwhelming NO, but every year since, especially at
every change of government, the same noisy minority keeps popping back
up making noises trying to get their way.
From la at mjec.net Wed Jan 6 11:50:06 2016
From: la at mjec.net (Michael Cordover)
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2016 11:50:06 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
Message-ID: <1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
FWIW, I think that this is the worst kind of bike-shedding. Before we
have a discussion about what we should do in future, let's have a long
discussion about what we should use to have that discussion. Blarg.
On Wed, Jan 6, 2016, at 10:19, Stewart Smith wrote:
> Anthony Towns writes:
> >> The existing Membership management tool, MemberDB is end of life and a
> >> replacement is sorely needed. Some discussion has occurred towards this
> >> goal, but momentum toward an outcome has not been sustained.
> >
> > I would say the momentum that was there was to set some criteria on what
> > the replacement should do, then evaluate alternatives. Proposing CiviCRM
> > as the right solution rather than doing that is exactly what killed the
> > momentum, from my perspective...
> >
> > I think "end of life" is just standing in for a value judgement, not
> > that there's an actual time limit on how long it can kept being used;
> > ie it would be more accurate to just write "MemberDB is pretty crap in
> > the author's opinion". Evaluating it against actual criteria would be
> > better, of course...
>
> or someone starting to make some small incremental improvements. Every
> attempt at rewriting from scratch has gone nowhere, largely because
> that's a whole bunch of extra effort.
Kathy Reid provided a working document to linux-aus on 2 Feb 2015
outlining enhancements that would be required to MemberDB. That's at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tyTA3Fj5J9XL2D7UTIxw46smXGrLM5J-fI4g6GxK9hM/edit?usp=sharing.
The key functionality of MemberDB that would need to be replicated in
any other system (aside from everyone-provides things like sign up flow)
is elections. MemberDB does this quite well, and meets some specific
needs:
1. the ability to run the whole process, including nominations,
acceptance and candidate statements
2. preferential voting
The latest Launchpad commit to MemberDB
(https://launchpad.net/memberdb/trunk) was 2011-02-04. Its underlying
DAL is built on PEAR::DB, which has long since been superseded
(http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.database.db.php). A quick look
indicates it was probably built for PHP 4, which was EOL in August 2008.
If someone can take on making improvements to MemberDB, that's great.
But it doesn't have the structure of a modern application, and it won't
work within a modern development environment. I think it's unlikely
anyone would want to maintain and improve it without a major refactor,
or indeed rewrite.
If we're going to work on that basis, we should consider whether we
should be using one or more other tools. CiviCRM isn't perfect, and
requires a Drupal base. It's a bit clunky, in part because it has a lot
of functionality which is not immediately useful to LA. However, it
gives all of the new functionality we need, and building in election
functionality would almost certainly be far less effort than building
the new functionality (in Kathy's document) into MemberDB. As a bonus,
we can contribute that back to the existing large community of CiviCRM
users.
MemberDB was an excellent tool. It was state of the art when the last
official release occurred, nearly 10 years ago. That we've been able to
continue using it is a testament to its quality. However, it does not
meet the current needs of LA.
Regards
Michael
From gdt at gdt.id.au Wed Jan 6 12:43:13 2016
From: gdt at gdt.id.au (Glen Turner)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 12:13:13 +1030 (ACDT)
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID:
Hi Kathy
I am somewhat outside of Linux Australia, but an interested onlooker. I
see the strategic questions slightly differently:
- how serious are you about lobbying?
- what is the natural size of "a peak body for Linux user groups"? Does
L.A even provide worthwhile services to the LUGs or is it in practice a
holding company for linux.conf.au?
- if you want a new constituency then what is it?
- what is the desired relationship with the maker movement?
The alternatives to the name are too poor. It's easier to explain "we're
more than linux" than to be in the morass of devalued "open" names.
If you are time-poor then outsource stuff. If the member registration
system is annoying then pay someone to do that function (not to fix the
system, but to do the entire task).
-glen
From dtbell91 at gmail.com Wed Jan 6 13:31:33 2016
From: dtbell91 at gmail.com (David Bell)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 13:31:33 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID:
I have nominated many of the contributors to this thread for OCM for the
2016 Council Election and I encourage you to do the same. If I have missed
anyone, feel free to nominate yourself on this basis.
The document prepared by Kathy has created much discussion on this list and
I would like to see a transition from commenting to doing.
David
On 6 January 2016 at 11:50, Michael Cordover wrote:
>
>
> FWIW, I think that this is the worst kind of bike-shedding. Before we
> have a discussion about what we should do in future, let's have a long
> discussion about what we should use to have that discussion. Blarg.
>
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016, at 10:19, Stewart Smith wrote:
> > Anthony Towns writes:
> > >> The existing Membership management tool, MemberDB is end of life and a
> > >> replacement is sorely needed. Some discussion has occurred towards
> this
> > >> goal, but momentum toward an outcome has not been sustained.
> > >
> > > I would say the momentum that was there was to set some criteria on
> what
> > > the replacement should do, then evaluate alternatives. Proposing
> CiviCRM
> > > as the right solution rather than doing that is exactly what killed the
> > > momentum, from my perspective...
> > >
> > > I think "end of life" is just standing in for a value judgement, not
> > > that there's an actual time limit on how long it can kept being used;
> > > ie it would be more accurate to just write "MemberDB is pretty crap in
> > > the author's opinion". Evaluating it against actual criteria would be
> > > better, of course...
> >
> > or someone starting to make some small incremental improvements. Every
> > attempt at rewriting from scratch has gone nowhere, largely because
> > that's a whole bunch of extra effort.
>
> Kathy Reid provided a working document to linux-aus on 2 Feb 2015
> outlining enhancements that would be required to MemberDB. That's at
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tyTA3Fj5J9XL2D7UTIxw46smXGrLM5J-fI4g6GxK9hM/edit?usp=sharing
> .
>
> The key functionality of MemberDB that would need to be replicated in
> any other system (aside from everyone-provides things like sign up flow)
> is elections. MemberDB does this quite well, and meets some specific
> needs:
>
> 1. the ability to run the whole process, including nominations,
> acceptance and candidate statements
> 2. preferential voting
>
> The latest Launchpad commit to MemberDB
> (https://launchpad.net/memberdb/trunk) was 2011-02-04. Its underlying
> DAL is built on PEAR::DB, which has long since been superseded
> (http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.database.db.php). A quick look
> indicates it was probably built for PHP 4, which was EOL in August 2008.
>
> If someone can take on making improvements to MemberDB, that's great.
> But it doesn't have the structure of a modern application, and it won't
> work within a modern development environment. I think it's unlikely
> anyone would want to maintain and improve it without a major refactor,
> or indeed rewrite.
>
> If we're going to work on that basis, we should consider whether we
> should be using one or more other tools. CiviCRM isn't perfect, and
> requires a Drupal base. It's a bit clunky, in part because it has a lot
> of functionality which is not immediately useful to LA. However, it
> gives all of the new functionality we need, and building in election
> functionality would almost certainly be far less effort than building
> the new functionality (in Kathy's document) into MemberDB. As a bonus,
> we can contribute that back to the existing large community of CiviCRM
> users.
>
> MemberDB was an excellent tool. It was state of the art when the last
> official release occurred, nearly 10 years ago. That we've been able to
> continue using it is a testament to its quality. However, it does not
> meet the current needs of LA.
>
> Regards
>
> Michael
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
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From stewart at flamingspork.com Wed Jan 6 15:31:33 2016
From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith)
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2016 15:31:33 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for
Linux Australia
In-Reply-To: <1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <87egdv49cq.fsf@flamingspork.com>
Michael Cordover writes:
>> or someone starting to make some small incremental improvements. Every
>> attempt at rewriting from scratch has gone nowhere, largely because
>> that's a whole bunch of extra effort.
>
> Kathy Reid provided a working document to linux-aus on 2 Feb 2015
> outlining enhancements that would be required to MemberDB. That's at
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tyTA3Fj5J9XL2D7UTIxw46smXGrLM5J-fI4g6GxK9hM/edit?usp=sharing.
>
> The key functionality of MemberDB that would need to be replicated in
> any other system (aside from everyone-provides things like sign up flow)
> is elections. MemberDB does this quite well, and meets some specific
> needs:
>
> 1. the ability to run the whole process, including nominations,
> acceptance and candidate statements
> 2. preferential voting
Yep, that's the basic stumbling block.
Note that in the past LA did throw money at the problem of getting that
implemented, so it could do so again....
> The latest Launchpad commit to MemberDB
> (https://launchpad.net/memberdb/trunk) was 2011-02-04. Its underlying
> DAL is built on PEAR::DB, which has long since been superseded
> (http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.database.db.php). A quick look
> indicates it was probably built for PHP 4, which was EOL in August
> 2008.
Yeah, that's possible - although it did work on early 5.x at least. I
think there's problems with the latest, which isn't so fun.
> If someone can take on making improvements to MemberDB, that's great.
> But it doesn't have the structure of a modern application, and it won't
> work within a modern development environment. I think it's unlikely
> anyone would want to maintain and improve it without a major refactor,
> or indeed rewrite.
yeah, I'd agree.
> If we're going to work on that basis, we should consider whether we
> should be using one or more other tools. CiviCRM isn't perfect, and
> requires a Drupal base. It's a bit clunky, in part because it has a lot
> of functionality which is not immediately useful to LA. However, it
> gives all of the new functionality we need, and building in election
> functionality would almost certainly be far less effort than building
> the new functionality (in Kathy's document) into MemberDB. As a bonus,
> we can contribute that back to the existing large community of CiviCRM
> users.
>
> MemberDB was an excellent tool. It was state of the art when the last
> official release occurred, nearly 10 years ago. That we've been able to
> continue using it is a testament to its quality. However, it does not
> meet the current needs of LA.
It's actually closer to 13 years now - which is a pretty long life for
a tool for an organisation. Basically, MemberDB has existed in some form
for nearly all of this century.
If somebody works on it, or on replacing it, that's great!
--
Stewart Smith
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From lev at levlafayette.com Wed Jan 6 15:43:56 2016
From: lev at levlafayette.com (Lev Lafayette)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 15:43:56 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
On Wed, January 6, 2016 11:50 am, Michael Cordover wrote:
>
>
> FWIW, I think that this is the worst kind of bike-shedding. Before we
> have a discussion about what we should do in future, let's have a long
> discussion about what we should use to have that discussion. Blarg.
I have to respectfully disagree Michael.
'Bikeshedding' is a discussion about an mostly irrelevant point because
everyone can have an opinion on it, whilst not contributing to the
difficult questions. "What colour should the bike shed be painted?" is the
traditional example cited, because it really isn't that important compared
to building the nuclear power plant*.
The issue isn't about Google Docs vs git as such, but rather whether an
organisation that calls itself "Linux Australia" or "Open Source
Australia" should use Linux-friendly and open-source tools or something
else that is convenient and/or popular but doesn't comply to open
standards, doesn't maximise accessibility, or isn't FOSS. This is *highly*
relevant.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law_of_triviality
This is important and actually should be part of a strategic direction
discussion. Do we want people to be using Linux/FOSS? Are *we* using it?
If either of those questions are 'no' then strategically one has to ask
whether the organisation is succeeding in its stated purposes**, even
internally! If the organisation is *not* succeeding, according to its own
stated goals, then it is discussions of whether it should be "Linux
Australia" or "Open Source Australia" is more akin to 'to what colour
shall the bike shed be painted?'
** https://linux.org.au/values
Personally I think it a matter of primary policy that Linux Australia use
Linux and FOSS tools. Just as I think that websites should be standards
compliant, and email should be available to plain-text readers. We value
these standards and open technologies not just because we're curmudgeonly
grognards, but because this openness is technically superior and it
ensures the best access for the most people.
All the best.
--
Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech
Mngmnt) (Chifley)
mobile: 0432 255 208
RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt
From lev at levlafayette.com Wed Jan 6 15:51:59 2016
From: lev at levlafayette.com (Lev Lafayette)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 15:51:59 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID:
On Wed, January 6, 2016 11:50 am, Michael Cordover wrote:
>
> If we're going to work on that basis, we should consider whether we
> should be using one or more other tools. CiviCRM isn't perfect, and
> requires a Drupal base.
I'm not sure whether that's the case. Whilst I'm not a user of CiviCRM
(although there are good reasons that I should be) I thought it could be
used by Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress.
https://civicrm.org/blogs/kurund/announcing-civicrm-463-release
--
Lev Lafayette, BA (Hons), GradCertTerAdEd (Murdoch), GradCertPM, MBA (Tech
Mngmnt) (Chifley)
mobile: 0432 255 208
RFC 1855 Netiquette Guidelines
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt
From tim at wirejunkie.com Wed Jan 6 16:02:07 2016
From: tim at wirejunkie.com (Tim Serong)
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2016 16:02:07 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <568C9FCF.4090405@wirejunkie.com>
On 06/01/16 10:33, Noel Butler wrote:
> On 06/01/2016 01:41, Anthony Towns wrote:
>>
>>
>> There was a member vote on which name to use, with "Linux Australia"
>> winning by outright majority, iirc (37 1st preference no name change,
>> versus 35 votes with a different first preference [0]).
>
>
> It's kinda like Queensland and daylight saving, a vote was called, the
> people voted an overwhelming NO, but every year since, especially at
> every change of government, the same noisy minority keeps popping back
> up making noises trying to get their way.
Interesting. I interpreted those figured to mean that -- assuming we
have 3,000 members -- the vast majority of 2,928 didn't care what the
name was or didn't hear about the election, while the remainder was
split roughly down the middle; 51% of those who voted wanted to keep the
existing name, and 49% wanted to change the name, but had various
differing opinions on what it should be.
Tim
From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Wed Jan 6 16:15:01 2016
From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 16:15:01 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
Message-ID: <568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
On 06/01/16 15:43, Lev Lafayette wrote:
> I have to respectfully disagree Michael.
>
> 'Bikeshedding' is a discussion about an mostly irrelevant point because
> everyone can have an opinion on it, whilst not contributing to the
> difficult questions. "What colour should the bike shed be painted?" is the
> traditional example cited, because it really isn't that important compared
> to building the nuclear power plant*.
>
> The issue isn't about Google Docs vs git as such, but rather whether an
> organisation that calls itself "Linux Australia" or "Open Source
> Australia" should use Linux-friendly and open-source tools or something
> else that is convenient and/or popular but doesn't comply to open
> standards, doesn't maximise accessibility, or isn't FOSS. This is *highly*
> relevant.
>
I don't disagree with your points. Linux Australia, wherever possible,
should use free and open source software and adopt open standards.
However, and this is a very big however, when someone takes the time and
energy to write a strategic paper with the intent of maturing and
advancing an organisation, this sort of criticism not only detracts from
the discussion at hand, it belittles the efforts of the author by
focussing on the format of content, not the content itself. No wonder we
have such difficulty attracting and retaining volunteer contributors if
this is how their contributions are treated.
I'd like to propose the following;
* That Inflection Point will, at an appropriate time, be moved to a GIt
repository managed by LA
* Until that time discussion regarding its *contents* continue on Google
Docs
I'd say let's build the nuclear reactor, but given North Korea's
activities this afternoon it may be considered poor taste.
Regards,
Kathy
From web at polynate.net Wed Jan 6 17:53:30 2016
From: web at polynate.net (Nathan Bailey)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 17:53:30 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID:
1. FORMAT
The wonderful thing about the Linux-related communities I have been a part
of is their inclusiveness. Although we all strive for greater openness, we
welcome the efforts of anyone, celebrating what they can do and then
helping them go further.
I would still celebrate a document like Kathy's even if it was written in
MS Word (or PDF). There is nothing stopping someone from forking her
document into a git-based repo for further edits.
By all means, discover and advocate for better tools, but let's not exclude
people from this valuable discussion who may only contribute with less
technically adept toolsets. [ No allusions to any specific person's skill
level here[1] ]
2. STRATEGIC PLAN and ELECTIONS
In terms of Kathy's broader intent - a strategic plan is a bold document.
It does take a long time to develop in large organisations, because there
are many constituents to consult. However, we can move faster than a
traditional organisation by using a variety of collaborative technologies
to build consensus in a quick and inclusive way.
I like Kathy's idea of a committee elected with a mandate for the future.
We won't get agreement on the future in four days, but we should get
agreement on the need for a bold, more decisive future, and a commitment
from people who are willing to help create that. Not just on the committee,
but in working groups for each major project. I'd be much more inclined to
commit to a working group with a defined timeline and outcomes than a role
on the committee.
kind regards,
Nathan
1: Time is also a factor. I can git, but I Google doc quicker.
On 6 January 2016 at 16:15, Kathy Reid wrote:
> On 06/01/16 15:43, Lev Lafayette wrote:
>
>> I have to respectfully disagree Michael.
>>
>> 'Bikeshedding' is a discussion about an mostly irrelevant point because
>> everyone can have an opinion on it, whilst not contributing to the
>> difficult questions. "What colour should the bike shed be painted?" is the
>> traditional example cited, because it really isn't that important compared
>> to building the nuclear power plant*.
>>
>> The issue isn't about Google Docs vs git as such, but rather whether an
>> organisation that calls itself "Linux Australia" or "Open Source
>> Australia" should use Linux-friendly and open-source tools or something
>> else that is convenient and/or popular but doesn't comply to open
>> standards, doesn't maximise accessibility, or isn't FOSS. This is *highly*
>> relevant.
>>
>>
> I don't disagree with your points. Linux Australia, wherever possible,
> should use free and open source software and adopt open standards.
>
> However, and this is a very big however, when someone takes the time and
> energy to write a strategic paper with the intent of maturing and advancing
> an organisation, this sort of criticism not only detracts from the
> discussion at hand, it belittles the efforts of the author by focussing on
> the format of content, not the content itself. No wonder we have such
> difficulty attracting and retaining volunteer contributors if this is how
> their contributions are treated.
>
> I'd like to propose the following;
>
> * That Inflection Point will, at an appropriate time, be moved to a GIt
> repository managed by LA
> * Until that time discussion regarding its *contents* continue on Google
> Docs
>
> I'd say let's build the nuclear reactor, but given North Korea's
> activities this afternoon it may be considered poor taste.
>
> Regards,
> Kathy
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
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From ac at main.me Wed Jan 6 17:20:19 2016
From: ac at main.me (ac)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 08:20:19 +0200
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
Message-ID: <20160106065845.8713F256B@mailhost.linux.org.au>
On Wed, 6 Jan 2016 15:43:56 +1100
"Lev Lafayette" wrote:
> ** https://linux.org.au/values
> Personally I think it a matter of primary policy that Linux Australia
> use Linux and FOSS tools. Just as I think that websites should be
> standards compliant, and email should be available to plain-text
> readers. We value these standards and open technologies not just
> because we're curmudgeonly grognards, but because this openness is
> technically superior and it ensures the best access for the most
> people.
> All the best.
>
a very good response, in my own personal opinion, those new to open
source (as it seems many of the proponents of change are) should read
your post at least three times :)
From ac at main.me Wed Jan 6 18:00:10 2016
From: ac at main.me (ac)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 09:00:10 +0200
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <20160106065957.DEF422576@mailhost.linux.org.au>
On Wed, 6 Jan 2016 16:15:01 +1100
Kathy Reid wrote:
> On 06/01/16 15:43, Lev Lafayette wrote:
> > I have to respectfully disagree Michael.
> >
> However, and this is a very big however, when someone takes the time
> and energy to write a strategic paper with the intent of maturing and
> advancing an organisation, this sort of criticism not only detracts
> from the discussion at hand, it belittles the efforts of the author
> by focussing on the format of content, not the content itself. No
> wonder we have such difficulty attracting and retaining volunteer
> contributors if this is how their contributions are treated.
>
> I'd like to propose the following;
>
You have so many proposals, some are so controversial that
even my old troll suits will need lots of green ooze, never mind the
tinfoil costs...
Kathy, your document is very professional and well thought out. It has
good structure, but it has some fatal flaws.
Personally, I read it twice.
The main problem with your document is that it deals with so many
different issues and tries to do that in one single document, there are
other issues that cuts deep into the very fiber of things Linux.
> * That Inflection Point will, at an appropriate time, be moved to a
> GIt repository managed by LA
> * Until that time discussion regarding its *contents* continue on
> Google Docs
>
Maybe it will be a solution to start first by taking a vote about the
platform?
Instead of simply telling everyone that it has to be?
Maybe also, break things down into bite size proposals?
Or maybe simply try to force everything through all at once, the sheer
amount of time that it will take to opine on the many different issues
alone will see an increase in apathy.
> I'd say let's build the nuclear reactor, but given North Korea's
> activities this afternoon it may be considered poor taste.
>
indeed. poor taste...
> Regards,
> Kathy
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Wed Jan 6 18:06:48 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 18:06:48 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Restructure suggestion for Inflection Point - A
Strategic Plan for Linux Australia
Message-ID:
I made the following suggestion to Kathy directly. She liked the
suggestion, and suggested I send it to the wider list.
It might help to provide an additional section at the end as follows:
Recommendations.
(1) Recommendations to be ratified at the AGM by vote
(a) Change to mission statements
(b) Other high-level scope and vision statement changes
(2) Recommendations to be provided to the new committee for consideration
(c) Consideration of paid memberships
(d) MemberDB changes
(e) Other items at the level of initiatives or projects
This might make the list of major things to be agreed simpler to ratify,
since any contentious items from the second list won't hold up the overall
agreement. It also provides a nice piece of handover to the next committee.
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From brent.wallis at gmail.com Wed Jan 6 18:27:52 2016
From: brent.wallis at gmail.com (Brent Wallis)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 18:27:52 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID:
Hi,
On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 4:15 PM, Kathy Reid wrote:
> On 06/01/16 15:43, Lev Lafayette wrote:
>
>> I have to respectfully disagree Michael.
>>
>> 'Bikeshedding' is a discussion about an mostly irrelevant point because
>> everyone can have an opinion on it, whilst not contributing to the
>> difficult questions. "What colour should the bike shed be painted?" is the
>> traditional example cited, because it really isn't that important compared
>> to building the nuclear power plant*.
>>
>> The issue isn't about Google Docs vs git as such, but rather whether an
>> organisation that calls itself "Linux Australia" or "Open Source
>> Australia" should use Linux-friendly and open-source tools or something
>> else that is convenient and/or popular but doesn't comply to open
>> standards, doesn't maximise accessibility, or isn't FOSS. This is *highly*
>> relevant.
>>
>>
> I don't disagree with your points. Linux Australia, wherever possible,
> should use free and open source software and adopt open standards.
>
> However, and this is a very big however, when someone takes the time and
> energy to write a strategic paper with the intent of maturing and advancing
> an organisation, this sort of criticism not only detracts from the
> discussion at hand, it belittles the efforts of the author by focussing on
> the format of content, not the content itself. No wonder we have such
> difficulty attracting and retaining volunteer contributors if this is how
> their contributions are treated.
>
>
start of debate decent
I'd like to propose the following;
>
> * That Inflection Point will, at an appropriate time, be moved to a GIt
> repository managed by LA
> * Until that time discussion regarding its *contents* continue on Google
> Docs.
>
(Deliberate CAPS ahead)
I CALL ON THE LA COMMITTEE TO MOVE THIS DEBATE OFF LIST TO A GIT REPO NOW
AS IN RIGHT NOW!!!
(Google docs is great but the inability to easily and clearly define a
thread is forcing people to use the mailing list...)
To do other wise would ignore the past debate where no-one really won.
Last time this was debated on list it descended into a "hell".
Please oh please do not repeat past mistakes.
Peace :-)
BW
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From hugh at blemings.org Wed Jan 6 19:18:38 2016
From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 19:18:38 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
Hi All,
I've been following this discussion with interest but not felt strongly
on any thing raised up until the "tooling" discussion began - do we use
Git or GoogleDocs.
I am an infrequent git user myself - I can use it and the relevant
review tools but am far from fluent. This is also, I suspect, true of
many of our fellow LA members - they are not fluent git users.
It seems to me then that in the spirit of wishing to invite the widest
possible range of input and participation from those interested in the
core discussion (LA's future) we should keep the barrier of entry as low
as possible.
There will be many in our fold that have excellent contributions to make
and feel comfortable in a mailing list discussion, or adding a comment
to a google doc.
But for these same people working out the process to contribute via a
git repository, when coupled with the inevitable pressures of day to day
life, will quickly see their desire to be involved fall into the too
hard basket.
We are, to a person, an excellent community, but not always deeply
conversant in the tools - let us continue the discussion in it's current
"easy to use" form and move to the worthy, but more exotic methods in
due course.
Kind Regards,
Hugh
From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Wed Jan 6 19:58:25 2016
From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 19:28:25 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <00d401d14860$67c72620$37557260$@adam.com.au>
Hi Glen,
> -----Original Message-----
> From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On
Behalf
> Of Glen Turner
> Sent: Wednesday, 6 January 2016 12:13 PM
> To: Kathy Reid
> Cc: Linux Australia
> Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
> Australia
> - what is the natural size of "a peak body for Linux user groups"?
Does
> L.A even provide worthwhile services to the LUGs or is it in
practice a
> holding company for linux.conf.au?
Linux Australia has never provided any direct services to LinuxSA
regardless of who happens to be the "benevolent dictator" at the time;
that said Linux Australia have, in the past, agreed to host both the
web-site and be custodians of LinuxSA's domain name (linuxsa.org.au) so
we could agree that the potential to help a local user group in SA is
there.
I haven't shifted the services over to Linux Australia simply because of
laziness more than anything else.
It's not clear what services Linux Australia could provide LinuxSA apart
from public liability coverage; in the past any activities I would be
involved in would be covered under AUUG's public liability (because they
were actually easier to deal with) however there's nothing that LinuxSA
does now that really needs any "special" coverage. If you slip over on a
banana peel at Marcellina's then realistically it's Marcellina's issue -
not LinuxSA's.
DSL
From noel.butler at ausics.net Wed Jan 6 21:45:32 2016
From: noel.butler at ausics.net (Noel Butler)
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2016 20:45:32 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568C9FCF.4090405@wirejunkie.com>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<568C9FCF.4090405@wirejunkie.com>
Message-ID: <78d7923b07fec78e7380e752020e8c9a@ausics.net>
On 06/01/2016 15:02, Tim Serong wrote:
> On 06/01/16 10:33, Noel Butler wrote:
>> On 06/01/2016 01:41, Anthony Towns wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> There was a member vote on which name to use, with "Linux Australia"
>>> winning by outright majority, iirc (37 1st preference no name change,
>>> versus 35 votes with a different first preference [0]).
>>
>>
>> It's kinda like Queensland and daylight saving, a vote was called, the
>> people voted an overwhelming NO, but every year since, especially at
>> every change of government, the same noisy minority keeps popping back
>> up making noises trying to get their way.
>
> Interesting. I interpreted those figured to mean that -- assuming we
> have 3,000 members -- the vast majority of 2,928 didn't care what the
> name was or didn't hear about the election, while the remainder was
The vast majority likely have no clue.
Only a small number are on this list, or bother to read this list, or
have valid/current emails.
This is brought about because of failures within LA (which I brought up
I think a few years ago and as recent as last election), every member
should be automatically subbed to LA announce list, but anyone wanting
to know stuff has to manually sub to THIS list, because no important
announcements are made anywhere else (failure #2) anyway, so probably
pointless, but I guess that will never change and we'll have 99% of
membership having no idea elections are called for let alone important
issue votes.
Said it before say it again, until council adds every member to its
announce list and actually bloody uses it for important stuff, its
always going to be the same 'ol "inner circle" / "boys club" deciding
what goes on.
From lucychili at gmail.com Wed Jan 6 22:56:23 2016
From: lucychili at gmail.com (Janet Reid)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 22:26:23 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
Message-ID:
On 6 January 2016 at 18:48, Hugh Blemings wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I've been following this discussion with interest but not felt strongly on
> any thing raised up until the "tooling" discussion began - do we use Git or
> GoogleDocs.
>
> I am an infrequent git user myself - I can use it and the relevant review
> tools but am far from fluent.
Would it be a useful compromise to use a wiki? or is that another
trickiness?
Not sure if it is really a thread flavoured solution.
Issue at the top and then branch the responses into sections and
edit into those perspective sections until each option is clear?
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From tim at wirejunkie.com Wed Jan 6 23:21:40 2016
From: tim at wirejunkie.com (Tim Serong)
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2016 23:21:40 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <78d7923b07fec78e7380e752020e8c9a@ausics.net>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<568C9FCF.4090405@wirejunkie.com>
<78d7923b07fec78e7380e752020e8c9a@ausics.net>
Message-ID: <568D06D4.7080609@wirejunkie.com>
On 06/01/16 21:45, Noel Butler wrote:
> On 06/01/2016 15:02, Tim Serong wrote:
>> On 06/01/16 10:33, Noel Butler wrote:
>>> On 06/01/2016 01:41, Anthony Towns wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> There was a member vote on which name to use, with "Linux Australia"
>>>> winning by outright majority, iirc (37 1st preference no name change,
>>>> versus 35 votes with a different first preference [0]).
>>>
>>>
>>> It's kinda like Queensland and daylight saving, a vote was called, the
>>> people voted an overwhelming NO, but every year since, especially at
>>> every change of government, the same noisy minority keeps popping back
>>> up making noises trying to get their way.
>>
>> Interesting. I interpreted those figured to mean that -- assuming we
>> have 3,000 members -- the vast majority of 2,928 didn't care what the
>> name was or didn't hear about the election, while the remainder was
>
>
> The vast majority likely have no clue.
>
> Only a small number are on this list, or bother to read this list, or
> have valid/current emails.
>
> This is brought about because of failures within LA (which I brought up
> I think a few years ago and as recent as last election), every member
> should be automatically subbed to LA announce list, but anyone wanting
> to know stuff has to manually sub to THIS list, because no important
> announcements are made anywhere else (failure #2) anyway, so probably
> pointless, but I guess that will never change and we'll have 99% of
> membership having no idea elections are called for let alone important
> issue votes.
>
> Said it before say it again, until council adds every member to its
> announce list and actually bloody uses it for important stuff, its
> always going to be the same 'ol "inner circle" / "boys club" deciding
> what goes on.
I agree that ensuring members details are current is necessary, and I
think this is touched on in the Inflection Point document we've been
discussing, where it talks about replacing MemberDB. However the doc
doesn't explicitly mention ensuring everyone's automatically put on the
announce list (at least, not that I saw).
That said, the announce list actually *is* currently used for the
important stuff. Check the archives. Annual announcements of AGMs,
council elections, the proposed name change vote, the member survey a
couple of years ago etc. all went to the announce list.
Regards,
Tim
From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Wed Jan 6 23:36:44 2016
From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid)
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 23:36:44 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568D06D4.7080609@wirejunkie.com>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<568C9FCF.4090405@wirejunkie.com>
<78d7923b07fec78e7380e752020e8c9a@ausics.net>
<568D06D4.7080609@wirejunkie.com>
Message-ID: <568D0A5C.3040605@kathyreid.id.au>
On 06/01/16 23:21, Tim Serong wrote:
> I agree that ensuring members details are current is necessary, and I
> think this is touched on in the Inflection Point document we've been
> discussing, where it talks about replacing MemberDB. However the doc
> doesn't explicitly mention ensuring everyone's automatically put on the
> announce list (at least, not that I saw).
>
Excellent point Tim. A lot of CRM/Membership tools provide the ability
to email sets of Members based on attributes, such as;
* All members
* Members who have an attribute - such as Victorian, or Student etc
* Members who have various Roles (such as a member of a Subcommittee)
If we move to a new membership tool, my expectation would be that the
tool allows us to undertake both targeted and mass communication to
members, including key announcements.
Kind regards,
Kathy
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From aj at erisian.com.au Thu Jan 7 01:17:47 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2016 00:17:47 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
Message-ID: <20160106141747.GA32725@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
On Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 07:18:38PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
> But for these same people working out the process to contribute via a git
> repository, when coupled with the inevitable pressures of day to day life,
> will quickly see their desire to be involved fall into the too hard basket.
Committing the document to a git repository is pretty trivial these days:
https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files-in-your-repository/
An open source advocacy organisation should be advocating open source
approaches, not dismissing them as too hard for normal people.
> We are, to a person, an excellent community, but not always deeply
> conversant in the tools - let us continue the discussion in it's current
> "easy to use" form and move to the worthy, but more exotic methods in due
> course.
Open source tools for authoring a document are not "exotic". It's 2016
for heaven's sake. If you don't want to stick stuff in markdown in git
[0] there's wikis, etherpad, drupal, wordpress, and, of course, just
sending an email.
(I'll also note that the google doc currently has it's revision history
disabled, at least when I try to access it. I got what looked like a
server error earlier, so I'm assuming it's a bug. You know, the sort
of thing you could at least conceivably do something about with free
software tools...)
Cheers,
aj
[0] Like LA already does, btw:
https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies
From aj at erisian.com.au Thu Jan 7 01:17:59 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2016 00:17:59 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <20160106141759.GA5544@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
On Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 01:31:33PM +1100, David Bell wrote:
> I have nominated many of the contributors to this thread for OCM for the
> 2016 Council Election and I encourage you to do the same. If I have missed
> anyone, feel free to nominate yourself on this basis.
I think this is a bit backwards; the council has over the years repeatedly
tried to emphasise that the people "doing stuff" in the organisation
shouldn't be limited to the people on the council -- if for no other
reason than that it puts too much burden on too few people. Being elected
or not shouldn't really make any difference on whether you're "doing"
or just talking.
Me, though, I'm just talking. I'm very reticent to do anything for LA
because I'm not really sure its values actually match my own anymore. As
is presumably clear, I value building and using free software, perhaps to
unreasonable extremes. When I was last on the council I worked on building
an expenses tracking tool out of free software. I thought it was working
pretty well for the final year I was treasurer, and I was optimistic the
new council would get some value out of it; but they decided to replace
it with Xero basically asap. That narrative probably dictates that I
should be more angry about it than I am, but I'm actually a bit fond of
Xero as an antipodean software startup... But either way, I think it was
a step backwards, and I really would like to see the two steps forward
that are meant to go with. Instead there just seem to be more steps
backwards. It's enough to make you think you might be in the wrong line...
There are other ways I think LA could move forward -- I've got some
ideas on how co-branding could be made to work, that I think would be
interesting, for instance. But all the evidence that I see points to
the doers already knowing what they want to do, and any efforts to try
different compromises to bring more people into the fold would just
be wasted -- at best, they'd be ignored, at worst the doers would stop
doing in protest.
So, like I said, I'm just talking. And this is a mailing list, and
Kathy did say she wanted to start a conversation when she posted the
link to the Google doc, so despite the mocking on IRC and Facebook,
I don't really think it's *that* horrible a thing to be doing...
Cheers,
aj
From abartlet at samba.org Thu Jan 7 06:29:49 2016
From: abartlet at samba.org (Andrew Bartlett)
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2016 08:29:49 +1300
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <1452108589.22992.22.camel@samba.org>
On Wed, 2016-01-06 at 12:13 +1030, Glen Turner wrote:
> Hi Kathy
>
> I am somewhat outside of Linux Australia, but an interested onlooker.
> I
> see the strategic questions slightly differently:
>
> - how serious are you about lobbying?
>
> - what is the natural size of "a peak body for Linux user groups"?
> Does
> L.A even provide worthwhile services to the LUGs or is it in
> practice a
> holding company for linux.conf.au?
>
> - if you want a new constituency then what is it?
>
> - what is the desired relationship with the maker movement?
>
> The alternatives to the name are too poor. It's easier to explain
> "we're
> more than linux" than to be in the morass of devalued "open" names.
This best expresses my feelings about the name change issue. Except
for FOSS, which isn't suitable in a name, all the name alternatives
simply exchanged one fault line (Linux vs Web technologies) for another
(Free vs Open Source).
That led me to prefer we came up with subtitles, trading names or
mission statements rather than trying to 'fix' the name, until we see
one that really works.
Thanks,
Andrew Bartlett
--
Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba
From silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com Thu Jan 7 07:40:21 2016
From: silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com (Silvia Pfeiffer)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2016 07:40:21 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <20160106141747.GA32725@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
<20160106141747.GA32725@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID:
On 7 Jan 2016 1:58 AM, "Anthony Towns" wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 07:18:38PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
> > But for these same people working out the process to contribute via a
git
> > repository, when coupled with the inevitable pressures of day to day
life,
> > will quickly see their desire to be involved fall into the too hard
basket.
>
> Committing the document to a git repository is pretty trivial these days:
>
> https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files-in-your-repository/
>
> An open source advocacy organisation should be advocating open source
> approaches, not dismissing them as too hard for normal people.
Github is not much more open source than Google docs. But in any case...
this bike shedding about which tool to use is really not constructive and
should be taken off this thread.
It's when discussions are side tracked like this that progress is stopped.
Let's please stop falling in this trap.
Regards,
Silvia.
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From russell-humbug at stuart.id.au Thu Jan 7 11:12:53 2016
From: russell-humbug at stuart.id.au (Russell Stuart)
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2016 10:12:53 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
Message-ID: <1452125573.2847.70.camel@stuart.id.au>
On Wed, 2016-01-06 at 22:26 +1030, Janet Reid wrote:
> Would it be a useful compromise to use a wiki? or is that another
> trickiness?
As a point of reference, Humbug changed over to using a wiki for it's
web site years ago. And it was administered as a true wiki that
everyone was with the slightest relationship (ie, everyone bar spammers)
was allowed to edit. If you look at Humbug's wiki you will see it's
pretty substantial for such a small group, thus proving once again if
you remove the barriers stuff gets done, often by the most unlikely
people. In other words, in my view it was a open source wild success.
There have been several times when I wish LA's site had the same degree
of openness. Most recently, it was when I tried to find conferences run
by LA that were coming up. Since LA's primary lot in life is promoting
and financing such conferences, it had to be there right? Providing a
place where your members can see what events you are running so they can
attend is the most basic of PR. But not, it wasn't.
I can understand why. The same thing happens with the most basic of
things on Humbug's wiki - after a regular meeting the exec doesn't
update meeting schedule because they are useless, or have lives, or
something. (I'm currently the president). But it always gets updated
regardless because someone gets annoyed it's wrong, but they can already
hear the "why didn't you fix it yourself" retort ringing in their ears,
so they do just that.
The point is, LA is an open source organisation, and as a way of getting
things done I _know_ to the very core of my being that open source
works. As Jonathan Corbet of LWN once remarked of LCA, letting a
different set of rank volunteers to run it each year seems insane, yet
time after time because LA shoulders the major barriers of capital and
liability they do it, and they reliably produce one of the best open
source conferences on the planet.
So we all know in our hearts open source does work. You just have to
have enough faith in it to remove the barriers, let others take control
and own the results. And all the while ensuring it doesn't go off the
rails. It's a tricky path to walk, but we manage it for LCA and so does
the Apache foundation, Mozilla and a lot of similar organisations.
Wiki's are unfortunately ugly. Humbug's certainly is. But we are
clever people, and I'm sure some combination of brochure front page and
Wikipedia free for all content engine could be made to work.
On Wed, 2016-01-06 at 23:36 +1100, Kathy Reid wrote:
> Excellent point Tim. A lot of CRM/Membership tools provide the ability
> to email sets of Members based on attributes, such as;
>
> * All members
> * Members who have an attribute - such as Victorian, or Student etc
> * Members who have various Roles (such as a member of a
> Subcommittee)
>
> If we move to a new membership tool, my expectation would be that the
> tool allows us to undertake both targeted and mass communication to
> members, including key announcements.
My guess is you are attempting to solve a non-problem. LA's membership
is one of the most plugged in bunch of people on the planet. They know
exactly what is going on, not just with LA but in the entire open source
world (with the notable exception of what conferences LA is running in
the next 3 months - but that's not their fault). It would be a very
rare LA member indeed that didn't monitor some combination of web sites,
mailing lists, twitter, planet feeds, facebook and whatever else todays
kids use. Copy your messages to all those channels and not only will
all members see them, so will all potential members.
I'll admit my biases here. The idea of LA council deciding which email
is important enough to end up in my inbox makes me shudder. It sounds
similar to the attitude the plethora 2 cent web stores that flood my
spam folder have - if I shove it down his throat often enough, he'll
love it. If you look at the email addresses I use, it's not difficult
to infer I guard my inbox ferociously. (I use it to organise a large
portion of my life.) I don't love it. If the opt out link doesn't
work, I like most LA members have the wherewithal to use other, more
final solutions.
From stewart at flamingspork.com Thu Jan 7 11:47:57 2016
From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith)
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2016 11:47:57 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568D06D4.7080609@wirejunkie.com>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<568C9FCF.4090405@wirejunkie.com>
<78d7923b07fec78e7380e752020e8c9a@ausics.net>
<568D06D4.7080609@wirejunkie.com>
Message-ID: <87twmq2p1e.fsf@flamingspork.com>
Tim Serong writes:
> I agree that ensuring members details are current is necessary, and I
> think this is touched on in the Inflection Point document we've been
> discussing, where it talks about replacing MemberDB. However the doc
> doesn't explicitly mention ensuring everyone's automatically put on the
> announce list (at least, not that I saw).
I used to do a manual import from MemberDB -> announce. Obviously, there
should be software that does that.
There was some effort on keeping member details up to date "recently",
but again, something for software to do. There is most of the facility
to automate that in MemberDB currently... it's just.. umm.. not
finished. Yeah, I know, software with an unfinished feature is a bit of
a shocker :)
I think it all comes under the "patches welcome" thing... which has been
problematic to get, or problematic for me to get spare hours to do it.
--
Stewart Smith
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From mithro at mithis.com Thu Jan 7 11:47:44 2016
From: mithro at mithis.com (Tim Ansell)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2016 11:47:44 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Proposing that Linux Australia fund Software
Freedom Conservancy
In-Reply-To: <567BF097.8060801@nitrotech.org>
References: <20151128055938.GC4867@akranes.dyndns.org>
<1450928035.27753.7.camel@samba.org>
<567BF097.8060801@nitrotech.org>
Message-ID:
Friendly ping (as you said to not let you forget it :).
Tim 'mithro' Ansell
On 25 December 2015 at 00:18, Joshua Hesketh wrote:
> Hello Andrew and all,
>
> Thanks for your input, it's very highly valued.
>
> This is something the council has begun discussing but failed to make a
> decision on just yet. Unfortunately we've had some very pressing matters
> to attend to, including the normal end of year financial work (one thing
> that this is slightly blocking on is a new budget for this year). I'm
> hoping we'll be able to add this to our agenda for next week and show
> our support one way or another. Personally I'd love to see LA support
> the conservancy, but I can't make any promises or speak for the whole
> council.
>
> In other words: watch this space, and don't let us forget!
>
> Cheers,
> Josh
>
> On 24/12/15 14:33, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> > On Fri, 2015-11-27 at 21:59 -0800, Francois Marier wrote:
> >> I'd like to propose that Linux Australia support the Software Freedom
> >> Conservancy [1] as part of its grants programme.
> >>
> >> Their leadership team, Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn [2], are
> >> members of our
> >> community and have talked at LCA several times. Their organisation
> >> represents a number of projects [3] that either originated in
> >> Australasia or
> >> have many contributors from this part of the world. In particular,
> >> they are
> >> the non-profit home of Samba and Outreachy, two projects that embody
> >> very
> >> well the values of Linux Australia.
> >>
> >> Since they are hoping to create a strong base of supporters to allow
> >> them
> >> the freedom (pun intended) to protect FOSS users and developers, it
> >> would be
> >> great to see Linux Australia become an annual supporter.
> >>
> >> The minimum monthly amount for individuals is $10 USD/month ($120 /
> >> year)
> >> but LA could certainly give more since Conservancy is putting that
> >> money to
> >> very good use.
> > As a member of a Conservancy project, and a rep to the Conservancy on
> > the Samba Team's project leadership committee, I see close-hand the
> > great work the Conservancy does. It would indeed be great if Linux
> > Australia could (substantially) support the Conservancy, preferably by
> > some kind of annual grant.
> >
> > How can I help move this forward?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Andrew Bartlett
> >
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
>
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From stewart at flamingspork.com Thu Jan 7 11:48:55 2016
From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith)
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2016 11:48:55 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568D0A5C.3040605@kathyreid.id.au>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<568C9FCF.4090405@wirejunkie.com>
<78d7923b07fec78e7380e752020e8c9a@ausics.net>
<568D06D4.7080609@wirejunkie.com> <568D0A5C.3040605@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <87r3hu2ozs.fsf@flamingspork.com>
Kathy Reid writes:
> On 06/01/16 23:21, Tim Serong wrote:
>> I agree that ensuring members details are current is necessary, and I
>> think this is touched on in the Inflection Point document we've been
>> discussing, where it talks about replacing MemberDB. However the doc
>> doesn't explicitly mention ensuring everyone's automatically put on the
>> announce list (at least, not that I saw).
>>
>
> Excellent point Tim. A lot of CRM/Membership tools provide the ability
> to email sets of Members based on attributes, such as;
>
> * All members
> * Members who have an attribute - such as Victorian, or Student etc
> * Members who have various Roles (such as a member of a Subcommittee)
>
> If we move to a new membership tool, my expectation would be that the
> tool allows us to undertake both targeted and mass communication to
> members, including key announcements.
Yeah - and some existing tool likely has those features working, rather
than the MemberDB implementations which... probably work if you poke SQL
the right way.....
--
Stewart Smith
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From aj at erisian.com.au Thu Jan 7 12:40:51 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2016 11:40:51 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160104065840.GE5013@akranes.dyndns.org>
<568B21F9.1040603@mcwhirter.com.au>
<568897BC.6000807@kathyreid.id.au>
<20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <20160107014051.GB16782@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
On Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 01:41:25AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> Personally, my biggest concern isn't in having a paid executive officer
> to do cool stuff, but rather having syadmins with enough time to keep
> the old (and current) lca sites up available.
So I received an off-list email from someone on the admin team indicating
they'd read this as an attack. FWIW, it was intended as support for top
priority on any additional resources that might help, nothing more.
That off-list mail also indicated that the 2013, 2014, and 2015 sites
aren't still offline due to lack of time/resources on the admin team's
behalf, but rather other reasons (which I haven't seen mentioned in
public, and since I only became aware via a private mail, I'm not sure
if they're secret/sensitive for some reason).
Anyway, I thought that warranted a public correction, rather than just
an off-list apology.
Cheers,
aj
From steven.ellis at gmail.com Thu Jan 7 13:28:06 2016
From: steven.ellis at gmail.com (Steven Ellis)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2016 15:28:06 +1300
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
<20160106141747.GA32725@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID:
I can't help but echo some of Hugh and Silvia's comments, and yet I
feel for Anthony's position.
We went through all of this organising LCA 2015, and had to be
pragmatic in balancing the capability across the team to enable
everyone to contribute. Tools like Trello looked awesome, but raised
the entry level too high, and horde for email scared everyone, so
Google docs/email was the solution...
Moving forward I agree we need Open Source alternatives and whatever
shape Linux Australia takes in the future it can participate in making
these changes happen, but right now we need to put best foot forward.
NZOSS is going through a similar inflection point and I hope to
provide some feedback at the LA AGM in Feb.
Kathy - huge thank you for the work in putting this together and
generating "robust debate"
On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 9:40 AM, Silvia Pfeiffer
wrote:
>
> On 7 Jan 2016 1:58 AM, "Anthony Towns" wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 07:18:38PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
>> > But for these same people working out the process to contribute via a
>> > git
>> > repository, when coupled with the inevitable pressures of day to day
>> > life,
>> > will quickly see their desire to be involved fall into the too hard
>> > basket.
>>
>> Committing the document to a git repository is pretty trivial these days:
>>
>> https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files-in-your-repository/
>>
>> An open source advocacy organisation should be advocating open source
>> approaches, not dismissing them as too hard for normal people.
>
> Github is not much more open source than Google docs. But in any case...
> this bike shedding about which tool to use is really not constructive and
> should be taken off this thread.
>
> It's when discussions are side tracked like this that progress is stopped.
> Let's please stop falling in this trap.
>
> Regards,
> Silvia.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Thu Jan 7 14:01:32 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2016 14:01:32 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
<20160106141747.GA32725@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID:
I posted a new thread with a restructuring suggestion, but have had no
replies. Given the volume of discussion in general, I am suprised I didn't
even get at least some criticism! :) Here it is repreated on-thread.
I made the following suggestion to Kathy directly. She liked the
suggestion, and suggested I send it to the wider list.
It might help to provide an additional section at the end as follows:
Recommendations.
(1) Recommendations to be ratified at the AGM by vote
(a) Change to mission statements
(b) Other high-level scope and vision statement changes
(2) Recommendations to be provided to the new committee for consideration
(c) Consideration of paid memberships
(d) MemberDB changes
(e) Other items at the level of initiatives or projects
This might make the list of major things to be agreed simpler to ratify,
since any contentious items from the second list won't hold up the overall
agreement. It also provides a nice piece of handover to the next committee.
On 7 January 2016 at 13:28, Steven Ellis wrote:
> I can't help but echo some of Hugh and Silvia's comments, and yet I
> feel for Anthony's position.
>
> We went through all of this organising LCA 2015, and had to be
> pragmatic in balancing the capability across the team to enable
> everyone to contribute. Tools like Trello looked awesome, but raised
> the entry level too high, and horde for email scared everyone, so
> Google docs/email was the solution...
>
> Moving forward I agree we need Open Source alternatives and whatever
> shape Linux Australia takes in the future it can participate in making
> these changes happen, but right now we need to put best foot forward.
>
> NZOSS is going through a similar inflection point and I hope to
> provide some feedback at the LA AGM in Feb.
>
> Kathy - huge thank you for the work in putting this together and
> generating "robust debate"
>
> On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 9:40 AM, Silvia Pfeiffer
> wrote:
> >
> > On 7 Jan 2016 1:58 AM, "Anthony Towns" wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 07:18:38PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
> >> > But for these same people working out the process to contribute via a
> >> > git
> >> > repository, when coupled with the inevitable pressures of day to day
> >> > life,
> >> > will quickly see their desire to be involved fall into the too hard
> >> > basket.
> >>
> >> Committing the document to a git repository is pretty trivial these
> days:
> >>
> >> https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files-in-your-repository/
> >>
> >> An open source advocacy organisation should be advocating open source
> >> approaches, not dismissing them as too hard for normal people.
> >
> > Github is not much more open source than Google docs. But in any case...
> > this bike shedding about which tool to use is really not constructive and
> > should be taken off this thread.
> >
> > It's when discussions are side tracked like this that progress is
> stopped.
> > Let's please stop falling in this trap.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Silvia.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > linux-aus mailing list
> > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
> >
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
--
--------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Thu Jan 7 14:03:15 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2016 14:03:15 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
<20160106141747.GA32725@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID:
I had a talk rejected from LCA called "How the internet is killing open
source" :). The proposal was probably too half-baked, but a part of the
discussion was exactly around how SAAS models interact with traditional
open source applications and actually reduce the ability to directly modify
and improve the software that's under use, plus the way in which free
central SAAS model can be counter-productive in some ways.
On 7 January 2016 at 13:28, Steven Ellis wrote:
> I can't help but echo some of Hugh and Silvia's comments, and yet I
> feel for Anthony's position.
>
> We went through all of this organising LCA 2015, and had to be
> pragmatic in balancing the capability across the team to enable
> everyone to contribute. Tools like Trello looked awesome, but raised
> the entry level too high, and horde for email scared everyone, so
> Google docs/email was the solution...
>
> Moving forward I agree we need Open Source alternatives and whatever
> shape Linux Australia takes in the future it can participate in making
> these changes happen, but right now we need to put best foot forward.
>
> NZOSS is going through a similar inflection point and I hope to
> provide some feedback at the LA AGM in Feb.
>
> Kathy - huge thank you for the work in putting this together and
> generating "robust debate"
>
> On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 9:40 AM, Silvia Pfeiffer
> wrote:
> >
> > On 7 Jan 2016 1:58 AM, "Anthony Towns" wrote:
> >>
> >> On Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 07:18:38PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
> >> > But for these same people working out the process to contribute via a
> >> > git
> >> > repository, when coupled with the inevitable pressures of day to day
> >> > life,
> >> > will quickly see their desire to be involved fall into the too hard
> >> > basket.
> >>
> >> Committing the document to a git repository is pretty trivial these
> days:
> >>
> >> https://help.github.com/articles/editing-files-in-your-repository/
> >>
> >> An open source advocacy organisation should be advocating open source
> >> approaches, not dismissing them as too hard for normal people.
> >
> > Github is not much more open source than Google docs. But in any case...
> > this bike shedding about which tool to use is really not constructive and
> > should be taken off this thread.
> >
> > It's when discussions are side tracked like this that progress is
> stopped.
> > Let's please stop falling in this trap.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Silvia.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > linux-aus mailing list
> > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
> >
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
--
--------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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From la at mjec.net Thu Jan 7 15:31:01 2016
From: la at mjec.net (Michael Cordover)
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2016 15:31:01 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
<20160106141747.GA32725@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <1452141061.1867287.485146266.566BF028@webmail.messagingengine.com>
On Thu, Jan 7, 2016, at 14:01, Tennessee Leeuwenburg wrote:
> Recommendations.
>
> (1) Recommendations to be ratified at the AGM by vote
> (a) Change to mission statements
> (b) Other high-level scope and vision statement changes
>
> (2) Recommendations to be provided to the new committee for consideration
> (c) Consideration of paid memberships
> (d) MemberDB changes
> (e) Other items at the level of initiatives or projects
For what it's worth, I think this is a good separation of concerns.
However, I see there being a real risk of the community deferring the
"hard" questions, as happened around this time last year. Let's not lose
the momentum arising from these discussions. I think we can - and should
- have these discussions at or around the time of the AGM, without
necessarily intending to resolve them then.
Regards
Michael
From abartlet at samba.org Thu Jan 7 19:09:20 2016
From: abartlet at samba.org (Andrew Bartlett)
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 2016 21:09:20 +1300
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To:
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
<20160106141747.GA32725@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <1452154160.22992.29.camel@samba.org>
On Thu, 2016-01-07 at 14:03 +1100, Tennessee Leeuwenburg wrote:
> I had a talk rejected from LCA called "How the internet is killing
> open source" :). The proposal was probably too half-baked, but a part
> of the discussion was exactly around how SAAS models interact with
> traditional open source applications and actually reduce the ability
> to directly modify and improve the software that's under use, plus
> the way in which free central SAAS model can be counter-productive in
> some ways.
I'll be covering that kind of territory a bit with my 'Samba + Github
== Freedom ??' talk. Before SAAS came along, it is clear we (the Samba
Team) would have rejected a propriety VCS, and we still maintain the
master with our own hosting, but we decided we wanted to be 'easy to
work with' so now mirror on github.
Andrew Bartlett
--
Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba
From josh at nitrotech.org Thu Jan 7 21:21:22 2016
From: josh at nitrotech.org (Joshua Hesketh)
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2016 21:21:22 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <1452154160.22992.29.camel@samba.org>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
<20160106141747.GA32725@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<1452154160.22992.29.camel@samba.org>
Message-ID: <568E3C22.9040407@nitrotech.org>
Hey all,
So there are a lot of different discussions going on in this list. It's
very encouraging to see so many caring about the future of the
organisation. There have been some really great and constructive points
made. I'd like to see a discussion on the content continue, rather than
getting stuck on the format*.
On the topic of membership I would like to highlight a few excerpts from
the councils minutes on the 02/03/2013[0]:
Membership tiers
Discussion was held around whether Linux Australia needs different
membership tiers, possibly with paid memberships. There is no current
financial imperative to do this. Council was also mindful that if people
pay money to be a member of Linux Australia they will have higher
service expectations. The key reason for paid memberships would be to
allow people who want to make more of a contribution to be able to do
so. General consensus that paid membership tiers are not required at
this stage.
MOTION moved by El President? that we;
1. Have a single free membership tier
2. That memberships are expired/renewed annually via an online mechanism
before 1st October in accordance with Clause 4(e) of the Constitution
Seconded by Fran?ois, carried unanimously
It was noted that we need to ensure that we make memberships ?inactive?
rather than removing them entirely in case membership data is completely
lost. Are there privacy principles that need to be upheld. This may need
to be researched in more depth. It was noted that this will require some
MemberDB changes.
...
Mailing lists
It was agreed that there should be more correlation between MemberDB and
the mailing list. Any new member gets subscribed to la-announce - they
can unsubscribe and still be a member of LA. We need to ensure everyone
is a member to start with and then can unsubscribe if they want to be.
We discussed whether we should just have an la-members mailing list
which is consistent with MemberDB, but this created more overhead.
It was agreed that we need a method to contact all members that is not
mailman dependent, and that we need to audit the mailing list and ensure
that every current member in MemberDB is on the announce mailing list,
and ensure that all new members are subscribed to the announce mailing
list, and that members may unsubscribe from mailing lists.
There were also a few sets of action items to see through the above
decisions. These action items were largely blocked on missing features
from memberdb (namely a method to contact all members and
auto-expiry/renewal). Unfortunately for numerous reasons (that I won't
get into now) these actions have not been completed.
I still stand by the decisions made back in 2013, however I believe the
new 2016 council should reconfirm them.
There are plenty of other discussions that I have thoughts of and I may
write more in due course. But for now, I must be off.
Keep in mind that nominations are open until Sunday. Presently we have
no candidates for any of the office roles. (If you've been nominated and
wish to stand, you must accept your nomination by logging into
https://linux.org.au/membership/ before you are a candidate).
Cheers,
Josh
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From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Fri Jan 8 06:49:05 2016
From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2016 06:19:05 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
In-Reply-To: <568E3C22.9040407@nitrotech.org>
References: <20160105154125.GA13681@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<87mvsj4nt9.fsf@flamingspork.com>
<1452041406.3793361.483972162.626DED8C@webmail.messagingengine.com>
<13ac1a28a37b9c5269248eb35e13e7ef.squirrel@webmail.levlafayette.com>
<568CA2D5.50905@kathyreid.id.au>
<568CCDDE.3020703@blemings.org>
<20160106141747.GA32725@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<1452154160.22992.29.camel@samba.org> <568E3C22.9040407@nitrotech.org>
Message-ID: <002201d14984$77c2f070$6748d150$@adam.com.au>
Actually, unpaid members classically tend to be more demanding than paid
ones ? it?s paradoxical but almost always true :)
From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On Behalf
Of Joshua Hesketh
Sent: Thursday, 7 January 2016 8:51 PM
To: Linux Australia
Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux
Australia
Hey all,
So there are a lot of different discussions going on in this list. It's
very encouraging to see so many caring about the future of the
organisation. There have been some really great and constructive points
made. I'd like to see a discussion on the content continue, rather than
getting stuck on the format*.
On the topic of membership I would like to highlight a few excerpts from
the councils minutes on the 02/03/2013[0]:
Membership tiers
Discussion was held around whether Linux Australia needs different
membership tiers, possibly with paid memberships. There is no current
financial imperative to do this. Council was also mindful that if people
pay money to be a member of Linux Australia they will have higher
service expectations. The key reason for paid memberships would be to
allow people who want to make more of a contribution to be able to do
so. General consensus that paid membership tiers are not required at
this stage.
MOTION moved by El President? that we;
1. Have a single free membership tier
2. That memberships are expired/renewed annually via an online mechanism
before 1st October in accordance with Clause 4(e) of the Constitution
Seconded by Fran?ois, carried unanimously
It was noted that we need to ensure that we make memberships ?inactive?
rather than removing them entirely in case membership data is completely
lost. Are there privacy principles that need to be upheld. This may need
to be researched in more depth. It was noted that this will require some
MemberDB changes.
...
Mailing lists
It was agreed that there should be more correlation between MemberDB and
the mailing list. Any new member gets subscribed to la-announce - they
can unsubscribe and still be a member of LA. We need to ensure everyone
is a member to start with and then can unsubscribe if they want to be.
We discussed whether we should just have an la-members mailing list
which is consistent with MemberDB, but this created more overhead.
It was agreed that we need a method to contact all members that is not
mailman dependent, and that we need to audit the mailing list and ensure
that every current member in MemberDB is on the announce mailing list,
and ensure that all new members are subscribed to the announce mailing
list, and that members may unsubscribe from mailing lists.
There were also a few sets of action items to see through the above
decisions. These action items were largely blocked on missing features
from memberdb (namely a method to contact all members and
auto-expiry/renewal). Unfortunately for numerous reasons (that I won't
get into now) these actions have not been completed.
I still stand by the decisions made back in 2013, however I believe the
new 2016 council should reconfirm them.
There are plenty of other discussions that I have thoughts of and I may
write more in due course. But for now, I must be off.
Keep in mind that nominations are open until Sunday. Presently we have
no candidates for any of the office roles. (If you've been nominated and
wish to stand, you must accept your nomination by logging into
https://linux.org.au/membership/ before you are a candidate).
Cheers,
Josh
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From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Fri Jan 8 20:47:07 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2016 20:47:07 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Upcoming elections
Message-ID:
Hi all,
Only a very small number of people have been nominated for the top two org
chart positions. Fewer still have accepted. Is there anyone here who would
like to be nominated? I don't represent any view other than my own here. My
view is that people should just feel free to self identify. I personally
think the reliance on an external nomination probably reduces the
likelihood that interested parties are identified. A more relaxed approach
to self-nomination might help, but people could well still be reluctant to
risk feeling silly for doing so. For example, I wouldn't be able to bring
myself to self-nominate unless someone told me it was cool to go ahead and
do.
So my suggestion to anyone who might be interested in any position would be
to email a friendly individual, possibly with prior council experience, and
just get their view.
While I've never been on council here, I have been involved in running
other volunteer groups. In general, I would describe the level of interest
in hearing from possible candidates as "desperately interested". I think
people should feel welcome to consider putting their hat in the ring, and
then just see how it goes.
Cheers,
-T
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From s.germaine at gmail.com Fri Jan 8 21:20:08 2016
From: s.germaine at gmail.com (Sae Ra Germaine)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2016 21:20:08 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] [Announce] Declaration of Council Election and call
for Nominations
In-Reply-To: <5689DE37.3080907@mcwhirter.com.au>
References: <56793476.4020005@linux.org.au> <56875D21.9030305@nitrotech.org>
<5689DE37.3080907@mcwhirter.com.au>
Message-ID:
Hi All,
Thank you to those who have nominated me for the position of Secretary. It
has been a very interesting, thought provoking and rewarding experience
which I would love to continue on.
I believe that Linux Australia has a great future ahead and I hope that I
can make a valuable and positive contribution to this organisation and
community. Linux Australia has given me fantastic memories along with some
challenging lesson learning ones as well.
It has been a great privilege to have been on Council the last 2 years and
I would be honoured to fill this position if elected.
Thanks
Sae Ra
On 4 January 2016 at 13:51, Craige McWhirter
wrote:
> On 02/01/16 15:16, Joshua Hesketh wrote:
>
> > TL;DR: Elections are open. Please nominate and/or stand.
>
> I've been a Council Member this last 12 months and I intend to stand
> again as a Council Member for the next 12.
>
> What's become crystal clear to me over not only the last 12 months on
> the LA council but over the last 20+ years of my involvement with Linux
> User Groups in Australia is:
>
> * How much work is borne by too few
> * The high barrier of entry contributing work to LA and LUGs to help
> "the few" and spread the load.
> * The nature of the way contributions are currently gated makes change
> slow and contributes additional workload for "the few".
> * How new enthusiasm sweeps in, brings much needed fresh change but the
> absence of long term planning makes today's "cool thing" tomorrow's
> maintenance burden.
>
> We have a large community of highly skilled people who would like to
> contribute more but are inadvertently locked out or discouraged by the
> current processes and the required restrictions around server access etc.
>
> For example, a member who is skilled in their field, should not have to
> send an email to an already busy council / sub-committee to have their
> patch / fix / content change approved and then applied by the council.
>
> It should be sufficient for the LA community to have a review service
> (such as Gerrit) where a patch is applied for a configuration / content
> change.
>
> This change could then be tested by a testing tool, such as Jenkins and
> reviewed by acknowledged peers in our community who "know their stuff".
> When $ENOUGH peers have approved the change, it is applied
> automatically, hands free.
>
> What I've described is neither new nor revolutionary as many of us
> already work this way in our professional lives, using the Gerrit and
> Jenkins combination which I've listed as an example or other tools, such
> as Phabricator, which fill the same role(s).
>
> I see this as the way forward for Linux Australia to not only manage our
> infrastructure securely, enable broader contribution to both
> configuration, patching and content management (website) but also as a
> service that could be offered to the broader FOSS community once we have
> it working for us.
>
> I think that such a review / testing service offers the Linux Australia
> community:
>
> * Lower barrier of entry to contribution.
> * More eyes on changes and a broader number of approvers.
> * Facilitate a migration to managing our web services better.
> * Enable a maintenance and change culture that will endure beyond
> current bursts of enthusiasm.
> * Provide a service infrastructure that could be utilised by LUGs and
> other groups.
> * Learning opportunities for inexperienced contributors to learn from
> peers.
> * An experience in professional practices for those that may not
> otherwise get to use such systems.
>
> While I am 2iC for LCA2017, the Director of LCA2017, Chris Neugebauer
> supports my bid for re-election as OCM to engage in this particular body
> of work, should the community and incoming committee believe this is a
> worthwhile endeavour.
>
> If you think this is a worthwhile effort, please free to nominate and
> second me for the position of Council Member:
>
> https://www.linux.org.au/membership/index.php?page=election-nominate&id=22
>
> See you in Geelong :-)
>
> --
> Craige McWhirter
> M: +61 4685 91819
> W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
>
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From josh at nitrotech.org Fri Jan 8 21:37:06 2016
From: josh at nitrotech.org (Joshua Hesketh)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2016 21:37:06 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Upcoming elections
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <568F9152.1010903@nitrotech.org>
Hey all,
Not only is self-nomination cool and in the constitution, it's also
encouraged!
For all the reasons Tennessee has given, anybody interested in being on
the council should put their hand up. It's a great way to ask questions
about what is involved, share your points of view and make it known that
you're keen.
Cheers,
Josh
On 08/01/16 20:47, Tennessee Leeuwenburg wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Only a very small number of people have been nominated for the top two
> org chart positions. Fewer still have accepted. Is there anyone here
> who would like to be nominated? I don't represent any view other than
> my own here. My view is that people should just feel free to self
> identify. I personally think the reliance on an external nomination
> probably reduces the likelihood that interested parties are
> identified. A more relaxed approach to self-nomination might help, but
> people could well still be reluctant to risk feeling silly for doing
> so. For example, I wouldn't be able to bring myself to self-nominate
> unless someone told me it was cool to go ahead and do.
>
> So my suggestion to anyone who might be interested in any position
> would be to email a friendly individual, possibly with prior council
> experience, and just get their view.
>
> While I've never been on council here, I have been involved in running
> other volunteer groups. In general, I would describe the level of
> interest in hearing from possible candidates as "desperately
> interested". I think people should feel welcome to consider putting
> their hat in the ring, and then just see how it goes.
>
> Cheers,
> -T
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
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From aj at erisian.com.au Sat Jan 9 00:47:54 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2016 23:47:54 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
Message-ID: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
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
From abartlet at samba.org Sat Jan 9 12:31:46 2016
From: abartlet at samba.org (Andrew Bartlett)
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2016 14:31:46 +1300
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <1452303106.22992.81.camel@samba.org>
On Fri, 2016-01-08 at 23:47 +1000, Anthony Towns 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].
Thanks Anthony. I really like that you have spelled out what could be
done, and how it could be done. I like that we show LA as the 'broad
church' without having to put it one side or other of historical
divides just because of where it has come from.
Thanks for your time and thought on this.
Andrew Bartlett
--
Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba
From noel.butler at ausics.net Sat Jan 9 13:01:42 2016
From: noel.butler at ausics.net (Noel Butler)
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2016 12:01:42 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <1452303106.22992.81.camel@samba.org>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<1452303106.22992.81.camel@samba.org>
Message-ID:
On 09/01/2016 11:31, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> On Fri, 2016-01-08 at 23:47 +1000, Anthony Towns 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].
>
> Thanks Anthony. I really like that you have spelled out what could be
> done, and how it could be done. I like that we show LA as the 'broad
> church' without having to put it one side or other of historical
> divides just because of where it has come from.
>
> Thanks for your time and thought on this.
>
> Andrew Bartlett
A Very huge + 1, well thought out Anthony, and I agree with pretty much
everything you propose.
--
If you have the urge to reply to all rather than reply to list, you best
first read http://members.ausics.net/qwerty/
From paul at gear.dyndns.org Sat Jan 9 16:30:19 2016
From: paul at gear.dyndns.org (Paul Gear)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 15:30:19 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <56909AEB.5040704@gear.dyndns.org>
On 08/01/16 23:47, Anthony Towns 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].
> ...
At the risk of this being an empty +1 of an email, Anthony's
contribution seems to me to be the most constructive, the most
immediately actionable, and the most respectful of the parties involved.
Thanks for moving the discussion forward, Anthony - it definitely needed
a paradigm shift, and I think you've provided that.
Paul
From hugh at blemings.org Sat Jan 9 19:34:43 2016
From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 16:34:43 +0800
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <6ADD95E3-E639-47D8-8F47-1EB1B0D1F6A7@blemings.org>
> On 8 Jan 2016, at 21:47, Anthony Towns wrote:
> [...]
Excellent stuff AJ, thankyou :)
Cheers,
Hugh
From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Sat Jan 9 21:30:55 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 21:30:55 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID:
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 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
--
--------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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From ac at main.me Sat Jan 9 21:58:12 2016
From: ac at main.me (ac)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 12:58:12 +0200
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <6ADD95E3-E639-47D8-8F47-1EB1B0D1F6A7@blemings.org>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<6ADD95E3-E639-47D8-8F47-1EB1B0D1F6A7@blemings.org>
Message-ID: <20160109105804.8667D43FC@mailhost.linux.org.au>
On Sat, 9 Jan 2016 16:34:43 +0800
Hugh Blemings wrote:
> > On 8 Jan 2016, at 21:47, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > [...]
> Excellent stuff AJ, thankyou :)
agreed, balanced and succinct
From bianca.rachel.gibson at gmail.com Sat Jan 9 22:39:49 2016
From: bianca.rachel.gibson at gmail.com (Bianca Gibson)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 22:39:49 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Upcoming elections
In-Reply-To: <568F9152.1010903@nitrotech.org>
References:
<568F9152.1010903@nitrotech.org>
Message-ID:
I seconded myself the first time I ran for council, and I think I was the
only person that felt funny about it.
I'm happy to talk to anyone that is considering but not sure about running.
Cheers,
B
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From andrew at donnellan.id.au Sat Jan 9 22:45:45 2016
From: andrew at donnellan.id.au (Andrew Donnellan)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 22:45:45 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID:
On 9 January 2016 at 00:47, Anthony Towns 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].
Thanks for the positive contribution, Anthony.
I haven't had time to really digest it and let my thoughts settle, but
my gut feelings are...
If we're going to have a name change, I suppose I'd like it to be done
in a decisive manner. Treating "opensource.org.au" as a brand for a
whole organisation (with affiliated conferences etc), when it still
operates under the auspices of LA, just feels a bit confusing to me.
This might be just me, and maybe it doesn't matter to the outside
world... perhaps some more work on nomenclature could make it clearer.
I haven't really thought very much about the idea that the role of
open source/free software advocacy should shift from the Council to a
subcommittee. I suppose it could work - I'm not immediately convinced
that it's the best approach, but I'm open to it. I like most of the
example subcommittee goals you've listed rather a lot.
Getting as quickly as possible to "doing cool stuff" is important.
Release early, release often and all that. Our structure needs to
actively encourage ordinary members to start new initiatives and have
a low barrier to entry (I don't wish to imply that current/previous LA
Councils haven't been trying, but I think there's still room here).
I'm still thinking about it, but right now I'm leaning towards saying
that letting subcommittees play with new ideas for LA's future mission
is probably an approach worth considering.
Andrew
--
Andrew Donnellan
http://andrew.donnellan.id.au andrew at donnellan.id.au
From noisymime at gmail.com Sat Jan 9 23:13:11 2016
From: noisymime at gmail.com (Josh Stewart)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 23:13:11 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia council elections
Message-ID:
Hi All,
As you may be aware, the nominations for Linux Australia council positions
close tomorrow, so if you had any thoughts of being involved but haven't
had a chance to do so yet, now's the time!
https://www.linux.org.au/membership/
Much to my surprise, a number of people have nominated me for the role of
president in the 2016 council. Whilst it had not been my intent to remain
on the council for a fourth year, these nominations have made me seriously
think about this position and I have had a lot of chats with prior and
potential future council members around this recently.
After much deliberation though (Not to mention changes of mind), I have
decided not to accept the nominations for any positions. Unfortunately I do
not believe I am going to have the time available over the next 12 months
to give these roles the attention that they do deserve. I do intend to look
again at being part of the tremendous LA council at some point in the
future, but 2016 is not the right time for myself.
With that said, I would like to extend to the new council (Whoever it ends
up being) whatever assistance I can in helping to get up to speed on the
organisational and practical details of Linux Aus. Whether this is in any
sort of formal capacity or simply a chat over coffee, I am more than happy
to help in any way I can.
Finally, a HUGE thank you to all I've worked with on the council over the
last few years. My time as OCM in 2013/14 and as VP in the last 12 months
have been incredibly rewarding and I have thoroughly enjoyed it all. I
truly do hope to be a part of this amazing organisation again in the future.
Regards,
-Josh Stewart
Linux Australia Vice President
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From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Sun Jan 10 00:52:45 2016
From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 00:52:45 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia council elections
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <569110AD.4090304@kathyreid.id.au>
Hi everyone,
Firstly I'd like to thank Josh, Josh, Sae Ra, Tony, Craige, James and
Chris for all their efforts on 2015 Council. The work the Council does
is often hidden or under the radar, and I'd like to publicly acknowledge
the time, energy and commitment that it takes to keep Linux Australia
running so well.
Thank you to those who have nominated me for various positions on
Council. During 2016, I won't have the bandwidth to take on the role of
President, if elected, however am delighted to accept nominations for
Vice President and for Ordinary Committee Member. If elected, my
priorities would be to;
- lay the foundations for establishing a relevant and reasonable
strategic blueprint for the organisation over the next 5 year horizon
- establish a Membership subcommittee and drive changes to the existing
platform and its capabilities
- bring structure and maturity to onboarding, supporting and assisting
volunteers to contribute to the organisation
I would intend to continue my roles on Media and Communications
Subcommittee, wrapping up LCA2016 and leading GovHack Geelong.
My positions on various issues facing the organisation are outlined in
'Inflection Point', and it's encouraging to see so much robust debate
about its contents and what activities, objectives and projects Linux
Australia should be focussing on to fulfil its remit.
This currently leaves Linux Australia without a nomination for
President, and I strongly encourage anyone who may be considering
nominating to do so.
Representing Australia's Linux, free and open source community is an
immense privilege, a challenging opportunity and a truly rewarding
professional development experience.
Kind regards,
Kathy Reid
From ilox11 at gmail.com Sun Jan 10 01:27:21 2016
From: ilox11 at gmail.com (Ian)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 00:57:21 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID:
Great post Anthony, something at last that I can accept. A pathway through
the morass of "bikeshedding" and misdirection that was going on.
I fully support your suggestions.
Let us be clear, Kathy deserves a big + for putting her words together to
get the discussion rolling.
Your post tops the recent discussions and gives all of us a way to put our
shoulder behind the direction we might want this to follow.
I love the committee name suggestion of "rabid fanatics. Sweet. Plenty of
them around, enough to fill several committees ;)
Personally I don't want the Home Brand of Linux Australia to be considered
for change, there isn't anything - at this time - approaching the Brand
recognition already out there.
If something better comes along, after developing the concept in the
appropriate sub-committee, at that time we can revisit the proposal.
Whatever replaces the LA Brand has to be Bigger Brighter Better than LA or
else there isn't any point in making the replacement. The paperwork and
time-wasting to change the organisation's name is horrid so I would never
contemplate making a change of name just because it might be newer and more
trendy. It really has to be something out of the box to replace what is
already there.
Co-branding isn't likely to bring about confusion to a large degree, mostly
the exercise allows the Brand to be redefined, expanded. I like your
suggestions to develop "Open Source Australia" (or whatever) and see where
that takes us. That suits me just fine.
This
email has been sent from a virus-free computer protected by Avast.
www.avast.com
<#DDB4FAA8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
On 9 January 2016 at 00:17, Anthony Towns 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
--
-- Ian
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From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Sun Jan 10 12:34:11 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 12:34:11 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Managing a committee without overloading
Message-ID:
So, I spent a number of years as chairperson for a small owners corporation
committee. It was challenging, because we didn't have efficient systems,
transferring the systems we did have to other people was hard, and the
amount of effort put in by most owners was minimal. There was a lot of work
that needed to be done, but relatively few people who could break down the
problems and develop appropriate solutions. Then, those same people had to
implement the solutions on top of both the planning and the base
administration.
Burning out the most committed problem solvers on 'base load' was not a
great approach.
We put in place professional management, which is easy to source for an
owners corporation as there are a lot of private providers.
It looks like we have a lot of potential councillors, but few executive
officers running. If that's how it plays out tonight, we'll end up in one
of the following situations:
a) Work falling onto the ordinary member councillors because that's who is
there
b) the cycle of burnout continues, as effort falls on a few
c) we put some real money into running the organisation
I assume if nobody accepts, there is some mechanism for later voting in a
president.
As things stand, I'm the only candidate who has accepted nomination for VP.
As I stated in my spiel, I don't have the 8-12 hours per week outlined in
the position description. I am running to 'provide choice' against whoever
does have that much time. I expect I would be able to fulfil the basic
responsibilities of the role in a lower amount of time per week and would
be able to manage the decision-making required.
I need to head afk, but I wanted to provide this brief statement here.
If we end up too thin on the ground, I would strongly suggest we look at
investing in full-time paid assistance, preferably sourced from the
community, to implement the plans and projects set in place by the council.
Regards,
-Tennessee
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From rbs at muli.com.au Sun Jan 10 15:37:17 2016
From: rbs at muli.com.au (Ronald Skeoch)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 15:37:17 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <5691DFFD.3050409@muli.com.au>
*Ronald Skeoch*
MD, *Muli Management Pty Ltd.*
Project Risk, Accounts & Process Management.
www.muli. bizPhone +612 (02) 9487 3241
This email may contain confidential information which may be subject to
legal professional privilege.
If you have received this email by mistake any use, interference with,
disclosure or copying of this material is prohibited.
If you have received this by mistake, please let us know immediately by
return email then delete it and any attachments from your system.
On 09/01/16 00:47, Anthony Towns 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;
>
Please understand Open Source is the not the core goal
/Unencumbered open standard/s is the cornerstone of our future.
Without the fundamental right to communicate and use without paying
royalties all is lost!
This issue needs to appear at the forefront of Goals!
How much time is wasted by open source people attempting to ensure they
are not ensnared
by "/fictitious/ Patents"
This substantial issue should be acknowledged in any re-branding.
and lead to additional LA goals and hence directed effort.
Regards
*Ronald Skeoch*
MD, *Muli Management Pty Ltd.*
Project Risk, Accounts & Process Management.
www.muli. bizPhone +612 (02) 9487 3241
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From hugh at blemings.org Sun Jan 10 15:48:43 2016
From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 15:48:43 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
Message-ID: <5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
Hi,
After kicking things off with a few tentative but ultimately encouraging
side conversations I am grateful, indeed somewhat humbled to have been
nominated as a candidate for President of Linux Australia.
By way of background, in addition to having long been involved in Free
and Open Source Software and Hardware (Slackware, back in the day!,
Linux Kernel development, Ubuntu, Arduino and OpenStack since then) I
have been fortunate to serve on the council of Linux Australia in the
past; I was an ordinary council member in 2003 and Vice President in
2013/14. I maintain a rudimentary web presence and blog here [0]
I hadn't started 2016 specifically planning to nominate for the Council
but had given it the occasional thought during 2015. After some of the
quite encouraging conversations on the Linux-aus mailing list I
reflected on it more deeply and things evolved from there.
I was also mindful that none of the other excellent candidates for
President were looking like they'd accept and while LA's constitution
allows for this eventuality, there seemed to be something to be said for
certainty and a degree of mandate.
To the matter of mandate, were I elected I will strive to lead by
consensus and bring out the best in what is already shaping up to be a
very strong council indeed.
Specifically I will work with the broader FOSS/Linux community and LA
Council to implement a hybrid of the ideas put forward on the linux-aus
mailing list by Kathy Reid [1], Anthony Towns [2] and the discussions
sparked by those initial posts.
In the interests of transparency I note that prior commitments will see
me with limited availability for voluntary activities until late March
2016 after which time I can direct my attention more fully to LA
matters. That said, I am confident that useful work can be accomplished
in these key early weeks of the Committee's term.
I will, naturally, commit to a full one year term in the role and will
review both my own commitments and the contribution I have been able to
make towards the end of 2016. From this I will make clear my intent for
2017 in time for others to consider taking up the role if I do not plan
to re-nominate myself.
Further in the interests of openness and transparency, I will note that
while I am no longer a full time desktop Linux user I work on FOSS full
time as part of my employment [3] and naturally have numerous
Linux/FOSS/OSH based bits of hardware, devices and servers that I
continue to enjoy tinkering with.
I remain of the view that an entirely FOSS based software
stack/environment is the ideal and one I am happy to advocate for, but I
acknowledge that a hybrid of FOSS and other (proprietary and shareware)
software is a practical if sub-optimal reality for most. In my view
both "camps" should be made welcome under the LA umbrella.
I am also of the view that Open Standards for information interchange in
its many forms and layers in the software stack is, arguably, more
important than the underlying software itself. Clearly both being Libre
is the ideal for which we must strive.
Should I be successful in being elected into the role of President I
shall do my utmost to work towards the furtherment of Free and Open
Source software in Australia and the local region and Linux Australia as
an organisation itself.
I add that my expectation is that as a President and Council we will
rely heavily on the considerable abilities, intellect and time of
members of the Australia FOSS community to accomplish our goals.
We will not do all the heavy lifting ourselves. To that extent our
success, or otherwise, equally rests in the hands of you gentle reader!
Thank you for your consideration of my candidacy.
Cheers,
Hugh
[0] http://hugh.blemings.id.au
[1] http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2016-January/022356.html
[2] http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2016-January/022419.html
[3] http://rackspace.com
From aj at erisian.com.au Sun Jan 10 17:29:09 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 16:29:09 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
Message-ID: <20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 03:48:43PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
> By way of background, in addition to having long been involved in Free
> and Open Source Software and Hardware (..., Ubuntu, ...)
> Further in the interests of openness and transparency, I will note that
> while I am no longer a full time desktop Linux user [...]
So, what do you use instead, and why? (You didn't mention if you run
Linux on your "smart devices"?) [0]
> In the interests of transparency I note that prior commitments will see
> me with limited availability for voluntary activities until late March
> 2016 after which time I can direct my attention more fully to LA
> matters.
Will "limited availability" be enough to address any issues that the
LCA or PyCon (etc) teams might have prior to or during March, or will
you be relying on your VP to deal with some/all of these (by chairing
meetings, following up on emails, handling votes, harrassing people to
do things, etc)?
Cheers,
aj
[0] For the record, I ran OS X when first elected to the LA council:
http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2004/11/08/my-new-ibook
http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2004/11/09/applemail-and-imap
http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2004/11/15/apple-mail-readers-continued
http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2004/12/16/yay-memory
http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2005-February/msg00045.html
I don't seem to have blogged about switching back to Linux, which
iirc was because the OS X filesystem at the time couldn't handle my
email efficiently/reliably (too many files in a Maildir/ directory),
and running Linux in a VM (on powerpc) was slow... Well, that and
Linux on the iBook had gotten reliable enough that suspend/resume
was working...
Hmm, we're getting close to the ten year anniversary of the year of
the Linux desktop according to me too:
http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2007/12/07/asus-eeepc
From josh at nitrotech.org Sun Jan 10 18:35:06 2016
From: josh at nitrotech.org (Joshua Hesketh)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 18:35:06 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <569209AA.4020300@nitrotech.org>
On 10/01/16 17:29, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 03:48:43PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
>> By way of background, in addition to having long been involved in Free
>> and Open Source Software and Hardware (..., Ubuntu, ...)
>> Further in the interests of openness and transparency, I will note that
>> while I am no longer a full time desktop Linux user [...]
> So, what do you use instead, and why? (You didn't mention if you run
> Linux on your "smart devices"?) [0]
>
>> In the interests of transparency I note that prior commitments will see
>> me with limited availability for voluntary activities until late March
>> 2016 after which time I can direct my attention more fully to LA
>> matters.
> Will "limited availability" be enough to address any issues that the
> LCA or PyCon (etc) teams might have prior to or during March, or will
> you be relying on your VP to deal with some/all of these (by chairing
> meetings, following up on emails, handling votes, harrassing people to
> do things, etc)?
Not that I am answering for Hugh, but I am confident that the elected
council will be able to take care of business during the absence of any
individual member (exactly the reason we have a VP etc). In addition to
that I am also very happy to be available to help out in any way I can
and to help answer any questions subcommittees or the new council may have.
Cheers,
Josh
>
> Cheers,
> aj
>
> [0] For the record, I ran OS X when first elected to the LA council:
>
> http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2004/11/08/my-new-ibook
> http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2004/11/09/applemail-and-imap
> http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2004/11/15/apple-mail-readers-continued
> http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2004/12/16/yay-memory
>
> http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2005-February/msg00045.html
>
> I don't seem to have blogged about switching back to Linux, which
> iirc was because the OS X filesystem at the time couldn't handle my
> email efficiently/reliably (too many files in a Maildir/ directory),
> and running Linux in a VM (on powerpc) was slow... Well, that and
> Linux on the iBook had gotten reliable enough that suspend/resume
> was working...
>
> Hmm, we're getting close to the ten year anniversary of the year of
> the Linux desktop according to me too:
>
> http://www.erisian.com.au/wordpress/2007/12/07/asus-eeepc
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
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From lists at iseppi.org Sun Jan 10 21:50:38 2016
From: lists at iseppi.org (James Iseppi)
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2016 21:50:38 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia council elections
In-Reply-To: <569110AD.4090304@kathyreid.id.au>
References:
<569110AD.4090304@kathyreid.id.au>
Message-ID: <2BD4CF03-3853-413C-836E-942A880B17D5@iseppi.org>
Hi All,
Thank you to those who have nominated me to continue as a member of the Linux Australia Council.
It has been an interesting, productive and rewarding year on the council, and I am happy to continue in a role on the council if I am elected.
The critical challenges the council faces are largely around finding resources to achieve outcomes for the organisation. From that perspective I believe it is important that council focuses on enabling others within the community to do great work and that we minimise reliance on individuals within the council to achieve those outcomes. Kathy's work on Inflection point and the contributions that have followed are great examples of what I think Council needs to foster. This means we need to improve our engagement with the broader Linux Australia community and enable them to achieve the outcomes that the organisation needs. If that means delegating responsibilities to sub-committees, outsourcing work that we can't find volunteers for, or helping people to get ideas off the ground starting from a conversation on the mailing list, then that is what I believe needs to occur.
With the growth of PyCon-AU and other non-linux related conferences organised by Linux Australia, I think a push towards rebranding is necessary, but equally I don't want to risk the goodwill associated with our current brand for a yet unproven new brand. That makes me very interested in the co-branding proposal by AJ, and I hope he is willing to help push that proposal forward from outside the council, given he does not appear to have accepted his nomination. I can see it being the start of revitalising the organisation and potentially changing the brand, but it is critical that this is driven by the community and not by the council, otherwise we will again run into the issues of burnout.
Finally I hope that all of those who do not get elected to council, will continue to drive the conversation where they believe it needs to go, because without that, there will be no change.
Thanks
James Iseppi
From hugh at blemings.org Mon Jan 11 02:59:53 2016
From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 02:59:53 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
Hi Aj, All,
Firstly my apologies for the delay in replying, I'm travelling on
holidays at present and have limited access to email.
On 10/01/2016 17:29, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 03:48:43PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
>> By way of background, in addition to having long been involved in Free
>> and Open Source Software and Hardware (..., Ubuntu, ...)
>
>> Further in the interests of openness and transparency, I will note that
>> while I am no longer a full time desktop Linux user [...]
>
> So, what do you use instead, and why? (You didn't mention if you run
> Linux on your "smart devices"?) [0]
A fair question and an interesting and timely opportunity for some
reflection as I write this.
The TL;DR here is probably "The choice of FOSS vs proprietary
applications and underlying OS largely made on the basis of case by case
pragmatism."
A full catalogue of what I have and what it runs what and why is
probably not very relevant, so a few examples in no particular order;
* My work laptop is a Mac which runs OSX natively and a mixture of FOSS
and proprietary software to do various day to day duties on top
** VMs of Ubuntu for desktop Linux needs and devstack tweaking
** A company preferred non-free videoconferencing suite
** Thunderbird for personal email
** A proprietary email/calendaring client for for most work related
email - while I could probably get a FOSS offering into working shape,
I'd rather spend my limited cycles elsewhere
** In downtime - various music applications, mostly non-free
* My home server (NAS, DNS, Media playback and other odds and ends)
** Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS
* Some of my (music) keyboards run Linux kernels as it happens - they
came that way from Korg and Yamaha. Others either run an embedded OS or
don't require one such as my much loved Beale Piano and loaner Hammond
L122 Organ :)
* Have been tinkering with ESP8266 hardware running esp-open-rtos
https://github.com/SuperHouse/esp-open-rtos
** Haven't got much further than blinking a LED yet, but am duly scheming
The main change then was moving from native Ubuntu on a Thinkpad to OSX
on a Mac a few years back.
Macs can of course run Linux natively, something I did initially but as
I spent more and more non-work time running music applications natively
under OSX it made more sense to shift to FOSS applications (Thunderbird
for example) under OSX as well.
Music applications, particularly virtual instruments are very compute
and memory intensive so virtualisation (OSX under Linux as it would have
been) is a non-starter.
I think then for better or worse, it was the (non-work related) use of
music software that drove the change for the most part. I actually have
a half written blog post on this (my choice of music software and
hardware) which I'll dust off sometime soon. TL;DR - there are some
important components to a working virtual instrument based keyboard rig
for which no adequate FOSS equivalent exists.
Hope the above makes some sense :)
>> In the interests of transparency I note that prior commitments will see
>> me with limited availability for voluntary activities until late March
>> 2016 after which time I can direct my attention more fully to LA
>> matters.
>
> Will "limited availability" be enough to address any issues that the
> LCA or PyCon (etc) teams might have prior to or during March, or will
> you be relying on your VP to deal with some/all of these (by chairing
> meetings, following up on emails, handling votes, harrassing people to
> do things, etc)?
I see Josh has kindly (and accurately) commented here - I will be
available enough to be at least tacitly involved in these conversations
as they occur. Up until mid/late March I will as you suggest be relying
on the newly elected Council and past members to do some of the chasing
here - something I have already discussed with the latter group.
Thank you again for the constructive and pleasantly thought provoking
questions AJ :)
Cheers,
Hugh
From aj at erisian.com.au Mon Jan 11 12:58:49 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 11:58:49 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <20160111015849.GA32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
On Fri, Jan 08, 2016 at 11:47:54PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> 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].
Hey, apparently it was interesting! Yay!
In that case, it's probably also interesting to see if/how that aligns
with Kathy's "Inflection Point" action items. Here's how I think that
goes:
* "rebrand"
This becomes "co-brand", with a totally different implementation
approach
* "replace memberdb with civicrm"
Kathy's nomination spiel proposes a membership subctte to "drive
changes to the existing platform"; the "rabid fanatics" would
presumably want to be involved in that as part of "experimenting
with membership levels" to some degree, but I think it's otherwise
independent?
* "upgrade the organisation's website"
I think this is semi-independent; while the "rabid fanatics"
work on upgrading opensource.org.au, others can work on upgrading
linux.org.au. I don't know if this interacts with potentially
using CiviCRM though.
* "move content responsibilities from web team to media and comms team"
I think this is independent in the short term -- since the "rabid
fanatics" are using a new/different website anyway. Maybe in the
long term maybe it means "content creation" becomes something
subcttes do for the subctte's purposes, rather than there being
a generic content/web/media/comms team though.
* "re-institute the Awards program"
Potential overlap with member endorsements
* "call for volunteers"
"rabid fanatics" would need to have members to be a subctte
* "campaign to increase membership from younger people and students"
experiments with membership might increase the benefits of
membership; which would be pretty compatible with a promotional
campaign?
* "move hosting" is unaffected
* "merge the admin / mirror / web teams" is unaffected
* "stakeholder engagement map" is unaffected
* "hire a part-time resource" is unaffected
I think the only other point of intersection is between "Should the
organisation charge for Membership? No." and "experiment with membership
levels, eg accepting annual donations / maybe accept corporate
memberships".
> [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
Also,
http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2012-April/019592.html
> [1] ...
> Meanwhile, the "rabit fanatics" is one such group, [...]
*Hop*, *hop*
Cheers,
aj
From aj at erisian.com.au Mon Jan 11 13:15:08 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 12:15:08 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] LA co-branding proposal
In-Reply-To: <5691DFFD.3050409@muli.com.au>
References: <20160108134754.GA10295@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<5691DFFD.3050409@muli.com.au>
Message-ID: <20160111021508.GB32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 03:37:17PM +1100, Ronald Skeoch wrote:
> On 09/01/16 00:47, Anthony Towns wrote:
> >I think the motivation for rebranding LA as "Open Source Australia" or
> >similar;
> Please understand Open Source is the not the core goal
> /Unencumbered open standard/s is the cornerstone of our future.
> Without the fundamental right to communicate and use without paying
> royalties all is lost!
> This issue needs to appear at the forefront of Goals!
I think this could be one of the advantages of doing it as a subctte
rather than having the council do it directly -- it's easy for there
to be an "open standards" subctte running in parallel with an "open
source" subctte, and whichever really is the foremost goal of members
will just be the more vibrant of the two, without the other needing to
be subservient in any way.
> How much time is wasted by open source people attempting to ensure they are
> not ensnared by "/fictitious/ Patents"
> This substantial issue should be acknowledged in any re-branding.
> and lead to additional LA goals and hence directed effort.
I'm not sure what practical steps LA could take to aid open standards?
Figuring some out would probably be a good first step?
Cheers,
aj
From aj at erisian.com.au Mon Jan 11 13:40:24 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 12:40:24 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
Message-ID: <20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 02:59:53AM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
> Firstly my apologies for the delay in replying, I'm travelling on holidays
> at present and have limited access to email.
(I'm confused as to why you're apologising for a <12h response time on
a sunday...)
> On 10/01/2016 17:29, Anthony Towns wrote:
> * My work laptop is a Mac which runs OSX natively and a mixture of FOSS and
> proprietary software to do various day to day duties on top
> ** VMs of Ubuntu for desktop Linux needs and devstack tweaking
What desktop Linux needs do you have that you can't (or prefer not to)
run natively on OS X? I got the impression most free things were available
for OS X, though the updaters weren't as convenient as Debian or Fedora.
> Music applications, particularly virtual instruments are very compute and
> memory intensive so virtualisation (OSX under Linux as it would have been)
> is a non-starter.
Hmm, compute-intensive seems surprising; I would've thought the constraint
was latency for device access (speakers, mic, midi etc). Isn't compute
under VM basically just a few percent worse than native these days? (Well,
running OS X under a VM seems to be frowned upon by Apple too from what
I can tell)
Cheers,
aj
From blakjak at blakjak.net Mon Jan 11 14:51:28 2016
From: blakjak at blakjak.net (Mark Foster)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 16:51:28 +1300
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
On 11/01/2016 3:40 p.m., Anthony Towns wrote:
>> On 10/01/2016 17:29, Anthony Towns wrote:
>> * My work laptop is a Mac which runs OSX natively and a mixture of FOSS and
>> proprietary software to do various day to day duties on top
>> ** VMs of Ubuntu for desktop Linux needs and devstack tweaking
> What desktop Linux needs do you have that you can't (or prefer not to)
> run natively on OS X? I got the impression most free things were available
> for OS X, though the updaters weren't as convenient as Debian or Fedora.
Are we seriously at the stage where we're challenging people who're
putting their hands up to take a not-insigificant role in LA, because
they use a mixed-software-stack for a variety of reasons?
I've been a big contributor to the Linux world in NZ for >15 years, but
I spend an awful lot of time in Linux (and infact, for various reasons,
I don't have a 'current' Linux workstation right now, though I still
have several servers). Do I need to resign from Linux Australia now? Or
at that level am I only worthy of being a 'member'?
I officially joined LA in order to serve on the core team for LCA2015
(Auckland); I volunteered a hellovalot of my time and energy into what I
believe was a very successful LCA.
I did an awful lot of the planning work for LCA on my (work COE issue)
Windows workstation, and using my (work COE issue) Apple iPhone.
I continue to administer the NZ Linux Users Group and participate in
groups such as the New Zealand Open Source Society on predominantly
Windows machines.
None of these things seemed to matter to the outcome of the event.
>> Music applications, particularly virtual instruments are very compute and
>> memory intensive so virtualisation (OSX under Linux as it would have been)
>> is a non-starter.
> Hmm, compute-intensive seems surprising; I would've thought the constraint
> was latency for device access (speakers, mic, midi etc). Isn't compute
> under VM basically just a few percent worse than native these days? (Well,
> running OS X under a VM seems to be frowned upon by Apple too from what
> I can tell)
>
Play the ball, not the man. The guy seems to have excellent pedigree in
terms of the Linux and Open Source worlds and has accepted nomination
into a challenging and time-consuming volunteer role.
Standing for office is so, so much more than splitting hairs and
interrogating over details like this.
Mark.
From blakjak at blakjak.net Mon Jan 11 15:00:33 2016
From: blakjak at blakjak.net (Mark Foster)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 17:00:33 +1300
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
Message-ID: <569328E1.3090304@blakjak.net>
On 11/01/2016 4:51 p.m., Mark Foster wrote:
>
> I've been a big contributor to the Linux world in NZ for >15 years,
> but I spend an awful lot of time in Linux (and infact, for various
> reasons, I don't have a 'current' Linux workstation right now, though
> I still have several servers). Do I need to resign from Linux
> Australia now? Or at that level am I only worthy of being a 'member'?
>
This should read "I've been a big contributor to the Linux world in NZ
for >15 years, but I spend an awful lot of time NOT in Linux" ....
Apologies for the lack of clarity.
Mark.
From hugh at blemings.org Mon Jan 11 15:17:00 2016
From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 15:17:00 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
Message-ID: <56932CBC.30900@blemings.org>
Hi Mark, AJ, All,
On 11/01/2016 14:51, Mark Foster wrote:
>
> On 11/01/2016 3:40 p.m., Anthony Towns wrote:
>>> On 10/01/2016 17:29, Anthony Towns wrote: * My work laptop is a
>>> Mac which runs OSX natively and a mixture of FOSS and
>>> proprietary software to do various day to day duties on top **
>>> VMs of Ubuntu for desktop Linux needs and devstack tweaking
>> What desktop Linux needs do you have that you can't (or prefer not
>> to) run natively on OS X? I got the impression most free things
>> were available for OS X, though the updaters weren't as convenient
>> as Debian or Fedora.
>
> Are we seriously at the stage where we're challenging people who're
> putting their hands up to take a not-insigificant role in LA,
> because they use a mixed-software-stack for a variety of reasons?
Ah, there's a bit of context that might be missing here;
Firstly I've known AJ for almost as long as I've done FOSS stuff, he's
one of a number of folk I respect and trust to be good, I dunno,
barometers for me as such matters.
Given that long standing friendship and association I don't view his
email as a challenge in anything other than a good and constructive way :)
To your query AJ - what are the needs that aren't met - it's probably a
mixture of inertia and, I suspect, the fact that for work related
calendaring and email, presently dealt with by an Outlook client run
natively - is unlikely to be seemless in anything else.
I may be doing the FOSS alternatives a disservice here as I've not
looked at it for a couple of years, but last time I did I put it in the
mental too hard basket :)
Plus, I must confess - when I wake five minutes prior to a 6am
conference call, I just want my video conferencing to work - it's
difficult enough having my hair in some sort of public-compatible shape
at that hour let alone anything else ;)
> I've been a big contributor to the Linux world in NZ for >15 years,
> but I spend an awful lot of time in Linux (and infact, for various
> reasons, I don't have a 'current' Linux workstation right now,
> though I still have several servers). Do I need to resign from Linux
> Australia now? Or at that level am I only worthy of being a
> 'member'?
No, I don't think this is necessary - I'll leave AJ to speak for himself
but I doubt this was his angle either :)
> I officially joined LA in order to serve on the core team for
> LCA2015 (Auckland); I volunteered a hellovalot of my time and energy
> into what I believe was a very successful LCA. I did an awful lot of
> the planning work for LCA on my (work COE issue) Windows workstation,
> and using my (work COE issue) Apple iPhone. I continue to administer
> the NZ Linux Users Group and participate in groups such as the New
> Zealand Open Source Society on predominantly Windows machines. None
> of these things seemed to matter to the outcome of the event.
And a cracker of an event it was too, I still remember it fondly and as
a credit to all involved :)
>>> Music applications, particularly virtual instruments are very
>>> compute and memory intensive so virtualisation (OSX under Linux
>>> as it would have been) is a non-starter.
>> Hmm, compute-intensive seems surprising; I would've thought the
>> constraint was latency for device access (speakers, mic, midi
>> etc). Isn't compute under VM basically just a few percent worse
>> than native these days? (Well, running OS X under a VM seems to be
>> frowned upon by Apple too from what I can tell)
I think where it fell down is that some of the software I use does funky
things with license management and/or realtime calls that may not play
well with OSX over Linux.
> Play the ball, not the man. The guy seems to have excellent
> pedigree in terms of the Linux and Open Source worlds and has
> accepted nomination into a challenging and time-consuming volunteer
> role.
>
> Standing for office is so, so much more than splitting hairs and
> interrogating over details like this.
As I noted above, I think AJ is at "worst" gently chiding me but I see
it a well intended topic of discussion :)
Cheers,
Hugh
From blakjak at blakjak.net Mon Jan 11 15:34:14 2016
From: blakjak at blakjak.net (Mark Foster)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 17:34:14 +1300
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <56932CBC.30900@blemings.org>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net> <56932CBC.30900@blemings.org>
Message-ID: <569330C6.1000407@blakjak.net>
On 11/01/2016 5:17 p.m., Hugh Blemings wrote:
> Hi Mark, AJ, All,
>
> On 11/01/2016 14:51, Mark Foster wrote:
>>
>> Are we seriously at the stage where we're challenging people who're
>> putting their hands up to take a not-insigificant role in LA,
>> because they use a mixed-software-stack for a variety of reasons?
>
> Ah, there's a bit of context that might be missing here;
>
> Firstly I've known AJ for almost as long as I've done FOSS stuff, he's
> one of a number of folk I respect and trust to be good, I dunno,
> barometers for me as such matters.
>
> Given that long standing friendship and association I don't view his
> email as a challenge in anything other than a good and constructive
> way :)
*rest snipped*
That being the case i'll happily go back to my perch. :-)
Having read two of Anthony's posts and without knowing your history I
just wanted to ensure we were focusing on the important matter that the
thread was about - the candidacy and your suitability for the role.
I certainly think you're qualified for the role, despite your mixed stack :)
(Thanks for your kind words regarding LCA2015 too. I was a load of fun
to put on and i'm immensely proud of what we achieved. I'm sure LCA2016
will set the standard even higher, however...)
Regards,
Mark.
From michael at the-davies.net Mon Jan 11 16:30:10 2016
From: michael at the-davies.net (Michael Davies)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 16:00:10 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org> <20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
Message-ID:
Hi Mark,
On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 2:21 PM, Mark Foster wrote:
> On 11/01/2016 3:40 p.m., Anthony Towns wrote:
>
>> On 10/01/2016 17:29, Anthony Towns wrote:
>>> * My work laptop is a Mac which runs OSX natively and a mixture of FOSS
>>> and
>>> proprietary software to do various day to day duties on top
>>> ** VMs of Ubuntu for desktop Linux needs and devstack tweaking
>>>
>> What desktop Linux needs do you have that you can't (or prefer not to)
>> run natively on OS X? I got the impression most free things were available
>> for OS X, though the updaters weren't as convenient as Debian or Fedora.
>>
>
> Are we seriously at the stage where we're challenging people who're
> putting their hands up to take a not-insigificant role in LA, because they
> use a mixed-software-stack for a variety of reasons?
>
I know both AJ and Hugh, and they also know each other. Both are pretty
much "Linux-greybeards", if such a term exists, as they've been around the
place prior to linux kernel 0.99 :-)
I don't think AJ was having a go at Hugh for using a mixed stack, but
rather questioning why he needed to. As in "I'm genuinely interested as to
why you need to do this thing". I thought it was an inquiry, not an
inquisition. At least I read it that way.
> I've been a big contributor to the Linux world in NZ for >15 years, but I
> spend an awful lot of time in Linux (and infact, for various reasons, I
> don't have a 'current' Linux workstation right now, though I still have
> several servers). Do I need to resign from Linux Australia now? Or at that
> level am I only worthy of being a 'member'?
>
> I officially joined LA in order to serve on the core team for LCA2015
> (Auckland); I volunteered a hellovalot of my time and energy into what I
> believe was a very successful LCA.
> I did an awful lot of the planning work for LCA on my (work COE issue)
> Windows workstation, and using my (work COE issue) Apple iPhone.
> I continue to administer the NZ Linux Users Group and participate in
> groups such as the New Zealand Open Source Society on predominantly Windows
> machines.
> None of these things seemed to matter to the outcome of the event.
And it was a great event :)
Music applications, particularly virtual instruments are very compute and
>>> memory intensive so virtualisation (OSX under Linux as it would have
>>> been)
>>> is a non-starter.
>>>
>> Hmm, compute-intensive seems surprising; I would've thought the constraint
>> was latency for device access (speakers, mic, midi etc). Isn't compute
>> under VM basically just a few percent worse than native these days? (Well,
>> running OS X under a VM seems to be frowned upon by Apple too from what
>> I can tell)
>>
>>
> Play the ball, not the man. The guy seems to have excellent pedigree in
> terms of the Linux and Open Source worlds and has accepted nomination into
> a challenging and time-consuming volunteer role.
>
AJ has been on the LCA council/committee for 5 years and also has been
involved in the organisation of many LCAs in various capacities. He has
also been a significant player in many open-source projects, distributions,
and worked in open-source roles in various companies. Like Hugh, AJ has an
excellent pedigree in the FOSS world.
> Standing for office is so, so much more than splitting hairs and
> interrogating over details like this.
I don't think that was the intent. I think you've read intention into the
email that was not intended.
Shar and Compress,
Michael...
Disclaimer: Hugh is a work colleague.
--
Michael Davies michael at the-davies.net
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From davidmwilliams at hotmail.com Mon Jan 11 17:23:00 2016
From: davidmwilliams at hotmail.com (David Williams)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 17:23:00 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
Message-ID:
> On 11 Jan 2016, at 5:15 PM, Mark Foster wrote:
>
> Are we seriously at the stage where we're challenging people who're putting their hands up to take a not-insigificant role in LA, because they use a mixed-software-stack for a variety of reasons?
Last year when there was a lack of candidates I nominated to make sure there were people standing. As surprising as it is you now, sure enough there was one guy who loudly proclaimed there was some problem with me because, among many other hats, I wrote technical articles for an online publication where that guy had an alleged grievance with the editor and another writer. Yep, that was the whole basis of his complaint against me - simple association. Ironically, Linux Australia had sought my permission to republish some of my articles at various events over the years.
For some it doesn't matter if you bring multi-million dollar open source engagements to board rooms, it is if there is a tenuous connection to something they allege to dislike.
It is perhaps the same disappointing mentality that leads people to take a well articulated policy direction that soundly sets forth discussion items for the future of the association and instead make it a discussion about where such a document should live instead of the content.
These people remind me of Mr Bean looking at Whistler's Mother and proclaiming "nice frame".
> Play the ball, not the man.
Agreed. It's something for the Association's members to work on.
From aj at erisian.com.au Mon Jan 11 18:21:21 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 17:21:21 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <56932CBC.30900@blemings.org>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net> <56932CBC.30900@blemings.org>
Message-ID: <20160111072121.GA18168@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 03:17:00PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
> On 11/01/2016 14:51, Mark Foster wrote:
> >Are we seriously at the stage where we're challenging people who're
> >putting their hands up to take a not-insigificant role in LA,
> >because they use a mixed-software-stack for a variety of reasons?
> Given that long standing friendship and association I don't view his
> email as a challenge in anything other than a good and constructive way :)
Yeah, that's how it was intended. (In any event, he's the only nominee
for that position and will be automatically elected; so he's already
tied to that crucible and presumably watching the seconds tick by; one,
by one, by one...)
> >On 11/01/2016 3:40 p.m., Anthony Towns wrote:
> >>What desktop Linux needs do you have that you can't (or prefer not
> >>to) run natively on OS X? I got the impression most free things
> >>were available for OS X, though the updaters weren't as convenient
> >>as Debian or Fedora.
> To your query AJ - what are the needs that aren't met - it's probably a
> mixture of inertia and, I suspect, the fact that for work related
> calendaring and email, presently dealt with by an Outlook client run
> natively - is unlikely to be seemless in anything else.
Err, I think you misread my question? You said you're using Linux in
a VM for desktop stuff as well as devstack things -- I was wondering
what the desktop stuff was that's worth going to the trouble of doing
inside the VM rather than just running natively in OS X? Or is running
Linux desktop apps via a VM so little trouble these days that it makes
no real difference?
(I think the only stuff I ran in a VM was Debian build tools; but VMs
were much slower when I was trying that...)
(Relatedly, I saw tytso talking about having a Debian environment under
Android the other day, but that still seems to be somewhat annoying in
practice: https://plus.google.com/+TheodoreTso/posts/chfKCGTSz3m )
> I may be doing the FOSS alternatives a disservice here as I've not looked at
> it for a couple of years, but last time I did I put it in the mental too
> hard basket :)
> Plus, I must confess - when I wake five minutes prior to a 6am conference
> call, I just want my video conferencing to work - it's difficult enough
> having my hair in some sort of public-compatible shape at that hour let
> alone anything else ;)
Videoconferences at 6am really seem like a step down from teleconferences
at 6am :(
What we need is a good FOSS videoconferencing tool with an option to
transmit an automated Max-Headroom like version of yourself, rather than
capturing live video...
> On 11/01/2016 14:51, Mark Foster wrote:
> >I've been a big contributor to the Linux world in NZ for >15 years,
> >but I spend an awful lot of time in Linux (and infact, for various
> >reasons, I don't have a 'current' Linux workstation right now,
> >though I still have several servers). Do I need to resign from Linux
> >Australia now? Or at that level am I only worthy of being a
> >'member'?
"I run Linux on my servers" is a totally good reason to be a member of
Linux Australia; though "I helped run a linux.conf.au" is probably an
even better one.
As far as free software or open source goes, I think it matters if
people who already care about the philosophy see sufficient road blocks
that they're not using it themselves for some things, and I think it's
interesting to know why that is. (I'd be interested in responses from
other candidates too, but they haven't provided the bait that Hugh did)
(And fundamentally, I don't think people should be bothered by discussions
of it -- it sucks that anyone has to make a tradeoff between having
control over the source code or having particular features; but if
"features" wins the day on the merits, that's totally fine)
> >I officially joined LA in order to serve on the core team for
> >LCA2015 (Auckland); I volunteered a hellovalot of my time and energy
> >into what I believe was a very successful LCA. I did an awful lot of
> >the planning work for LCA on my (work COE issue) Windows workstation,
> >and using my (work COE issue) Apple iPhone. I continue to administer
> >the NZ Linux Users Group and participate in groups such as the New
> >Zealand Open Source Society on predominantly Windows machines. None
> >of these things seemed to matter to the outcome of the event.
I have my doubts that your volunteering didn't matter to the outcome of
the event, but I'll take your word for it. ;-P
In any event, like I said in the footnote of my mail, I did my first year
or so on the LA council running OS X, and it worked fine. It's something
of an indictment of how good Linux and open source software is in various
areas that people like us make those choices (and I think discussing
the why's is the first step to fixing them), but nothing more than that.
(Work-issued hardware and software is a different matter entirely,
as far as I'm concerned, and probably not that interesting to talk about)
On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 03:17:00PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
> >>>Music applications, particularly virtual instruments are very
> >>>compute and memory intensive so virtualisation (OSX under Linux
> >>>as it would have been) is a non-starter.
> >>Hmm, compute-intensive seems surprising; I would've thought the
> >>constraint was latency for device access (speakers, mic, midi
> >>etc). Isn't compute under VM basically just a few percent worse
> >>than native these days? (Well, running OS X under a VM seems to be
> >>frowned upon by Apple too from what I can tell)
> I think where it fell down is that some of the software I use does funky
> things with license management and/or realtime calls that may not play
> well with OSX over Linux.
Yeah, realtime calls to the OS that interact with hardware are always
going to be problems for VMs as far as I can see. Last I heard, realtime
stuff for Linux and audio was a problem anyway; and is the excuse for
Android not having many cool music apps. :( Looking now, it seems like
things might not be great yet, but at least the fundamentals are getting
better:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pro_Audio#Realtime_Kernel
http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/11/13/android-audio-latency-in-depth-its-getting-better-especially-with-the-nexus-5x-and-6p/
> >Play the ball, not the man. The guy seems to have excellent
> >pedigree in terms of the Linux and Open Source worlds and has
> >accepted nomination into a challenging and time-consuming volunteer
> >role.
Hugh doesn't just seem to have an excellent pedigree, he does, no
question. (Which seems to be true of everyone standing to be honest)
Cheers,
aj
From aj at erisian.com.au Mon Jan 11 18:42:55 2016
From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 17:42:55 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To:
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
Message-ID: <20160111074255.GA21547@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 04:00:10PM +1030, Michael Davies wrote:
> I know both AJ and Hugh, and they also know each other. Both are pretty
> much "Linux-greybeards", if such a term exists, as they've been around the
> place prior to linux kernel 0.99 :-)
I definitely haven't been using Linux since 0.99. I /think/ my first
version was 1.2, or maybe a late 1.1 release? At any rate I bought the
installer from the cheap CDs bin at Harvey Norman, so it was clearly
already mainstream by the time I got involved.
] Here is a list of a few of the new features that version 1.2 has,
] compared to version 1.0:
] ...
] * Supports more kinds of floppies, including 2.88 MB.
] * New sound driver supports Linux DOOM
] ...
-- http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2682
Cheers,
a "not that old!" j
From blakjak at blakjak.net Mon Jan 11 18:49:12 2016
From: blakjak at blakjak.net (Mark Foster)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 20:49:12 +1300
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <20160111072121.GA18168@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net> <56932CBC.30900@blemings.org>
<20160111072121.GA18168@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <56935E78.9060502@blakjak.net>
On 11/01/2016 8:21 p.m., Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 03:17:00PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
>> On 11/01/2016 14:51, Mark Foster wrote:
>>> Are we seriously at the stage where we're challenging people who're
>>> putting their hands up to take a not-insigificant role in LA,
>>> because they use a mixed-software-stack for a variety of reasons?
>> Given that long standing friendship and association I don't view his
>> email as a challenge in anything other than a good and constructive way :)
> Yeah, that's how it was intended. (In any event, he's the only nominee
> for that position and will be automatically elected; so he's already
> tied to that crucible and presumably watching the seconds tick by; one,
> by one, by one...)
Thanks for that final element of clarification, and for the spirit in
which my (perhaps slightly exasperated, needlessly as it turns out)
response was handled (by all responders).
I do enjoy the way the members of this mailing list generally conduct
themselves. Long may it continue.
Good luck to Hugh!
(my first distro was RedHat 5.2, so I am a relative newbie when compared
to some of you lot... !)
Mark.
From xanni at glasswings.com.au Mon Jan 11 19:36:07 2016
From: xanni at glasswings.com.au (Andrew Pam)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 19:36:07 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <20160111072121.GA18168@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net> <56932CBC.30900@blemings.org>
<20160111072121.GA18168@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
Message-ID: <56936977.1070906@glasswings.com.au>
On 11/01/16 18:21, Anthony Towns wrote:
> What we need is a good FOSS videoconferencing tool with an option to
> transmit an automated Max-Headroom like version of yourself, rather than
> capturing live video...
It's not FOSS, but Facerig is close to the software you're looking for -
you can import your own models, and it animates in realtime from webcam
face capture and/or audio input: facerig.com
Now we just need them to either open their code or someone to develop an
open equivalent.
Cheers,
Andrew
--
mailto:xanni at xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://www.xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
http://www.glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
http://www.sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
From craige at mcwhirter.com.au Mon Jan 11 20:48:28 2016
From: craige at mcwhirter.com.au (Craige McWhirter)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 19:48:28 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To:
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
Message-ID: <56937A6C.8080806@mcwhirter.com.au>
On 11/01/16 16:23, David Williams wrote:
> On 11 Jan 2016, at 5:15 PM, Mark Foster wrote:
> It is perhaps the same disappointing mentality that leads people to take a well articulated
> policy direction that soundly sets forth discussion items for the future of the association
> and instead make it a discussion about where such a document should live instead of the content.
As one of those "people"[1], I'd like to suggest it's a fair question.
If you re-read at least my reply, you'll see that it's less about
"where" but more about "how".
Google, like one of the suggestions, GitHub, are proprietary services
(that do use a lot of otherwise "free as in freedom" software). So the
points I made are not about the nature of the service.
My point at least was that the nature of collaboration on Google Docs[2]
is more difficult to follow and track. IMHO there are better ways to
track changes to documents like this where significant numbers of people
have been invited to collaborate and patch.
It is my opinion that are better tools for collaboration on that scale.
Many of those tools are Open Source, some are hosted by proprietary
service providers and some can be self hosted, should the organisation
desire. We can also switch more readily between either model and a
number of providers without losing any accumulated meta data.
Linux Australia already uses one option for some documents and there are
many great examples, such as the documentation project in OpenStack
(lead by one of our amazing members and worked on by many LCA attendees)
that perform collaborative documentation, in anger, in the real world
with great success, using Open Source or Free Software solutions.
I would also argue that any service that requires people to have an
account to a proprietary service (whether it's Github or Google) is a
barrier of entry for many our community[3].
Asking whether we can move to a more inclusive and technically
manageable solution is a reasonable question, IMHO.
I'd also like to suggest it's an important one given that the
aforementioned document articulates a vision of Linux Australia taking a
larger role in advocating OpenSource software but is hosted on a
proprietary service, which some members will not log into.
> These people remind me of Mr Bean looking at Whistler's Mother and proclaiming "nice frame".
>> Play the ball, not the man.
[1] I not only asked that question but also participated in the
discussion via Google Docs
[2] I've delivered Google Docs / Apps migrations for a number of
businesses. No, the number is not zero ;-)
[3] Not myself, I already have accounts on both
--
Craige McWhirter
M: +61 4685 91819
W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
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From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Mon Jan 11 21:04:39 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 21:04:39 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <56936977.1070906@glasswings.com.au>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net> <56932CBC.30900@blemings.org>
<20160111072121.GA18168@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56936977.1070906@glasswings.com.au>
Message-ID:
I realise nobody asked me, but I think the choice of platform among open
source fans is an interesting discussion avenue. I haven't used Windows in
any form as a computing platform for like 10 years. I have used OSX
enthusiastically for about the last 4 years, and Linux prior to that. The
drift was the result of:
-- Better OSX support by my corporate environment
-- Better physical hardware in laptops
-- Better open source support than Windows for my open source dev needs
I have to say, I couldn't be happier. There is almost nothing "linux-y"
that I cant' do on my laptop -- the most notable exception being the hassle
in the different library path prefixes of opengl meaning that some things
don't build easily for me. Obviously that's not a complex issue really, but
maintaining my own private port of the relevant complex application was a
big pain.
What I'm really grateful is the fantastic support OSX provides for open
source development and applications. I use approximately 50-70% FOSS
applications in my general work. While I could probably find my way clear
to the same endpoint on Windows, it would be a huge amount of trouble to do
so. I haven't really got anything against it, I just find it less efficient
for achieving work.
While I support open source and Linux as a key part of the ecosystem, I
don't think it should be 'beyond competition' from commercial and/or
closed-source packages. I appreciate innovation and progress wherever it
comes from, and I think we world is slowly figuring out the right way to
support an ecosystem with multiple kinds of software heritage.
On 11 January 2016 at 19:36, Andrew Pam wrote:
> On 11/01/16 18:21, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > What we need is a good FOSS videoconferencing tool with an option to
> > transmit an automated Max-Headroom like version of yourself, rather than
> > capturing live video...
>
> It's not FOSS, but Facerig is close to the software you're looking for -
> you can import your own models, and it animates in realtime from webcam
> face capture and/or audio input: facerig.com
>
> Now we just need them to either open their code or someone to develop an
> open equivalent.
>
> Cheers,
> Andrew
> --
> mailto:xanni at xanadu.net Andrew Pam
> http://www.xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
> http://www.glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
> http://www.sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
--
--------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Mon Jan 11 22:26:57 2016
From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 21:56:57 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] Confound It @ MemberDB :)
Message-ID: <003a01d14c62$fb6c9bc0$f245d340$@adam.com.au>
I am tempted to alter the code to allow "equal preferences", eg:
1. I'd prefer Person1;
2. I don't care if Person2 or Person3 get second preference;
3. Then Person4;
4. And finally, I don't care if Person5, Person6 or Person7 have
fourth place;
5. There may be other candidates that I have not voted for after
this.
But I don't know if I could get the mathematical model right although I
know enough about voting systems to know that someone's probably
modelled this type of voting.
Or we could just stop having such good candidates. I suppose :P
--
David Lloyd
http://www.validlyodd.net/
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From ac at main.me Tue Jan 12 00:22:11 2016
From: ac at main.me (ac)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 15:22:11 +0200
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To:
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net> <56932CBC.30900@blemings.org>
<20160111072121.GA18168@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56936977.1070906@glasswings.com.au>
Message-ID: <20160111132200.7A5BF446A@mailhost.linux.org.au>
At the considerable risk of being grouped with "rabid fanatics" (and
as I do not really care whether anyone loves/likes me or not) I am
making this post :)
Simply because some people have strong opinions about software freedom
and openness and fairness and level playing fields and low barriers to
entry and so many many other philosophies flowing from the
same motivators is hardly a reason to think they are "rabid fanatics"
anyway...
Google Docs and any/all Google products: (and OSX, etc):
it is not so much about an opinion of whether this or that platform is
better or whether you or I think it is more usable, has a more evolved
UI or you find it more user friendly.
It is about a lot more.
It is about open standards of data exchange, (and open standards in
general) about open source code, it is about philosophy, it is about
using FOSS and supporting/promoting FOSS tools, products and FOSS
communities. (as opposed to promoting huge multinational businesses)
with hundreds of thousands of software patents, etc.
Who can quickly name five top FOSS document Collaboration tools?
What are the barriers to entry to young software engineers trying to
make something themselves? (What I am asking is Google Docs good or is
it bad? and if it wasn't Google Docs it would be Bing Docs or Apple
Docs, etc etc)
This is not a Google Products community? Or an Apple support group?
It is a Linux Organisation (and by default also FOSS)
Yes, it is important whether it is Google Docs, or what else that an
open source community promotes by using it.
By using and disseminating Google Docs and other non open
source tools, products etc. you are in fact marketing it....
In my rabid opinion :) It does matter and No, I do not think it is something trivial.
of course at least 50% (plus?) of this group disagrees, but well,
sometimes it feels good just to get something of your chest, even if it
turns out you are wrong, and/or people think you are an idiot, at least
I still have the freedom to say what I feel and think., this is
something to celebrate!
Freedom to have my own opinion (and even to be an idiot/wrong/etc) *yay* :)
On Mon, 11 Jan 2016 21:04:39 +1100
Tennessee Leeuwenburg wrote:
> I realise nobody asked me, but I think the choice of platform among
> open source fans is an interesting discussion avenue. I haven't used
> Windows in any form as a computing platform for like 10 years. I have
> used OSX enthusiastically for about the last 4 years, and Linux prior
> to that. The drift was the result of:
>
> -- Better OSX support by my corporate environment
> -- Better physical hardware in laptops
> -- Better open source support than Windows for my open source dev
> needs
>
> I have to say, I couldn't be happier. There is almost nothing
> "linux-y" that I cant' do on my laptop -- the most notable exception
> being the hassle in the different library path prefixes of opengl
> meaning that some things don't build easily for me. Obviously that's
> not a complex issue really, but maintaining my own private port of
> the relevant complex application was a big pain.
>
> What I'm really grateful is the fantastic support OSX provides for
> open source development and applications. I use approximately 50-70%
> FOSS applications in my general work. While I could probably find my
> way clear to the same endpoint on Windows, it would be a huge amount
> of trouble to do so. I haven't really got anything against it, I just
> find it less efficient for achieving work.
>
> While I support open source and Linux as a key part of the ecosystem,
> I don't think it should be 'beyond competition' from commercial and/or
> closed-source packages. I appreciate innovation and progress wherever
> it comes from, and I think we world is slowly figuring out the right
> way to support an ecosystem with multiple kinds of software heritage.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 11 January 2016 at 19:36, Andrew Pam
> wrote:
>
> > On 11/01/16 18:21, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > > What we need is a good FOSS videoconferencing tool with an option
> > > to transmit an automated Max-Headroom like version of yourself,
> > > rather than capturing live video...
> >
> > It's not FOSS, but Facerig is close to the software you're looking
> > for - you can import your own models, and it animates in realtime
> > from webcam face capture and/or audio input: facerig.com
> >
> > Now we just need them to either open their code or someone to
> > develop an open equivalent.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Andrew
> > --
> > mailto:xanni at xanadu.net Andrew Pam
> > http://www.xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
> > http://www.glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
> > http://www.sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious
> > Cybernetics _______________________________________________
> > linux-aus mailing list
> > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
> >
>
>
>
From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Tue Jan 12 00:38:53 2016
From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 00:08:53 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
In-Reply-To: <56937A6C.8080806@mcwhirter.com.au>
References: <1C95F28E-27F5-43BB-8033-14268F7BFB99@blemings.org>
<5691E2AB.70204@blemings.org>
<20160110062909.GA14683@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<56927FF9.6060705@blemings.org>
<20160111024024.GC32198@sapphire.erisian.com.au>
<569326C0.7010405@blakjak.net>
<56937A6C.8080806@mcwhirter.com.au>
Message-ID: <000d01d14c75$6a3d9380$3eb8ba80$@adam.com.au>
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/tree/master#README
So easy I can install it.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On
Behalf
> Of Craige McWhirter
> Sent: Monday, 11 January 2016 8:18 PM
> To: linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President
>
> On 11/01/16 16:23, David Williams wrote:
> > On 11 Jan 2016, at 5:15 PM, Mark Foster wrote:
>
> > It is perhaps the same disappointing mentality that leads people to
> > take a well articulated policy direction that soundly sets forth
> > discussion items for the future of the association and instead make
it a
> discussion about where such a document should live instead of the
> content.
>
> As one of those "people"[1], I'd like to suggest it's a fair question.
> If you re-read at least my reply, you'll see that it's less about
"where" but
> more about "how".
>
> Google, like one of the suggestions, GitHub, are proprietary services
> (that do use a lot of otherwise "free as in freedom" software). So the
> points I made are not about the nature of the service.
>
> My point at least was that the nature of collaboration on Google
Docs[2]
> is more difficult to follow and track. IMHO there are better ways to
track
> changes to documents like this where significant numbers of people
> have been invited to collaborate and patch.
>
> It is my opinion that are better tools for collaboration on that
scale.
> Many of those tools are Open Source, some are hosted by proprietary
> service providers and some can be self hosted, should the organisation
> desire. We can also switch more readily between either model and a
> number of providers without losing any accumulated meta data.
>
> Linux Australia already uses one option for some documents and there
> are many great examples, such as the documentation project in
> OpenStack (lead by one of our amazing members and worked on by
> many LCA attendees) that perform collaborative documentation, in
> anger, in the real world with great success, using Open Source or Free
> Software solutions.
>
> I would also argue that any service that requires people to have an
> account to a proprietary service (whether it's Github or Google) is a
> barrier of entry for many our community[3].
>
> Asking whether we can move to a more inclusive and technically
> manageable solution is a reasonable question, IMHO.
>
> I'd also like to suggest it's an important one given that the
> aforementioned document articulates a vision of Linux Australia taking
a
> larger role in advocating OpenSource software but is hosted on a
> proprietary service, which some members will not log into.
>
> > These people remind me of Mr Bean looking at Whistler's Mother and
> proclaiming "nice frame".
>
> >> Play the ball, not the man.
>
>
>
> [1] I not only asked that question but also participated in the
discussion
> via Google Docs [2] I've delivered Google Docs / Apps migrations for a
> number of businesses. No, the number is not zero ;-) [3] Not myself, I
> already have accounts on both
>
>
> --
> Craige McWhirter
> M: +61 4685 91819
> W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
From la at mjec.net Tue Jan 12 09:42:48 2016
From: la at mjec.net (Michael Cordover)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 09:42:48 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Confound It @ MemberDB :)
In-Reply-To: <003a01d14c62$fb6c9bc0$f245d340$@adam.com.au>
References: <003a01d14c62$fb6c9bc0$f245d340$@adam.com.au>
Message-ID: <1452552168.2412535.489229170.61829896@webmail.messagingengine.com>
On Mon, Jan 11, 2016, at 22:26, David Lloyd wrote:
>
> I am tempted to alter the code to allow ?equal preferences?, eg:
>
> 1.I?d prefer Person1;
> 2.I don?t care if Person2 or Person3 get second preference;
> 3.Then Person4;
> 4.And finally, I don?t care if Person5, Person6 or Person7 have fourth
> place;
> 5.There may be other candidates that I have not voted for after this.
>
> But I don?t know if I could get the mathematical model right although
> I know enough about voting systems to know that someone?s probably
> modelled this type of voting.
I haven't looked into it in any detail, but I suspect you could use an
augmented Schulze method where the function d_v(i, j) (being the
function which normally returns 1 if voter v prefers candidate i to
candidate j and 0 otherwise) returns 1/n where v's preference for i =
v's preference for j, with n being the number of candidates for whom v
shared this preference (including i and j).
Having said that, I don't know what counting system MemberDB uses at
the moment...
Regards
Michael
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From _ at chrisjrn.com Tue Jan 12 10:48:10 2016
From: _ at chrisjrn.com (Christopher Neugebauer)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2016 23:48:10 +0000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Confound It @ MemberDB :)
In-Reply-To: <1452552168.2412535.489229170.61829896@webmail.messagingengine.com>
References: <003a01d14c62$fb6c9bc0$f245d340$@adam.com.au>
<1452552168.2412535.489229170.61829896@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID:
On 12 January 2016 at 09:42, Michael Cordover wrote:
>
> Having said that, I don't know what counting system MemberDB uses at the
> moment...
Instant runoff voting where exclusions are conducted until the number
of candidates remaining is equal to the number of positions to be
filled.
--Chris
--
--Christopher Neugebauer
Jabber: chrisjrn at gmail.com -- IRC: chrisjrn on irc.freenode.net --
WWW: http://chrisjrn.com -- Twitter: @chrisjrn
From stewart at flamingspork.com Tue Jan 12 11:09:26 2016
From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 11:09:26 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Confound It @ MemberDB :)
In-Reply-To:
References: <003a01d14c62$fb6c9bc0$f245d340$@adam.com.au>
<1452552168.2412535.489229170.61829896@webmail.messagingengine.com>
Message-ID: <87ziwbfykp.fsf@flamingspork.com>
Christopher Neugebauer <_ at chrisjrn.com> writes:
> On 12 January 2016 at 09:42, Michael Cordover wrote:
>>
>> Having said that, I don't know what counting system MemberDB uses at the
>> moment...
>
> Instant runoff voting where exclusions are conducted until the number
> of candidates remaining is equal to the number of positions to be
> filled.
I was going to be only slightly cheeky and post a URL to the source, but
that's a good summary :)
It turns out having multiple people elected to the one position
(Ordinary Committee Members) with preferential voting where you don't
*have* to fill in all the boxes is a really odd thing for anyone to ever
do... and we're possibly unique in that.
--
Stewart Smith
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From craige at mcwhirter.com.au Tue Jan 12 14:17:35 2016
From: craige at mcwhirter.com.au (Craige McWhirter)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 13:17:35 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Confound It @ MemberDB :)
In-Reply-To: <003a01d14c62$fb6c9bc0$f245d340$@adam.com.au>
References: <003a01d14c62$fb6c9bc0$f245d340$@adam.com.au>
Message-ID: <5694704F.5090807@mcwhirter.com.au>
On 11/01/16 21:26, David Lloyd wrote:
> I am tempted to alter the code to allow ?equal preferences?, eg:
Stewart may not have been cheeky enough but I am:
https://launchpad.net/memberdb
Patch away!
:-D
--
Craige McWhirter
M: +61 4685 91819
W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
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From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Tue Jan 12 15:07:52 2016
From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 14:37:52 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] Confound It @ MemberDB :)
In-Reply-To: <5694704F.5090807@mcwhirter.com.au>
References: <003a01d14c62$fb6c9bc0$f245d340$@adam.com.au>
<5694704F.5090807@mcwhirter.com.au>
Message-ID: <011501d14cee$cf511520$6df33f60$@adam.com.au>
Craige,
Actually, the point to the source was in reference to another person (NOT
ME) wondering how the current code works; one can tell by inference that I
know it doesn't work the way I might want it to.
That said, we could patch the code such that it had a myriad of voting
systems such that depending on which one was chosen (and it could be
chosen after the election) depended on who got elected. We could then
"sell" this open source system to various "democratic governments in the
world" who seem to operate on "democratic elections so long as I can
retrospectively change the voting system such that I win" type
democracies.
It would be a winner, open source and I'm sure we could gain some real
finance to do it!
DSL
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Craige McWhirter [mailto:craige at mcwhirter.com.au]
> Sent: Tuesday, 12 January 2016 1:48 PM
> To: David Lloyd ; 'Linux Australia' aus at lists.linux.org.au>
> Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] Confound It @ MemberDB :)
>
> On 11/01/16 21:26, David Lloyd wrote:
>
> > I am tempted to alter the code to allow "equal preferences", eg:
>
> Stewart may not have been cheeky enough but I am:
>
> https://launchpad.net/memberdb
>
> Patch away!
>
> :-D
>
>
> --
> Craige McWhirter
> M: +61 4685 91819
> W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
From craige at mcwhirter.com.au Tue Jan 12 15:57:13 2016
From: craige at mcwhirter.com.au (Craige McWhirter)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 14:57:13 +1000
Subject: [Linux-aus] Confound It @ MemberDB :)
In-Reply-To: <011501d14cee$cf511520$6df33f60$@adam.com.au>
References: <003a01d14c62$fb6c9bc0$f245d340$@adam.com.au>
<5694704F.5090807@mcwhirter.com.au>
<011501d14cee$cf511520$6df33f60$@adam.com.au>
Message-ID: <569487A9.1040200@mcwhirter.com.au>
On 12/01/16 14:07, David Lloyd wrote:
> That said, we could patch the code such that it had a myriad of voting
> systems such that depending on which one was chosen (and it could be
> chosen after the election) depended on who got elected. We could then
> "sell" this open source system to various "democratic governments in the
> world" who seem to operate on "democratic elections so long as I can
> retrospectively change the voting system such that I win" type
> democracies.
I'm not familiar with the code but comments from those who are made it
quite clear that memberdb would need some non-trivial re-factoring and
that similar effort could result in a voting module being added to free
software CMS.
*Then* it could be used around the world ;-)
--
Craige McWhirter
M: +61 4685 91819
W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
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From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Tue Jan 12 18:21:42 2016
From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 17:51:42 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] Confound It @ MemberDB :)
In-Reply-To: <569487A9.1040200@mcwhirter.com.au>
References: <003a01d14c62$fb6c9bc0$f245d340$@adam.com.au>
<5694704F.5090807@mcwhirter.com.au>
<011501d14cee$cf511520$6df33f60$@adam.com.au>
<569487A9.1040200@mcwhirter.com.au>
Message-ID: <01b301d14d09$e53b05b0$afb11110$@adam.com.au>
It wouldn't hurt to rewrite it in a more modern, standard framework such
as Laravel (if one wished to keep it in PHP).
> -----Original Message-----
> From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On Behalf
> Of Craige McWhirter
> Sent: Tuesday, 12 January 2016 3:27 PM
> To: 'Linux Australia'
> Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] Confound It @ MemberDB :)
>
> On 12/01/16 14:07, David Lloyd wrote:
>
> > That said, we could patch the code such that it had a myriad of voting
> > systems such that depending on which one was chosen (and it could be
> > chosen after the election) depended on who got elected. We could
> then
> > "sell" this open source system to various "democratic governments in
> > the world" who seem to operate on "democratic elections so long as I
> > can retrospectively change the voting system such that I win" type
> > democracies.
>
> I'm not familiar with the code but comments from those who are made it
> quite clear that memberdb would need some non-trivial re-factoring and
> that similar effort could result in a voting module being added to free
> software CMS.
>
> *Then* it could be used around the world ;-)
>
> --
> Craige McWhirter
> M: +61 4685 91819
> W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
From lucychili at gmail.com Tue Jan 12 19:51:43 2016
From: lucychili at gmail.com (Janet Reid)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 19:21:43 +1030
Subject: [Linux-aus] Fwd: digital transformation
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID:
Could be good to have some people thinking about open data and open source
on this team?
https://www.dto.gov.au/careers#openings-list
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From info at lcabythebay.org.au Tue Jan 12 20:19:01 2016
From: info at lcabythebay.org.au (Kathy Reid - Team linux.conf.au 2016 Geelong - LCA By the Bay)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 20:19:01 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Intel Fellow and cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell
to keynote linux.conf.au 2016 Geelong
Message-ID: <5694C505.6020204@lcabythebay.org.au>
Intel Fellow and cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell to keynote
linux.conf.au 2016 Geelong
Intel Fellow and Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Intel,
Australian-born Genevieve Bell leads a team of social scientists,
interaction designers, human factors engineers and computer scientists
whose mission is to build products in tune with people?s needs and
desires. An industry expert and commentator on the intersection of
culture and technology, she has published widely around the societal
challenges facing us all as computing becomes ubiquitous. An
accomplished anthropologist and researcher, Bell joined Intel in 1998.
She has been granted a number of patents for consumer electronics
innovations throughout her career, with additional patents in the user
experience space pending, and is the author of numerous journal papers
and articles. She was named an Intel Fellow in 2008.
In addition to her position at Intel, Bell is a highly regarded industry
expert and frequent commentator on the intersection of culture and
technology. She has been featured in publications such as Wired, Forbes,
The Atlantic, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal and the New York
Times. She is also a sought-after public speaker and panelist at
technology conferences worldwide for the insights she has gained from
extensive international field work and research.
In addition to her position at Intel, Bell is a highly regarded industry
expert and frequent commentator on the intersection of culture and
technology. She has been featured in publications such as Wired, Forbes,
The Atlantic, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal and the New York
Times. She is also a sought-after public speaker and panelist at
technology conferences worldwide for the insights she has gained from
extensive international field work and research.
Her industry recognition includes being listed among the "100 Most
Creative People in Business" by Fast Company in 2010, induction in the
Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2012, and being
honored as the 2013 Woman of Vision for Leadership by the Anita Borg
Institute. Bell's book, "Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology
in Ubiquitous Computing," written in collaboration with Paul Dourish,
was published by MIT Press in 2011.
Bell holds a combined bachelor's and master's degree in anthropology
from Bryn Mawr College and a master's degree and Ph.D. in cultural
anthropology from Stanford University, where she was a lecturer in the
anthropology department from 1996 to 1998.
She is attributed with formalising user experience as a discipline, and
ensuring that its practises are recognised as not just valuable, but
vital, for ongoing technical success.
Conference 2IC and Speaker Liaison, Kathy Reid, was delighted to
announce Ms Bell as one of four outstanding keynotes for linux.conf.au
2016.
?As Linux moves from servers and desktops into embedded hardware, into
the cloud, into mobile devices, the need for those products to be in
affinity with user needs becomes ever more important. Genevieve?s area
of practise is such a natural fit for our conference theme - Life is
better with Linux - and we can?t wait to learn from Genevieve!?
One of the most respected technical conferences in Australia, Linux
Conference Australia (linux.conf.au) will make Geelong home between
1st-5th February 2016. The conference is expected to attract over 500
national and international professional and hobbyist developers,
technicians and innovative hardware specialists, and will feature nearly
100 Speakers and presentations over five days. Deakin University?s
stunning Waterfront Campus will host the conference, leveraging state of
the art networking and audio visual facilities.
The conference delivers Delegates a range of presentations and tutorials
on topics such as open source hardware, open source operating systems
and open source software, storage, containers and related issues such as
patents, copyright and technical community development.
Linux is a computer operating system, in the same
way that MacOS, Windows, Android and iOS are operating systems. It can
be used on desktop computers, servers, and increasingly on mobile
devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Linux embodies the ?open source? paradigm of software development, which
holds that source code ? the code that is used to give computers and
mobile devices functionality ? should be ?open?. That is, the source
code should be viewable, modifiable and shareable by the entire
community. There are a number of benefits to the open source paradigm,
including facilitating innovation, sharing and re-use. The ?open?
paradigm is increasingly extending to other areas such as open
government, open culture, open health and open education.
Potential Delegates and Speakers are encouraged to remain up to date
with conference news through one of the following channels;
Website:http://lcabythebay.org.au
Twitter: @linuxconfau, hashtag #lca2016
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/lcabythebay
Google+:https://www.google.com/+LcabythebayOrgAu
Lanyrd:http://lanyrd.com/2016/linuxconfau/
IRC: #linux.conf.au on freenode.net
Email: info at lcabythebay.org.au
Announce mailing
list:http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/lca-announce
We warmly encourage you to forward this announcement to technical
communities you may be involved in.
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From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Tue Jan 12 21:16:20 2016
From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 21:16:20 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Fwd: digital transformation
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID:
Might be work the committee reaching out to them, see if there's any room
for getting LCA into the room on key discussions?
On 12 January 2016 at 19:51, Janet Reid wrote:
> Could be good to have some people thinking about open data and open source
> on this team?
> https://www.dto.gov.au/careers#openings-list
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>
>
--
--------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Tue Jan 12 22:05:41 2016
From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 22:05:41 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Fwd: digital transformation
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <5694DE05.2030400@kathyreid.id.au>
I think Janet's idea of having representation from LA to DTO is a good one.
The question though is why should it be only the Council doing this?
There are many in our community with the skills, aplomb and
interpersonal acumen to make such an approach. Are there any volunteers?
Kind regards,
Kathy
On 12/01/16 21:16, Tennessee Leeuwenburg wrote:
> Might be work the committee reaching out to them, see if there's any
> room for getting LCA into the room on key discussions?
>
> On 12 January 2016 at 19:51, Janet Reid > wrote:
>
> Could be good to have some people thinking about open data and
> open source on this team?
> https://www.dto.gov.au/careers#openings-list
>
>
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From jamezpolley at gmail.com Tue Jan 12 23:07:29 2016
From: jamezpolley at gmail.com (James Polley)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 23:07:29 +1100
Subject: [Linux-aus] Fwd: digital transformation
In-Reply-To:
References:
Message-ID: <402C6DD2-B5C3-4CD8-87E8-BD7B6305E9FF@gmail.com>
It definitely would be good!
There are already two former vice-presidents of Linux Australia on the team ? I?m sure they?d love to have more from the LA community join them.
From: linux-aus on behalf of Janet Reid
Date: Tuesday, 12 January 2016 at 19:51
To: Linux Australia