[ILUG] ILUG AGM Announcement

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Fri, Oct 15, 2004 at 02:31:02PM +0000, Niall Walsh wrote:
> Why?   Yes, I've read the rest of your comments, understand and agree 
> with them (except that it is a waste of time) but I do not understand 
> why this removes the issue from discussion at the AGM.

Because it is not relevant to the running of ILUG, or the operation
of the ILUG committee.

> A motion at AGM could impose any license on future content.

Absolutely, but imo this would be a waste of time. Firstly, almost any
contributer to the ILUG website is almost certainly going to understand
the open-source philosophy - as indeed will the attendees of the AGM. At
the suggestion, I would wager the majority of content authors for the
website would have no problem with CC license and may apply it
volunarily. Any people that don't probably have good reasons, and I
don't think it would be a matter of them not understanding the ideas
behind CC. 

If they have good reasons, like preferring another open-content license,
not owning all of the copyright or just plain personal preference is it
in ILUG's interest to not have this content on the website?

Basically, Linux users "get" open-content licensing, the attendees at
the AGM "get" open-content licensing, and any prosective authors are
likely to "get" open-content licensing. Explaining it is a waste of
time, and if future authors feel like not using an open-content licence
it'll only be linux-user's loss not to see the content on the ILUG
website (and remember, all authors agree to it being there no matter
what).

Better is to simply suggest, on-list, that all content authors use a CC
license, because we all have better things to do (namely going to a pub)
rather than listening to pointless motions as the AGM merely to affirm a
sense of righteousness.

> Let's take a simple example, I have rewritten some documents for the 
> BLG, I did not have the option to edit the existing documents (and 
> neither does anyone else other then the original author).   If content 
> was placed in a wiki (as has been discusssed) then what happens then to 
> the author's copyright?

The author retains copyright on their portions of it as written, and as
long as the wiki is still the ILUG website I can't see a problem
emerging.

>    What is your objection to a dictat that future ILUG content be
>    entered into a Commons?   Why are the options you describe a waste
>    of time?

It's not goign to educate anyone in the room, and it's not actually
going to achieve anything you can't achieve by simply asking content
authors to use a CC license. Therefore it's a waste of time. 

The point of the AGM is not that we can make pointless motions that
affirm how great we think we are, we could sit there all day with
motions like "That the ILUG membership affirm that the government should
use linux everywhere" but rather it is a General Meeting for the purpose
of electing a committee and outlining what they are going to do for the
year.

It is not event where any proposal may be invested in the full authority
of ILUG and therefore immediately happen, motions and so on do not
transpire into events and actions, and this case the actions neccessary
are trivial and implementable outside of a GM.

> It's the ones who don't want to be involved anymore, or have gone
> missing, that are an issue.   Their documents are therefore dead and
> at some point need to be removed or dealt with by some means.

So? Ask the webmaster to remove them, or better yet collate a list of
exactly which pages are out-of-date, why and so on, try to contact the
authors, and forward the results to the webmaster so that they can do
this easily.

I don't see how discussing this as the AGM helps it happen faster.

> An AGM does not serve only to produce motions, it is also a forum to
> discuss things.   It is a method of discovering opinions of interested
> members, more productive then firing a mail to a list which will
> generally either be ignored or start a flame war with no resolution.

If something is ignored, the membership don't consider it important,
get over it :) 

> >A motion that may be worth considering:
> >
> >	1.	That the membership endorse that the ILUG mailing list
> >	be made subscriber-only.
> >
> >	I would hope that this motion would dramatically fail, but that
> >	this would at least serve as backup for Colm when the bi-annual
> >	thread on this list raises its ugly head. It'd be useful to
> >	finally put the issue to rest.
> >
> Well why not propose the reverse if that's what you want?

Motion ettiquette demands that you never propose a status quo motion,
that's pointless and again, a waste of time. 

> 1.    That the membership endorse that the ILUG mailing list must
> remain open to non-subscriber posting?

And if that was rejected, does that mean it can be subscriber-only?
Or should another motion be tabled? There's a reason status-quo
motions are bad.
-- 
Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net