On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 05:11:39PM -0400, Gary Lawrence Murphy wrote: > But you need some reason to believe it nonetheless. Otherwise I could > assert anything I liked, for instance, that Her Majesty might read the > blog and exercise her veto power through the Governer General's > office. Saying it don't make it so, even if we'd really want it.
/me decides to completely give up the role of devil's^Wbloggers advocate > > It's an awkward question to ask without offense, but how many of those > groups cause change at the Parliamentary level? s/groups/group/g and it does cause change at the Parliamentary level. Additionally, you mentioned below, that with the resources you specified, the CFIB effected such change and saved you $200/yr in taxes through their lobbying. So it appears that it can be done. > K> Obviously someone who has a Linux-based business, might > K> consider it a sensible investment to donate $100/mo > > Again, speculation: We have no precident in the entire open source > community to believe this is true. If we did, then I might entertain > the notion, but we don't. No professional free-software org has > received this sort of support on a national scale. The closest that > comes to mind is the LPI which is also tightly entwined with the > business interests of its sponsors, but it requires _international_ > scope to raise the little amount it has to play with. Ok, so $100/mo was a little high, but I've had at least one response that $1k/yr seemed reasonable when I asked a few friends with the resources to consider such contributions. If only we had a metric calendar so people rounding /unit-of-time wouldn't create these embarassing differences :) > I'm dubious of the claim, but always welcome being proved wrong about > such cynical things ;) Well I still think it's unlikely that we'd get anything going since there is still that whole vicious circle of "i'll contribute when i see some results" and "we need money to make some results" > For a free-software org to command the same "minimum $35/month" > commitment from me, they'd have to demonstrate a postive impact on my > corporate bottom line, but that's all: If they directly help me make > money, I'm happy to spread the wealth around, but if all they do is > create PR events, well I can do that more cheaply with a naked lady on > a white horse. We seem to already have some effective lobbyists in our midst. IMHO, the most sensible way to support a Free Software/Open Source lobby right now would be to let them keep doing what they're doing, and occasionally provide them with the means to raise funds for research (interestingly enough, I think any necessary research could be done _relatively_ cheaply due to the availability of social scientists with a personal interest in Free Software and Open Source - though admittedly, most of the ones I know have left academia, reducing our ability to get the research done on the universities' dime) -- Kristofer Coward http://unripe.melon.org/ GPG Fingerprint: 2BF3 957D 310A FEEC 4733 830E 21A4 05C7 1FEB 12B3 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
