On 4/18/06, Jon maddog Hall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > As to Ben's input ... > I think that general guidelines of "We believe in Free and Open Source > Software and its use" is a pretty general idea and leaves lots of room > open for advocacy.
"General ideas" tend to get bogged down when the details get involved. And they always do. You ever watched a session of Congress? Heck, you ever monitored the traffic on the -discuss list? :) Saying "We're all for Linux" is a far cry from a consensus on how one should go about advocating that in schools, government, etc. In other forums, I've seen long debates about whether FOSS should be given preferred status over, or simply put on equal grounds with, proprietary offerings. Heck, there are still GNHLUG people who appear to be rather undecided on the idea of whether we should incorporate *at all*. Although I suspect these cases are due more to inertia and a general dislike of bureaucracy than anything substantial, I can just envision the group grope that will ensue if we try to agree on a program of political action. I'm just saying I think it might be better if we bypassed any such controversy by keeping "GNHLUG" more "neutral". And personally, I'd feel uncomfortable saying "I represent GNHLUG. Our positions is..." in an advocacy sales-pitch if I wasn't sure I actually *did* represent GNHLUG. On the third hand, maybe there's some other pre-existing organization we could hitch our wagon to to avoid that problem for GNHLUG, saving us the trouble of creating two legal entities just to avoid that problem. > So unless we are a religion ... .... eh, nevermind. :) > ... or a real charitable entity (which means our members do not get > compensation for what they "give") I don't understand. I thought one of the reasons for seeking (c)(3) status was so that contributions would be tax-deductible. ?? -- Ben _______________________________________________ gnhlug-org mailing list gnhlug-org@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-org
