[wellylug] Re: Formalising WellyLUG - revisited

[Tony Booth]

Damon Lynch wrote:

> So naturally you are going to issue a public letter to the 
> Gnome Foundation telling them their structure is not needed 
> and they should just hang out over IRC and get together from 
> time to time?
> 
> Linus is renowned for his organisational and people skills.  
> For the rest of us, structure helps, not hinders.
> 
> Damon

Well, I don't disagree that structure is necessary when you are
soliciting large donations and the like (e.g. Gnome Foundation, FSF).
But I think you picked a bad example in the Gnome Foundation, because
they are in a totally different league.  If you read their charter, you
will see they set up the Foundation because of the "emergence of a GNOME
industry".  In other words, they got huge.  When they weren't huge (like
WellyLUG) they got by just fine without a structure.

Here are the reasons Colin suggested we should incorporate:

"To give more certainty to LUG activities and information.
At present there is no one person or group who you can contact to tell
you what may be planned, who may be doing what, or who has what skills.
Relying on the mailing list is ok but still a bit hit and miss.
When we raise funds from events we need a way to decide where to spend
them, how to avoid tax, and where to store any (limited amounts of)
stuff we may acquire."

1. I think the first point can be addressed (single point of contact)
with an e-mail address which can be set to forward to whoever is
organising the next meeting.  Or, as Colin says, a post to the mailing
list.

2. As for raising funds from events, why would we want to do that?
Cost-recovery I can understand, but we have got by without funds (other
than the small contributions given at Johnsonville meetings) just fine.


Here's another way to think about this:

How many people moved to Linux so that they could get what they wanted
without the undesirable crap?  I know I did.  Then I moved from a
vanilla Redhat install to Debian, because I could cut out more cruft.
On some of my boxes, I use LFS to cut resource-use even further.  The
popularity of LFS/Gentoo suggests I am not alone.

So why not apply the Linux philosophy (keep it simple and uncluttered if
possible) to the LUG?  WellyLUG is small (nothing wrong with that),
needs little if any funding, and seems (to me anway) to work okay as it
is.