LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: David Lloyd <lloy0076@rebel.net.au>
  To  : <michaeld@senet.com.au>
  Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 13:12:12 +1030

Re: LinuxSA, Organisers and incorporation

Michael!

> Positives
> ---------

1) LinuxSA becomes a legal person
 - able to take membership as a group of certain organisations that do
not recognise unincorporated associations
 - removes liability of members should a cause be found to sue

2) LinuxSA could become more `durable'
 - currently 1-2 organisers (with one in Melbourne if I remember
correctly)
 - answers the "what if the staff at Netcraft takes a bus to Sydney and
has a crash" question

> Negatives
> ---------

1) Change
 - people hate it and it is a change

2) Organisational Issues
 - it's a new way of running the group
 - possibly committee meetings and such

If I could paraphrase Glen Turner though, if you write your constitution
properly you won't need to have excessive amounts of formality or
excessive committee meetings.

3) Funding
 - it costed $108 last year to Incorporate
 - changes to constitution incur a fee
 - unless LinuxSA is either a for-profit organisation or raises funds in
excess of a certain amount (in legal terms this translates as "becomes a
prescribed body under the Associations Incorporations Act 1993 as
amended), financial issues are moot provided the books are kept in a
reasonable state of affairs

4) Membership
 - it's hard to determine who is a member now
 - we can't simply say "anyone is a member"
 - you do have to specify what is a member

In a worst case scenario, this amounts to "who is the committee
accountable to"...however it's more "who gets the discounts that LinuxSA
may have negotiated" or "how does AUUG recognise LinuxSA members and
therefore charge a special conference registration fee".

Unfortunately, because Incorporating is "change" and it is a rather
"ethereal" (1) concept and doesn't have any immediate effects on how the
association operates - word your constitution correctly and we won't
notice a change - on the surface it appears to have more cons than pros.

However, having an "official" Linux Users Group in Adelaide that works
hand-in-hand with the broader based Unix Users Group (AUUG) would, in my
opinion, serve to strengthen Unix and Open Source in South Australia.
Furthermore, incorporating removes a good number of legal issues and
absolves us from a number of "odd" things.

DSL

(1)

How appropriate! The name of a packet dissecter - you really have to
dissect this issue and see what's really in the payload before making a
decision yes or no...

-- 
Domine O venite O sacramentum eo deo
Domine O venite O sacramentum eo deo
Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum.
Sacramentum eo deo

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