RE: [Fsfe-uk] Membership

[ian]

On Fri, 2003-05-23 at 18:44, Andrew Atkinson wrote:
> > How about this...
> >
> > One can only join by successfully answering a quiz.
> >
> > Is the free in free software about
> > * free as in free beer?
> > or
> > * free as in freedom?
> >
> > (The ones who fail will have to be spammed with an essay :-)))
> >
> > All I am concerned about is that any such associated members might
> > spread the wrong basic message.
> >
> >
> Surely this is a case of education. If you aren't talking to people, free
> software will just stay a minority game. Freedom of choice and to make
> mistakes has to be the way forward for any free software to succeed


Sorry, been away for a couple of days. Good news though, another school
likely to use Specialist School status to put Linux thin clients
everywhere :-)

What I would have thought for associate membership would be initially to
invite people to join who we know understand a bit about the issues and
then look at broadening things. Its risk management. Do things
incrementally getting feedback and decide where to draw the line.
Personally, I doubt the AFFS has much to worry about large recruitment
of mildly committed members as they will be a disparate group with no
great axe to grind so why should they want to subvert? I have been at
two different schools over the last two days and I reckon I have talked
to about a dozen people about free software issues. Every one of them
understood the concepts and I guess would put their names to an
organisation to further the aims even if they didn't feel in a position
to do more than that at present. I doubt I would get many to part with a
tenner because while they are sympathetic, they aren't "activists", just
people who see the logic but have many other pressing issues of their
own. 

A more compelling reason for gradual expansion would be to give a
definite geometric growth. The only real purpose in getting the
membership up this way is to be able to say things like "Isn't it
amazing, we are getting exponential growth with 100 new members last
month, 50 the month before, 20 the month before that. What conclusion
would any sane person draw from this?

The only reason applications are not ported wholesale to Linux is
confidence so a big part of getting a big switch is getting confidence
up. M$ realise this so they undermine confidence with FUD. If we are
really serious about getting free software universal acceptance we have
to make some tough decisions about what will make it happen. IMHO
*anything* that engenders confidence is to be encouraged - case studies
are vital, good experiences for early adopters is vital, the perception
that there is sustainable rapid growth etc. The main reason people use
Windows is that everyone else does so you have the confidence to know
that even the blue screen of death is Ok!

The AFFS only has one category of membership at the moment but there is
no real reason why that has to remain the case. The rugby club I belong
to has several categories of membership Vice Presidents who basically
pay a biggish one off for the priv, playing members, junior members,
social members. No great reason to give all the same voting rights, eg
you could have one committee member who represented the interests of
associate members so they weren't entirely disenfranchised but couldn't
distort the aims of the organisation with some massive block vote.
Actually, I joined the AFFS so how did you know I wasn't a M$ spy
planted to disrupt? ;-). There isn't actually a vetting system at the
moment to check members understand the details of the GPL etc is there? 

All this aside, has the AFFS set targets for membership? If so what
strategies are there for recruitment? (Maybe I should have asked that
first before muddying the waters with associate membership :-) )

-- 
ian <address@hidden>