Re: [Fsfe-uk] Membership

[Ramanan Selvaratnam]

Martin Keegan wrote:

> On Wed, 28 May 2003, Andrew Savory wrote:
>
>  
>
> > > Redefining one's notion of "membership" does not give one a bigger voice.
> > > If anything, it undermines one's credibility.
What Ian  suggested when starting off this was that the 'politicians 
will show the door' unless there were numbers behind (no not money! 
people ;-) the campaign. Memebership was a suggestion that stuck.

It is already a shame that concepts of sharing and cooperation have to 
be campaigned for so vigorously as a political matter.
So there cannot be any harm in exploring ways to get some numbers behind 
us.

> > >      
> > Depends on the definition.
> >
> > If 'associate members' pay for their membership by registering with us and
> > allowing us to use their details (as has already been suggested), I don't
> > see how having thousands of them would undermine our credibility?
> >    
>
> Redefining one's notion of "pay" does not give one ... [etc, etc]
>  
Precisely why we need to state clearly why we give mass associate 
membership (or something similar) to certain important segments of soceity.
Something like this....
'Teachers teach the emerging generation who will depend on software more 
than ever.....so they qualify automatically.'
'The same opportunity is given to anyone who agrees that they know what 
software freedom is ...because they bothered to understand the quirk in 
contemporary english w.r.t the word free and it is an issue with software'

Why not use 'associate membership or similar' until we finalise on how 
to go about this?

Regards,
Ramanan