Re: [seul-edu] members and supporters

[David Bucknell <david@iteachnet.com>]

Sounds good to me. I'd just keep it short. We're too young a group to
stand on ceremony; besides one of the reasons I like free/open stuff for
education is that I wish education were a more inclusive endeavor. So I
say include rather than exclude, and work together, or in parallel, when
that's not possible.

David


On Sat, 29 Dec 2001, Doug Loss wrote:

> David Bucknell wrote:
> >
> > Well, the reason I said "site" in my suggestion for differentiating
> > between members and supporters is that the definition of organization is
> > vague. seul.org has no official org behind it as I remember you saying;
> > nor does opensourceschools.org. Iteachnet, my other site, does have an
> > org, but that doesn't mean it's any more substantial than the site.
> >
> > Again, I think a simple definition is that members have sites; supporters
> > may, but not those dedicated exclusively to the "cause."
> >
> This is exactly the discussion I hoped we'd have.  I don't think the
> "organization/individual" distinction is as indefinite as you do.  True,
> SEUL (and most other OSS projects) has no legally-recognized
> organization behind it, but that doesn't make any operational
> difference.  It's clearly a group of people working together toward
> common goals, as is Open Source Schools, rather than an individual
> showing an interest in a particular subject.  There could be some
> overlap between organizations and individuals when the organization is
> just starting up, as projects usually come from a very few initiators.
> A good example might be Jeff Knox's Linux in the Classroom, which I
> would qualify as an organization, but which clearly started as a one-man
> effort and stayed that way for a while before expanding to involve more
> people.
>
> So I think your suggestion that members should have sites dedicated to
> their "organization" :-) is a good one.  That would indicate at least
> some committment to actually working toward a goal rather than just
> expressing solidarity with a principle.  Individuals could be
> supporters, but to become members they'd have to join (or form) an
> organization that works (or will work) on some aspect of furthering Free
> and Open Source resources in education.  How does that sound?
>
> --
> Doug Loss          As long as I have you there is just
> drloss@suscom.net  one other thing I'll always need--
> (570) 326-3987     tremendous self control.
>                           Ashleigh Brilliant
>