Don't close AUUG down!

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

The following is part of a message I sent to the AUUG board a couple
of days ago.

On Sunday,  9 December 2007 at 12:35:25 +1100, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>
> You know, of course, that I've been suggesting dissolution for some
> time, at a time when people didn't want to admit it.  But now that the
> time has come, far from saying "I told you so", I'm having second
> thoughts.  I think we should donate all AUUG's assets to the Lions
> Chair and then carry on as a non-financial institution.  No membership
> fees, no money to look after; in principle, just the name, the web
> site and the mailing lists.  I suggest the John Lions chair because it
> seems to be the most obvious, but that's certainly a matter for
> discussion.
>
> Let's consider the alternatives.
>
> Close down:
>
> - Lots of hassle.  In particular, I suspect that we're going to have
>   to produce complete financials, and there are all sorts of
>   bureaucratic hurdles to jump over.
> - Irreversible.  If we close down, that's the end, once and for all.
>
> Non-financial institution:
>
> - The money we have goes to a good cause.
> - We don't really need to do anything immediately.  But in the
>   mid-term we can set up pages for on-line membership applications and
>   things.  I suspect that people will come out of the woodwork who so
>   far have been scared off by the membership fee.
> - If it doesn't work, we can still take the alternative.
>
> With this in mind, I don't intend to renew my subscription.  I'd be
> happy to be a board member and come to the meeting, but it doesn't
> seem logical to pay membership for an organization that is planning to
> shut down.  If you take the second alternative, I'd also suggest that
> you refund the memberships to anybody who has renewed just to be able
> to attend the meeting.
>
> What do you think?

I have received no reply.  On an earlier occasion I volunteered for
the position of secretary.  The way that this was handled suggests
that I have offended somebody in the current board; they didn't reply,
and when I reminded them of the offer, I was told that my services
were not required.  I'd like to make it clear that I have no knowledge
and no intention of any offence.

As a result, it looks like I won't be at tomorrow's meeting.  In view
of the intention to dissolve AUUG tomorrow, I can't wait for a
possible reply from the board.  This is also why I'm abusing my
ability and copying auug-announce.  My apologies to anybody who is
offended by this.

So: for tomorrow please consider transitioning AUUG to a non-financial
institution as described above.  For those of you who don't know, I
should point out that the main web server (www.auug.org.au) is run
free of charge by Internode.  About the only costs I can see are the
$20 odd per year needed to renew the domain.

Discussion welcome.

Greg Lehey
Past president, AUUG Inc.
--
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.auug.org.au/pipermail/auug-announce/attachments/20071211/b3601088/attachment.pgp>