[AUUG-Talk]: Wind up AUUG: Objections?

[Lawrie Brown]

Hi Frank

Nice to hear from you.

On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 10:40:35AM +1100, Frank Crawford wrote:
> history, etc, alive, the first steps of this is getting some form of
> action from the current board or a replacement board.

Agreed, though clearly difficult.

> On Sun, 2008-10-26 at 09:32 +1100, Lawrie Brown wrote:
> Okay, what do you believe an "informal association" would be able to do?
> Certainly the items you mentioned are more likely to be signed over to
> individuals who have an interest in keeping these things working.  But
> I'm wondering about the structure of such an association in a more
> formal sense.  If it does have some formal structure, then it may be
> better to keep AUUG Inc. going.

The problem I see is that I'm not at all certain that AUUG is legally 
able to assign such assets to an individual. I personally would not
be comfortable with that. The point of the "informal association"
is precisely to provide a suitable legal entity to be the recipient
and owner of such community assets. In one sense it would be easier
to keep "AUUG Inc.". The problem with that is the "Inc." bit, which
imposes a number of legal obligations and associated costs on it.
And has has been noted (repeatedly & insistently) here, AUUG is
not currently managing to meet them, nor I suspect is likely to any
time soon. Part of the rationale that Groggy suggested, I believe,
was precisely to have an "informal association" to avoid those 
costs and overheads. And given it would not be managing much in
the way of cash flow, I don't think the legal protections of
incorporation are really needed.

> > Otherwise is there a suitable incorporated association that could take
> > over whatever is then left of AUUGs assets on wind-up? Which is clearly

On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 10:55:50AM +1100, Peter Miller wrote:
> On the subject of keeping AUUG domains and mailinglists alive after AUUG
> winds up, I approached LCA back in 2006 (IIRC) and the-president Jon
> Oxer kindly attended AGM which decided to put vote to members.
> When asked specifically if LCA could host AUUG domains and mailing lists
> after AUUG was wound up, the answer was "yes".

Thanks for reminding me of that Peter. Given that LCA is clearly an
obvious candidate to receive AUUG's assets on wind-up, that is good
to know.

> If the board doesn't take any action, what mechanisms is there left to
> handle any transfer?  I think it basically come up for grabs after AUUG

Someone suggested they were going to look up some details from Vic
on that scenario. Would be good to know what was found. However I
would guess that they'd still try and follow the general process
in the constitution (since its based on the Incorporations Act)
and assign all assets to a suitable organisation. It would clearly
be cleaner if we manage to specify which that should be in the process.

Cheers
Lawrie

ps. Frank, on a somewhat different issue, did the proposal to get all
past AUUGN's scanned by Google go ahead? Since thats likely the only
chance they have of living on in any meaningfully accessible manner.