22 Apr
2012
22 Apr
'12
3:45 p.m.
On Sun, April 22, 2012 3:02 pm, Robin Gareus wrote:
And I have already put it to the board several times.
On 04/22/2012 02:27 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
Perhaps it would help if a meeting time was organised and a notification
email sent out to the Consortium mailing list in advance so people could
schedule to attend in person or via tele/video conference. Pretty standard
fare for most serious business people.
On Sun, April 22, 2012 1:52 pm, Robin Gareus wrote:
I did. 4-5 times over the last 7 years.
Most of the LAO crowd meets at the Linux Audio Conference but the
majority of the Management Board has been absent there in recent years.
On 04/22/2012 12:12 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
Funny that no one brought it up until now...
On Sun, April 22, 2012 11:24 am, Robin Gareus wrote:
> On 04/22/2012 11:15 AM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
>
>> I'm still not sure why you don't want businesses to give people
>> round
>> here
>> money.
>
> Not at all. "people 'round here" can take all the money they want
> from
> anyone for whatever they deem fit.
>
> but linuxaudio.org itself will have a hard time. Usually money comes
> with obligations and we are in no position to handle that properly.
>
Maybe I am naive but I thought our obligation as a consortium was to
discuss these topics and come to a workable solution that benefits all
members.
just take it in stride. -- Your obligation as member of the management
board is also to meet with the others at least once a year :) [ see 2.
at http://linuxaudio.org/policy ]
[..]
I tried hard to explain the position and make it clear that it's not a
/knee jerk/ reaction.
let me try this way: the few bucks that linuxaudio.org could make via
adverstising on linuxaudio.org will - in commercial context - never be
able to pay for the services linuxaudio.org provides - and not even pay
for the administrative overhead.
I think you seriously underestimate the amount of money that could be
earned by accepting advertising across the LAO channel. Let alone across
the entire Linux Audio community.
My
personal opinion aside:
I'm in favor to maintain a reasonable approach.
The freedom of the community (no user-tracking, no obligations WRT to
content posted on the site, no harassment, no discrimination, etc)
takes
priority. We should _not_ be "completely anti advertising", but think
twice before adding ads or agreeing to 3rd party conditions.
We can certainly express gratitude or favor companies that support
linuxaudio.org but must be careful about maintaining independence.
It's not possible to generalize advertising campaigns, but online
marketing techniques usually come with strings attached..
Nobody complained that you put a link to _your_ site on the pages _you_
maintain on *.linuxaudio.org - but 3rd party interests - esp paid - are
questionable.
Hence the request for clarification of Policy. Instead all I get is a
knee
jerk reaction and irrational prejudice. Hardly conducive to making
progress... If you have a viable business plan, we're all
ear.
Well apparently this is a change of heart ;-)
So a policy
that sets clear guidelines is completely out of the
question?
Dunno, that's a question for the management board, not me.
linuxaudio.org has no treasurer, no guidelines or
infrastructure to deal
with donations or money. There are no established procedures how the
Board needs to agree and how to deal with such funds.
Besides that, a policy would need to be in accordance to the rules of
the Commonwealth of Virginia and Virginia Tech (our host). Ico has
elaborated on that in his email to you from 04/20/2012 02:57 AM CEST on
the consortium list.
These items have already been discussed and I provided options which would
allow us to progress.
From what I've learned: official policies are best
avoided and replaced
with common-sense.
A policy is simply a way for everyone to know what the expectations are.
If we leave it up to each one of us to guess then we will never be able to
agree on anything.
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd