As mentioned earlier, every legal project/individual/whatever that actively contributes towards Linux audio scene, including "upstream developers," is more than welcome to apply for a membership. Personally, I've never refused anyone's membership to the consortium if their work was compatible with our mission. More so, I've sent many invitations to the upstream projects/developers I felt were worthy. What I cannot do, though, is force anyone to become a member. If you would like to help me with recruitment of the upstream developers/projects, you are more than welcome to do so, as I could use any help I can get... Merchandising, whether you like it or not, is an unavoidable aspect of our mission if we wish to be successful in a society we live in. IMHO, it also helps consortium gain credibility and consequently attract more of the upstream developers/higher-profile projects/institutions/hw companies who may be currently skeptical of our long-term prospects. Furthermore, all this ultimately helps upstream projects as it helps link their product with the end-user base. This should become especially important once (if?) we begin supporting Linux audio artists as well. I originally wanted to suggest making a separate thread for the sake of clarity, call for a vote, and have everyone vote on it. However, this may not help with the anonymity. Alternately, we could generate a webpage where everyone could vote? I am afraid, though, that doing so may take too much time as we need to be able to link each vote with one member project/institution/whatever in order to ensure that no one votes more than once, and for that we will have to have a more involved framework. Third option, which could be seen perhaps as a compromise, would be simply having everyone e-mail director, mgmt. board chair (Dave) and possibly another member (just in case you choose not to trust my or Dave's count (-: ), directly off-list and then having us count the votes and report back to the consortium. Does anyone else have a better idea? FWIW, *if* we vote the Ubuntu out, we will have to also consider doing so for other existing members who fall into this category (which in and of itself will be difficult to define as Mandriva, for instance, is for-profit company while Ubuntu/Canonical isn't, etc.), as otherwise we will be projecting an image of playing favorites which will subsequently warrant rewriting of the consortium's mission, as well as result in locking-out of some of the merchandising possibilities down the road (IMHO, this is a very slippery slope). In addition, maintaining Ubuntu Studio membership will become cumbersome as it will project a dubious message of supporting audio on a distro that we appear not to be willing to endorse. Ico