Re: [seul-edu] Schoolforge organization--membership

[Michael Viron <mviron@findaschool.org>]

Doug,

I have another question-- are organizations that are part of a 'parent'
organization (ie, like General Education Online is part of Simple End User
Linux) automatically considered members once the parent organization has
become a member of Schoolforge?  Or are they considered 'supporters'?

Just wondering, since I didn't see it in your original post (of course, I
did just glance over it, so I might have missed it).

Michael

--
Michael Viron <mviron@findaschool.org>
Project Manager / Primary Developer
General Education Online

At 07:30 PM 12/27/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>This is what I originally posted.  I didn't differentiate between
>"member" and "supporter," as we hadn't talked about any such gradations
>at that time:
>
>These are my ideas, not my dictat, so I'm not going to couch
>everything in "I think" and "I believe."  Just assume that those
>words are in every paragraph, and feel free to discuss and disagree
>with any point I make.
>
>First thing: who gets to be a member of the coalition?  Membership
>should be by groups, not by individuals.  Individuals can, and ought
>to be, members of one or more of the groups in the coalition, but
>not members of the coalition itself.  The coalition doesn't do much
>of the actual work of promoting free resources in education.  It
>just provides a unified face to the various groups for the outside
>world to see, and gives them an easy means of communicating among
>themselves.  Individuals should be where the work is, in the member
>groups.
>
>What are the criteria for membership?  A member group must be
>furthering the advancement of free resources into the educational
>field in some way.  That could be by providing educational software
>that runs on Linux, providing discussion fora for educators and
>techies on using free software and other resources in the schools,
>providing documentation on using such resources, contracting support
>services for such resources, etc.  We should have a broad definition
>of this, but not bend over backward to make every group that might
>conceivably want to join fit in.  For example, if some project
>writing a first-person shooter game for Linux wanted to join the
>coalition on the idea that some students might enjoy playing the
>game in a school computer lab, I'd say they haven't met the
>requirement.
>
>A qualifying group would agree to post an agreed-upon logo and the
>text, "A member of the Schoolforge coalition" prominently on it's
>website and promotional literature.  Again, we should interpret this
>broadly rather than have hard and fast requirements for a specific
>size and position on a site's front page.  It would also agree to
>post a press release to Linux PR or the equivalent announcing its
>joining the coalition.
>
>Along with this each group will post a list of links to the major
>coalition areas on its website, in some non-obscure area.  This
>could be on the front page, or on some linked page, or could be just
>a front page link to the coalition website.
>
>Groups in the coalition would need to be active, defined as having
>their website/CVS/documents/whatever-their-primary-project-is
>updated at least once every X months, where X is a number agreed on
>by the coalition (I'd think 3-6).  Groups not meeting that
>requirement would be declared inactive members, with no vote in
>coalition management (I'll get to that later) until they do begin
>updating things again.  After a similar period as inactive members,
>groups would be removed from the coalition.
>
>-- 
>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
>