TLUG's value to community ???

Fri Jul 8 16:29:03 UTC 2005

I don't understand why this question comes up and why it always ends up revolving around money.

Why we incorporated:

There are several big reasons why we did so:

1) We were faced with a situation where we did not have any official status and thus couldn't get private and public organizations to sponsor us for anything. The people at IBM today are asking us why we need this, but the same group was openly asking why they could get tax receipts six years ago. Other companies were doing the same thing. This was back when we still had active volunteers that did talk to people about sponsoring TLUG.

2) The volunteer group, specifically the ones that have been doing the behind the scenes work have been doing it for five to seven years without thanks, or appreciation, and quite frankly have gotten tired of it. The incorporation structure allows people to come and go from the volunteer staff with little problems. It doesn't solve the problem of finding the volunteers, but at least we know when we need to fill posts.

3) It allows some kind of order in both picking and removing people from the executive. In the past we have had up to four rival LUG simluateously in Toronto because people didn't like what the executive was doing but was powerless make any changes. As a member of GTALUG do you have methods of making changes.

4) In 1999 (correct me if I'm wrong about the date), Matt organized a tlug membership drive at comdex, and raised approximately $5000 (correct me if I'm wrong, I quoting George's numbers from 2001), and handed over a little less than $2000 to Clive, George and committee (remember the committee everyone) for the purposes of incorpation. There have also been other 'membership drives' by other groups claiming to represent TLUG. By becoming an official organization we can at least claim that those other parties don't represent TLUG. We have gotten people threaten to sue us in the past because either members on the list claiming to speak for TLUG have tried to make deals with business on our behalf. We aren't obligated to honour such deals, but it did breed anomisity towards us for no reason.

5) I would like to point out to everyone that you all live in Canada, and any official organization in Canada who claims to have members MUST have a non-zero membership fee, collected at least once a year. You can complain about it to your member of parliament if you don't like this arrangement.

6) The fee is arbitrary and we have control over what we charge. The $20 was cosen because its a token amount that most people don't have a problem parting with. I guess we were wrong.

The reason GTALUG exist as a legal entity is two fold: back when incororation was started we were being asked by the business community to provide such infrastructure to facilitate donations of facilities to our cause; and the legal framework allows the rest of the world to be able to identify us and thus avoiding people who claim to represent the group.

Bill

On Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 08:12:00AM -0400, Christopher Browne wrote:
> On 7/6/05, John Moniz <john.moniz-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > G. Matthew Rice wrote:
> > 
> > >mgjk-cpI+UMyWUv9BDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org writes:
> > >
> > >
> > >>>What is GTALUG's value to community?  What service do we provide?  What
> > >>>do "our community" get from us?
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >>TLUG is a users group of hobbysts and professionals.  People show up
> > >>because they like what the other people showing up are doing.
> > >>
> > >>The community is the service.
> > >>Right?
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > >Wrong.
> > >
> > >William, I believe, is referring to the incorped GTALUG Inc. that has been
> > >going around and collecting membership fees from people at TLUG and NewTLUG
> > >and Linux World but have yet to say publicly what the money is for, who is
> > >running GTALUG (the biz), why they think that they represent TLUG and NewTLUG
> > >(and now westlug [or phlug??? are they the same]) plus a bunch of other
> > >questions.
> > >
> > >In fact, I think that IBM has asked them to stop the membership drive at the
> > >IBM meeting location for NewTLUG until such information comes forth.
> > >
> > >Hope this clarifies the question.  It probably raises many more, though ;)
> > >
> > >Regards,
> > >
> > >
> > One question that it raises is about money, but TLUG money. When I
> > joined back in 1999 or 2000, I paid a membership fee and received a TLUG
> > membership card. That was at a computerfest when TLUG also sold a pile
> > of Caldera CDs for $5 each (anyone remember that one?). I believe a few
> > thousand dollars were raised that year, some people would know the
> > correct amount. I thought the membership was reasonable and would have
> > made a similar annual contribution had it been requested.
> > 
> > Some of that money may have been used up in the effort to incorporate
> > TLUG (don't know if it was), but the cost of incorporation was suppose
> > to have been much less than the amount collected.
> > 
> > The questions it raises are: how was the money spent (if any), who is
> > looking after the account now, and how much $$ is left over?
> > 
> > I have always been curious about that. It's important to have trust in
> > what happened in the past before one can support some future endeavours
> > involving the collection of money.
> 
> As far as I can tell, nearly all of that money went towards the cost
> of "lawyering up" to deal with incorporation.
> 
> You can set up a business corporation for just a few hundred dollars,
> but for a not-for-profit, the necessity of defining various things
> formally makes it quite a bit more expensive.
> 
> Further, NUANS searches were made more expensive by the fact that
> several names had to be searched for until something that didn't
> conflict was found.  Notably, "TLUG" conflicts with plenty of existing
> names.  Tokyo may be most prominent; Toledo is only a few hours drive
> away...
> 
> So far, there hasn't been indication of there being terribly much
> (outside of the legal costs) that money winds up being good for.
> 
> -> GTALUG could use a projector 
> 
> Though the result would be fairly much isomorphic to the present
> situation where it uses borrowed ones; there would be the IDENTICAL
> need to stuff the projector some place for 29 days a month...
> 
> -> There might be a need to pay something for meeting venue.
> 
> But once you get away from "free," renting real estate winds up being
> quite spectacularly expensive.
> 
> -> A traditional reason to need an incorporated LUG is to allow that
> to be used for infrastructure for conferences.
> 
> But RWL comes and goes without any need of that infrastructure...
> 
> -> It would be useful for GTALUG to have an "InstallFest kit"
> consisting of a few PCs, a router, and an assortment of bits of "extra
> hardware".
> 
> Which might be $1K worth of hardware all tolled, with the same
> situation as with the projector where it needs to get stashed most of
> the time and transported for each (relevant) meeting.
> -- 
> http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/linux.html
> "The true  measure of a  man is how he treats  someone who can  do him
> absolutely no good." -- Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
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