Re: [Fsfe-uk] AFFS strategy (Was: Beyond bitching...)

[Alex Hudson]

On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 18:00 +0100, Graham Seaman wrote:
> Ah, I see. Then we have a free software organisation without any general
> mailing list for its members? 

Yep :o)

> Why not?

Did we discuss this on FSFE-UK? I think we did, but I can't remember. I
think the main reason was that FSFE-UK was and is a fairly quiet list,
and splitting topics away from it could simply result in two dead
lists. 

> I would have thought this was the first essential for getting any
> modern organisation running.

Maybe. I don't think we've ever had a demand for one, the FSFE-UK and
AFFS-Project are, by mailing list standards, fairly quiet. We could
easily put one in place; but would it get used?

> But is that really the case? A few mails ago, Tom Chance wrote
> 
> 'The AFFS lists are already frequented by a small minority of free 
> software users, contributors & advocates from the UK.'
> 
> Implying that there was more than one AFFS list - I assume he meant the
> FSFE-UK list and the AFFS-project list? Which is not for the general
> public and not pointed to on the website IIRC?

Firstly, AFFS-Project is definitely a public list - it's on our site (on
the Members page, which admittedly isn't a good position - we are
currently looking at reorganisation of the information on our site
though) and anyone can subscribe, you don't have to be a member. 

But yep, most people think FSFE-UK is "the AFFS list", or somehow
associated with AFFS. And, de facto, it is associated with AFFS because
AFFS was started by people on the FSFE-UK list. And, to be honest, it's
probably no bad thing - we're all here already, and it's also good to
have a fair readership who aren't AFFS members. 

That then leads us back to the "communicating with members" problem
again, though :)

Cheers,

Alex.