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Re: Responsibilities and issues regarding amuta status.



Marc A. Volovic writes:
 > In message <199607240920.MAA30588@blinky.bfr.co.il>,  writes:
 > |
 > [a whole lot of absolutely correct information snipped].
 > 
 > |Linux Users Group using his status to get invited to conferences, or
 > |using official group stationary for personal business letters.  Or it
 > |might take a more criminal form, such as using group funds to fly to a
 > |conference.
 > 
 > This should be prevented by writing up a fairly draconic charter for the
 > NPO. I am not above peculation, myself, but would not want anyone else
 > peculating. I am sure most Linux-IL members feel the same way.

Well, of course goes without saying that much time and effort must be
spent on the painful task of writing a charter that only permits the
permissible.  But this only helps when you're suing the board members
for misconduct, which is a laborious, tedious, time consuming, 
expensive task that nobody wants to go through to begin with.

The fact of the matter is that unless the group members themselves are
vigilant in reviewing the books, it's trivial for the board members to
get away with *alot* of misconduct.  And I'd suspect that your typical
linux group member will *not* take such an interest in regularly cross
checking the finances.

Furthermore, if the president and treasurer are friends, it's pretty
easy for them to doctor the books together so that even careful
checking won't find anything amiss.

Not that I expect any such gross criminal acts, but these are the
kinds of things that happen when a group becomes an "organization",
and we need to all be aware of this and careful to avoid it (when
possible).

The problem is that it can't always be avoided.

 > |Of course there are alot of advantages to becoming an amuta.  The
 > |official status would allow us to do alot of things that we currently
 > |can only do with great difficulty.  Others have discussed these
 > |things.  I just wanted to point out some of the
 > |political/inter-personal dangers of becoming official.
 > 
 > A very important matter is the ability to get money from the bloody
 > government for the NPO. This money should and must be used to finance
 > Linux-IL's participation in trade shows and NOTHING ABSOLUTELY else.
 > This, of course, includes printing flyers, stickers, T-shirts or
 > whatever, but does not include consumables or other items.

Hmmm... Getting money from the government to finance the promotion of
Linux?  If that's the case, then we could be talking about some
seriously big bucks, in which case the dangers I'm outlining above are
going to be much more real than when we're talking about a piddling
8000 nis.  And, if you're talking big bucks, then you're talking about
the president, treasurer, board of directors, etc, all being full time
*paid* jobs, in which case we're starting to talk about some serious
money going directly to daily running expenses - office space, paid
personel, ..., and *NOT* to the actual task of promoting Linux.

Personally, I'd rather let the private sector deal with disseminating
Linux - why get the government involved?  And besides, I already pay
enough taxes that I don't want to give the government yet another
excuse to spend more money & take more taxes.

And, actually, I think it'd be alot more convincing for a couple of
random Linux users to call up a TV computer show to chat & demo Linux,
than it would be for this big, bureaucracy laden, government funded
"Linux Users Group" to make an official statement.  The latter sounds
too much like Microsoft, and the former sounds much more in the spirit
of the game.

-- 
Dr. Harvey J. Stein
Berger Financial Research
abel@netvision.net.il


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