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Re: Thursday's meeting with Sela



On Sat, 18 May 1996, Shay Rojansky wrote:

>   * Financial problems.
>   * FTP site
>   * Official status

Of the three, I consider the lack of official status the most pressing 
problem. If Sela is able to provide linux-il with a semblance of official 
standing, well and good.

> Next, Ariel explained how he sees our group and what he expects to gain.
> The main message Ariel passed was that he is interested in people. His

What, I wonder, is Ariel willing to provide? Will Sela assist Linux-IL 
with funding for shows? Will Sela be willing to provide an official 
standing vis-a-vis people or organizations who demand such a standing?

> point was that people in Linux-il are gurus, administrators and could
> be very helpful in his line of business. Some ideas he had were to
> hire people for part/full time jobs, to obtain technical help from the
> list, to get ideas and development-related help from the list, and
> to generally draw on the list's people and knowledge.

I am sorry to say, but I mistrust Sela. This is _NOT_ a mistrust of Sela 
per se, but a general mistrust of Sela as a commercial company, in which 
capacity it is no different from MS, Sun, Digital or AzTek. Sela must be 
willing to provide what support it is willing to provide (and nothing 
definite was said on that front, according to the minutes) in a 
non-binding manner. True, as matters stand now, it is impossible to bind 
Linux-IL to anything, but were Linux-IL made dependent on Sela for 
anything, Sela would be in the position to impose its goals and interests 
on Linux-IL.

In my opinion, Sela must make a public and general commitment to assist 
Linux-IL in a non-binding manner. Otherwise, Linux-IL members should (as 
is only right) deal with Sela on a personal and/or ad hoc manner.

---MAV               (finger for PGP signature block)
Marc A. Volovic (marc@cs.huji.ac.il)
                 Linguists do it cunningly


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