I’m pleased to have prompted a bit of a discussion on the linux-aus mailing list about Linux AU and the relationship with NZ. James Purser kicked things off with a blog post on Friday and so far the discussion is going really well. I’ve outlined a few more of my thoughts below.

I think the issue of national identity is probably the key to this whole discussion. It is important for the NZ community and LUGs to retain their own identity and not be subsumed into Australian identity.

When Craig, John and I started the Linux NZ discussion, it came in part from a fair degree of envy from what we were seeing Linux AU acheiving. If you read our initial invitation it was quite clear that we were looking for support to “duplicate” Linux AU into NZ. We didn’t get there, and after taking a month or two to think about it, I believe that trying to duplicate Linux AU into NZ was the wrong approach to take.

As beneficial as it would be in terms of creating a distinct identity there are far too many other things that it just doesn’t make any sense to duplicate at all. LCA, the podcasts and Advocacy preparation are the three key things that pop immediately to my mind and I’m sure there are others too.

I think the biggest thing we learnt from our LinuxNZ endeavours is that we don’t (currently?) have huge numbers of people available to do things in NZ, and we are always going to suffer from problems of scale to some extent. In many ways the more duplication we can avoid the better. That allows us to free what people we do have to focus on the things that are NZ specific.

This is the key reason that I’m pushing to see if there is support for Linux Australasia. It’s not that we want LinuxAU to adopt or subsume NZ LUGs, the idea is that LinuxAU would grow to include NZ and become a bigger, better and more inclusive organisation as a result. I guess the flipside for Australians is that the resulting organisation would be less nationalistic…. More on that in a minute. ISON probably fits in here too, I only just become aware them yesterday so I’m still reading their site. However my impression is that while it is definitely an organisation we should be linked with, its aims and goals are orthogonal to what I’m trying to achieve by proposing Linux Australasia.

The impression I’m getting from talking to Pia, and lurking on this list is that LA is working very hard to empower the members to be the workers rather than the committee. With the committee providing the organisational oversight, legal structure, vision and authority needed to keep everything hanging together. I think it’s a great strategy, and would fit in perfectly with the bigger, broader Linux Australasia that I’m proposing.

Give NZ members the opportunity to work on the press, publicity and advocacy sub-committees too and you’re pretty much there in terms of
achieving Linux Australasia! The sub-committees as a whole can work on their specific areas (avoiding unnecessary duplication) and then the
NZ/AU components of each sub-committee can do the necessary (hopefully minor) localisation work if and when required.

Following from this, if there is a need for a more nationalistic component then it’s simply a matter of creating a sub-committee to do the work required to “promote national identity”… perhaps we need to have FOSS competitions across the ditch so we can beat each other in something other than sport…

Plenty to think about and as many have pointed out the key place to resolve all this is probably going to be at LCA’06 in Dunedin. I think as James has pointed out though, it is going to be very beneficial for us all if we can do much of the talking beforehand and at least get an idea of where everyone is at, even if we are poles apart in terms of what we think.