[Pil-pc-oceania] National PC Day

[jedd]

 Hi John,

 Thanks for the info about the history of this suggestion.

On Wed, 2 Apr 2008, Champagne wrote:
> To pick up on Pennys thread, I'm also totally intrigued as to how
> decisions are made in this movement. There is no process, never has been
> and until due process if worked out, discussions such as this one end up
> resembling a dogs breakfast.

 Periodically (every year or so) I tend to ramble on about the
 parallels between the free software and permaculture movements,
 often ending up with a comparison between the bearded patriarchs
 of each.

 But something more concrete this time.

 I'm an advocate of the Debian GNU/Linux [1] system.

 This is a free operating system that would (estimates suggest)
 cost somewhere around $US10 billion if you went out and paid a
 bunch of programmers to develop it from scratch.  These guys
 have a manifesto, a social contract, international shindigs, and
 an election process that spans the planet.  They're doing the right
 thing, and they know that they're doing the right thing.  They have
 had to address many of the same problems that often come up on this
 and other permaculture lists (though they haven't addressed their
 biggest problem - how do you make someone do something (when
 you're not paying them)).

 It's possible that the kinds of people who get excited about how
 to organise other people may want to have a look at the Debian
 Constitution [2] and do some research on the mechanisms these
 guys have for managing a large, unpaid, bunch of grumpy types
 who all very much have their own ideas on how things should be
 done (and are often genuinely surprised when others don't agree
 with them).

 Jedd.


 [1]  http://www.debian.org/
 or   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian

 [2]  http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution