Re: Release Candidate of the PostgreSQL Europe association statutes

On 13/01/2008, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum <ads(at)pgug(dot)de> wrote:
> > Normal users would join their regional group, such as PostgreSQLFr or
> > the Italian PUG, and pay the appropriate membership.
>
> What about the many countries without regional associations?
> Not even germany has a group or is forming one. What about UK?

That's a whole other issue but an important point.

> > Otherwise, many users will only join one or the other which would make
> > PG-EU and the regional groups competitors with each other.
>
> Why? They can work in both and i don't see competition here.

A new user decides to join a user group and finds the UK and a
European user group. Which does he join? My bet is that he's unlikely
to pay both.

> If UK has a group, nice, very good. Thats for regional work, if you have
> enough members to support the work. But the EU group is also for
> countries which don't have a regional group. We also should be present
> in this countries and one of the topics could be building regional
> groups.

Yes. What we could do is have a category of paid membership for
*users* for those countries without their own organisation. When they
are ready to start their own, we simply transfer their membership to
their new group, and take a membership fee from the group instead.
That way we have no competition or confusion between regional or EU
groups, because the EU group would only operate as a user group in
countries without their own.

> So what is the real problem here? The membership fee? Or the "umbrella"
> status?

Having a membership fee for contributors to an umbrella group. Think
of it as if you had to pay country and EU income tax. You don't - you
pay income tax to your government, and they pay to be a member of the
EU. The administration (contributors) certainly don't pay to help run
the EU.

/D