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<br/>> On April 13, 2013 at 2:51 PM Bryan Bishop <kanzure@gmail.com> wrote:
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<br/>> On Sat, Apr 13, 2013 at 2:32 PM, Randall G. Arnold wrote:
<br/>> > In the case of Makerspaces there is no real product, which actually benefits
<br/>> > us. There is no corporate entity, really, to which we are beholden. On the
<br/>> > surface, though, that means the absence of a single guiding force that
<br/>> > identifies purpose. Some can say that in our world O'Reilly is or means to
<br/>> > be that force... but as noted, they have a financial agenda of their own
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<br/>> Could you be more specific about how O'Reilly gets in the way? Of
<br/>> course, the general argument that a commercial entity is biased
<br/>> towards itself is totally valid in this case, but I think there have
<br/>> been specific incidents with O'Reilly (or other commercial entities)
<br/>> that are worth mentioning. Using specific examples helps us to account
<br/>> for those cases in whatever proposals we fling around at each other.
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I didn't say for certain that O'Reilly gets in the way. Again, I'm new to this list and was offering benefit of the doubt to a previous commenter.
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<br/>> Besides insurance bargaining, what else would you put in a list of
<br/>> hacker goals for a foundation?
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<br/>> If I was to make up the rules on my own, then the rules or goals would
<br/>> end up being something related to funding activities- such as finding
<br/>> funding, raising money, franchising products or whatever, to pay for
<br/>> and fund excellent hackers in hackerspaces working on excellent open
<br/>> source projects throughout hackerspaces, including lesson plans,
<br/>> circuits, schematics, biology projects, chemistry projects, or any
<br/>> other hacker activity.
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First, I'm not necessarily advocating a foundation in this case. A council may very well serve the needs described by others.
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For our local foundation, there are a multitude of purposes and reasons:
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- financial
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- identity
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- civic support
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- community resource management
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- legal
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Your own comments are also valid. ;)
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Of course one sticking point here is defining "hacker". I'm not trying to quibble over semantics either-- this community is much more diverse than any other in which I've been involved. There are those who would favor a quasi-corporate approach to governance. There are others who would gleefully opt for anarchy... and myriads of flavors in between...
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Randy
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