<CORSA Chapters> Membership question -- 100% vs Not. Chapter level

[Bryan Blackwell]

This comes up every so often, let me cover some history:

  - VV was started back in 1990 as a list of addresses passed around  
by the members.  It was viewed as a pretty strange (stupid) idea, this  
e-mail thing.
  - I made it a single address on a Unix host in '91, and it moved  
around with me for a while at Mitre.  Cost to CORSA?  That would be  
zero.
  - We made VV a CORSA Chapter, still viewed as a dumb idea by a lot  
of CORSA folks, partially to avoid fragmentation, and partially so we  
could ask for a meeting place at the Convention.
  - When I left Mitre in '98, 3 *years* of donations were collected to  
cover hosting the list and it was converted to a committee since it  
didn't fit the chapter model very well.  At that time, part of the  
process was an agreement that VV would remain free to any subscriber.
  - In the meantime, VV served as a recruitment tool for CORSA.
  - Through some discussions, the idea of an ISP tailored to CORSA  
needs came up, so we set that up.  As a side project, we moved VV over  
to the same host.
  - Three years ago, it was time to upgrade the hardware.  VV donated  
money to cover it.

To say that somehow VV is taking something away from CORSA is flat  
wrong, in fact the opposite is true.  Beyond that, setting up a  
mailing list or web forum is such a trivial thing (consider the latest  
example forum if you don't believe me) that making it CORSA only would  
serve mostly to fragment the community.

A much better idea would be online member only CORSA web resources.   
Sort of the equivalent to Larry Claypool's answer of "it's in the Tech  
Guide".

--Bryan

On Dec 16, 2009, at 10:08 PM, AeroNed at aol.com wrote:

> FastVairs is not a CORSA affiliated group. I'm not sure CORSA would  
> benefit
> from making VV for members only now. Seem there are plenty of things  
> CORSA
> should have done in the past.