Slashdot Mirror
It's Ham Vs.Ham As Radio Amateurs Are In Conflict At ARRL (perens.com)
Bruce Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond -- and he's also Slashdot reader #3872. But this week he wrote in with some news from the world of amateur (or "ham") radio:
ARRL has been the USA's representative organization for Amateur Radio for over a century. More recently, the organization has replaced transparency and democratic representation of its membership with confidentiality, policies to stifle dissent, and punishment of their own leadership when they get out of line. A vote happening this month offers members a chance to get back in control.
The open letter at that link -- signed by several AARL life members (including Perens), argues that "The members are not currently represented as they should be, due to the continued application of a policy meant for a for-profit corporate board," adding that "The only whistle-blower on the board was publicly castigated for informing us."
"The currently-suspended rules that go against the member's interest are temporarily suspended, and could be restored."
The open letter at that link -- signed by several AARL life members (including Perens), argues that "The members are not currently represented as they should be, due to the continued application of a policy meant for a for-profit corporate board," adding that "The only whistle-blower on the board was publicly castigated for informing us."
"The currently-suspended rules that go against the member's interest are temporarily suspended, and could be restored."
I have this mental image of today’s hams belting each other with canes and oxygen tanks...
I don't know, I've been on the other side of that "let's let everyone with a belly button in" attitude before. It doesn't end well. You get a bunch of jerks who don't understand and who don't care what made the community great in the first place. They just want to take, take, take and return nothing. Barriers to entry are a good thing. You don't want the Great Unwashed to spoil your good thing. That's how we ended up with Brexit.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Barriers to entry are a good thing.
Barriers to entry are good if they involve a relevant and useful skill.
For instance, handling emergency braking in a turn would be a useful skill to require of car drivers. Requiring them to calculate a square root is not, since that has nothing to do with driving.
Morse code is useless. How do I know? Because I know Morse code. Haven't used it in decades.