ITWire

Given that this is a general topic, everyone and his dog has weighed in. But, as usual, some perspectives deserve a little more attention than others, and to me, it appears the the former president of Linux Australia, James Turnbull, provides a view that is most relevant.

Turnbull, who has been working in the US since mid-2010, says, "I hate to be the harbinger of bad news but Linux Australia is an almost unknown brand. Outside of a small subset of the Australian Linux community (a significant number of said subset post on this list) it's largely unrecognised. It's certainly not perceived as a peak body.

"The linux.conf.au brand is very strong - in the Linux world it's seen as one of the premier open source conferences in the world - but largely in my experience no one knows Linux Australia is the parent entity.

"My view is that this is an opportunity. Rebrand, do some solid media relations and grab hold of the peak body status for open source in Australia. I see this as an excellent chance to own open source issues for Australasia and actually start to make a different in government and business."

But Turnbull's suggestion also highlights one of the major problems that has dogged the organisation - its inability to put together a cogent media policy, its inability to keeps its name in the media, its inward-looking nature.

Turnbull would probably have made some inroads into address these deficiencies had he stayed on as president. It was his idea to run a survey that highlighted many of the issues that Linux Australia faces as an organisation.

His successor, John Ferlito, has done a lot to broaden the involvement of the organisation. But he is not a media slut - and that's the type of person who is needed to run the joint, if one wants to make it well-known. There is no indication of any cogent media policy, despite there being some talk about it.

The term incidentally comes from one of the world's most respected security technologists, Bruce Schneier, who told me during an interview in 2008, "You know, I like to think I'm a media slut, basically. I used to say I'm a media whore, but then I realised I didn't get paid. But I think my job, such as it is, is to communicate security to as wide an audience as possible. So it's important, I mean, the press is how the public get their security information."

The whole success or otherwise of the renaming exercise, if it is gone through, may well depend on that one factor.