Places to hold conferences

[Barry Shein]

>Even Usenix itself: not only have they voted against having events
>in Arizona

USENIX has never voted against having events in Arizona and has no
such policy.

For a member of the press that was a breathtakingly liberal paraphrase
of what even Gene said, David.

>but they've also voted against (or, 
>to be more correct, "punted on voting") having a South African
>university join the organization.

The deciding issue was that it would cost USENIX some arbitrary amount
of money, at least a thousand dollars (legal fees), to accept that
application.

At the time (I am not certain of the current situation) the United
States Department of Commerce was enforcing a trade embargo against
South Africa which specifically mentioned technical materiels.

To accept the application for membership involved instructing our
legal counsel to petition the US Dept of Commerce for approval. This
would cost the membership at least a thousand dollars (I remember that
was a minimum estimate.) Exact cost would depend upon the outcome, and
whether the Dept of Commerce decided to require further detail or
efforts on our (USENIX's) part to substantiate the request.

We would also need to support continuing legal expenses to determine
whether particular member benefits were exportable under the embargo,
as the issues arose (e.g. if we developed a software tape.)

It was decided this was not a prudent use of members' funds.


What surprises me is, you were in the room during that discussion and
decision, right?

Did you miss all that, or just forget to mention it?
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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