SAGE? LOPSA? WTF?

So once upon a time, there was an organization called USENIX. Then, along the way, they formed a sort of "sub-group" called SAGE, the "System Administrators' Guild".

Over the years, there's been a lot of... discontent... among some undefined percentage of SAGE members, feeling sort of like the red-headed stepchildren of USENIX. USENIX, as a 501(c)(3) organization is not capable of offering a lot of the professional-services types of things they believe the organization should be providing. Doing so would make them into more of a "trade union" type of non-profit, which is something that would jeopardize the particular tax-free status USENIX presently enjoys (one which makes donations to it tax-deductible).

There was a lot of talk about USENIX spinning SAGE off into its own entity, to live on its own two feet. That seems to have gone nowhere in particular. In the end, the SAGE Interim Board, who had been put in charge of leading the direction for SAGE to go, and in working with USENIX to do that, were told that this was not going to happen.

And so, LOPSA - the League Of Professional System Administrators was born.

As a couple USENIX members pointed out, in tonight's public forum at LISA, there is room for both USENIX (which may borg SAGE completely into nothingness within the USENIX entity) and LOPSA, as they both excel at completely different things, some of which are things that one of them at least cannot even legally attempt to offer.

USENIX excels at putting on technical conferences and establishing a community around them. I get one-hundred times more value out of a week at LISA than I would at any three O'Reilly conferences combined, and I include in that the MySQL Users Conference where I generally see a crapload of our book get sold bringing direct revenue my way.

At the same time, though, LOPSA -- while its ability to perform these tasks is yet untested -- is much better positioned, legally, to do things like advocacy, or represent sysadmins in general to a larger audience as a trade organization (like the AMA or ABA does for doctors and lawyers). USENIX can't even get into those areas without risking IRS trouble, and there's a lot of demand in the sysadmin community for that type of representation. An organization that can attempt to generate some sort of "standards" for sysadmins "do", establish a code of ethics, and represent to some extent a stamp of legitimacy, can be an invaluable organization to have.

So, I see the SAGE "membership" going away within USENIX, with USENIX continuing to do what it does good, and LOPSA doing what it can do well. I don't see a lot of potential for conflict, especially now that LOPSA is just deciding to "start out fresh" and not necessarily depend on USENIX's good graces for its start. It's off to a great start already, and I can only believe that the membership drive they are on this week at LISA will give them a firm footing going forward.