I strongly recommend selecting one of the following as your nominated
charity:
Free Software Foundation
Software in the Public Interest (for the Debian Project)
Please try not to be too put off by the poor wording in a couple of places.
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 18:54:27 -0600 (CST)
From: "Utpal M. Dholakia" <dholakia(a)ruf.rice.edu>
Subject: [uklugs] Request from academic researcher
Reply-To: "Utpal M. Dholakia" <dholakia(a)ruf.rice.edu>
Newsgroups: mlist.uk.org.lug.lists.uklugs
Dear Linux User Group Moderator:
I am a faculty member in the Jones school of management at Rice University
in Houston, Texas (this may be verified using a Google search with "Paul
Dholakia", or "Utpal Dholakia"). We are conducting an academic research
project, studying social interactions online, and how communities
organized around products or brands are formed, from a sociological
perspective.
In this regard, the entire open-source movement, and particularly LINUX
user groups and online bulletin boards provide a wonderful context to
study these sociological issues.
We are conducting a survey of members of LINUX user groups/ online
bulleting boards seeking information on different elements of their
thoughts, feelings, and motivations of participating in such groups, and
the value of the group to them... The survey is available on the web at
the following URL:
http://www.surveypro.com/cgi-bin/surveypro/run_survey.cgi?id=2444
Of course, this research is strictly academic, and has no commercial links
or interests. We hope to publish this research in a sociology journal.
As a small token of our appreciation for participants' time, and in the
spirit of the philosophy underlying the open-source movement, we will
donate $500 total to the five favorite organizations/ groups of our
participants' choice (we ask the participant's to nominate their favorite
groups in the survey).
I am writing to seek your help in conducting this research, first through
participating, and second, through encouraging your user group members to
participate in the research.. This will not take more than ten minutes of
your (and their time).
We welcome all help, and look forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
Paul Dholakia
Assistant Professor
Rice University
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~dholakia
