Become an individual or organisational member

Everyone is welcome to participate, listen, and speak, but only members can vote.

Annual Memberships

  • Professional $40
  • Student/Senior/Unwaged $20

You can become a member right now on our Members website with payment either by bank transfer or secure online credit card payment.

Your membership is valid for a year from the date of payment of your membership fee.

Individual Membership

Any real individual with in an interest in forwarding the mission of the Society can be a member. Membership is automatically conferred with payment, but with veto right by Council.

Benefits of membership:

  1. a vote in NZOSS matters
  2. list oneself as an NZOSS member
  3. participate in open NZOSS forums
  4. access freely available NZOSS online services
  5. ability to hold office in the Society
  6. ability to benefit from reciprocal relationships with other organisations
  7. ability to complete a profile on our website to make FOSS credentials discoverable be potential employers, etc.
  8. ability to list/brand oneself as an NZOSS financial member
  9. take advantage of Free and Open Source Services the Society makes available to members

Organisational Membership

Available for companies and organisations incorporated in NZ.

Underlying principles:

  1. a company/organisation is a collection of individuals with various and possibly disparate ideals - companies do not get a "vote", but they get individual memberships, where those individuals get a vote on the same basis as other individuals
  2. companies/organisations will get a benefit of being affiliated with the NZOSS by virtue of the good work that the NZOSS does.
  3. the bigger a company/organisation is, the more it can afford per-person due to economies of scale
  4. the Society wants to engage small companies/organisations
  5. we want to vet companies/organisations to confirm, based on a council review, whether we feel they are an appropriate fit with the NZOSS' stated ideals. The NZOSS council will be the final arbiter of the membership decision based on consensus.
  6. a consensus of the NZOSS committee is sufficient to discontinue the membership of a company/organisation that fails to live up to NZOSS-espoused ideals. That company/organisation will receive a pro-rated credit for any remaining paid membership.

Terms

We provide company/organisational memberships for a fixed yearly membership fee based on the number of staff.

Cost: NZ$50 per employee, so a sole trader is $50/year, a company with 3 staff is $150/year, and a company with 100 staff is $5000.

For that fee, the employees gain individual membership, but in order to exercise their membership rights, the organisational member must provide us with their name and email address.

When an individual leaves the employment of an NZOSS member company, they must
a) alert the NZOSS, and
b) have a grace period of 90 days before their membership lapses during which time they can become an independent financial member or be employed by another member company.

Benefits of company/organisational membership

The additional advantages of corporate membership (beyond individual member benefits for staff) include:

  1. ability to list the company/organisation as an NZOSS affiliate
  2. an invitation to provide and publish branded case studies related to open source software or announcements of FOSS training opportunities (for companies/organisations which offer them)
  3. free publication of employment opportunities which involve FOSS technologies