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, LINUX user groups and mailing lists provide a wonderful context to study these sociological issues. We are conducting a survey of members of LINUX user groups/ mailing lists 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 whatsoever. 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). Broad participation will increase the validity and generalizability of our findings, making the research more useful. 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