[Coin-members] Thank you (and renewal reminder) for associate members

[Lou Hafer]

	Associate Membership Renewal Reminder

Yes, once again it's time for the INFORMS Annual Meeting, and that means it's
time for a reminder: Please consider renewing your Coin-OR Associate Membership

It's been a bit over seven years since the Coin-OR initiative was first
announced at ISMP 2000, and almost four years since the Coin-OR Foundation
was formed and we moved from IBM web servers to INFORMS web servers.  Our
repository now hosts 25 projects, with several more moving through the
acceptance process. Our software builds and runs on most popular hardware and
software platforms, and we are beginning to offer binary distributions of
selected software components for Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX.

We could never have accomplished this without you, our members. Thanks to your
participation and support, Coin-OR has a vibrant user community, a vibrant
developer community, and a rapidly evolving software base that includes some
of the best software available anywhere. And it's all open-source.

As an Associate Member of the Coin-OR Foundation, your support provides much
more than operating funds --- it provides the best sort of evidence that
there is demand for, and support for, good open-source software by and for
operations research professionals. Your support does make a difference.

I'll get to the point without further ado. Associate Memberships don't last
forever.  We hope that you feel your Associate Membership in COIN-OR has been
a worthwhile investment, and we hope that you'll consider renewing your
membership for 2008. Stop by the COIN-OR booth at INFORMS Seattle, or go to
http://www.coin-or.org/how-to-help.html to renew on-line.

We don't spend much time sending out membership reminders, and we hope you
appreciate that.  We certainly appreciate your support of the COIN-OR
Foundation.  Whether you decide to renew, or not, please continue to use
Coin-OR software, and continue to tell us what's wrong and what's right about
it. For open-source software, that's what it's all about.

	      Lou Hafer
	      Coin-OR Membership Committee