[News.eclipse.foundation] What's the value of an Associate Membership?

[Tom Morris <tfmorris@xxxxxxxxx>]

Recently I've been investigating getting an open source organization 
signed up as an Associate Member of the Eclipse Foundation.  As the list 
of documents that the lawyers need to review grows longer (13 of them at 
 http://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/, all apparently incorporated by 
reference in the membership agreement), I thought I should go back and 
really convince myself that this is beneficial enough to spend the time 
and money on.

In the membership benefits matrix at 
http://www.eclipse.org/membership/become_a_member/How2Join%20Eclipse%20Rights%20by%20Membership%20Category.pdf 
I found the following benefits listed:

1. Submits requirements
2. Participates in Project reviews
3. Participate in creation of all projects
4. Participate in project IP discussions
5. Support EMO IP due diligence
6. Member of Eclipse
7. Use the Eclipse Foundation Member logo

There's also an 8th benefit that's not listed:

8. Association profile entry and link on the Eclipse web site

Now there's clearly a cross marketing benefit in #6-8 (well, #6 is a 
tautology, but let's leave that aside).  #5 sounds like a chore, not a 
benefit. I think, but am not entirely sure, that #1-4 are rights that 
everyone has whether they're a user, committer, associate member, or 
whatever.  Am I correct in believing that these (#1-4) are not unique to 
members?

Are there other benefits to associate membership, particularly 
non-marketing benefits, that I'm missing?  Can any existing associate 
members speak to the value that they've derived from the relationship?

Tom Morris