Yeah, might sound a little unusual, but that might just be if you've not seen some of the more specialised orgs. I own a Starfarer, so i've joined an org for Starfarer owners. Maybe in the future organised trips to gas planets with heavy security will be arranged - works out cheaper because 10 ships hiring 10 fighters and 2 capships as protection is cheaper than being 1 ship needing 3-4 fighters and still not looking too threatening to a small bunch of pirates.
Like Halfmad says, the structure of the Org system is pretty flexible, and theres different ways it can be used. Your primary org you could treat like your own business, you work with people regularly to achieve certain goals, make money and have fun. But you're still a member of different clubs for specific interests, whether its as simple as a ship-owners club or rare alien antiques, to things like subscriptions like you would for netflix or a gym, giving you access to something they supply you.
You dont have time commitments in the same way, but an association has its perks... but they may come at a cost too.
Maybe owners of a Crucible repair ship create a group, they want 10,000 UEC/yr for membership, and in return you have direct access to them when you need help. Their policy says they wont help non-members and you still pay the going rate, but they're proven high-rated repair teams, so you could chance it and just ask for help and take whatever is on offer at the time, but the UEE RAC might have all the best teams and you end up with someone trying to learn the ropes on your ship.
Likewise if you're into mining or salvage, you could pay to be in an org which is willing to pay the most for mining/salvage discoveries and transmits that data to all members MobiGlas devices. You all pay membership fees to allow the data purchases, so rather than the finder giving that information to the UEE or a large multi-purpose org, your org outbids the rest on some of the high-value discoveries because it has the funds to do so.
We could even have lawless systems where a large pirate group occupies it, and for a small fee they'll make sure your visits are always nice and safe.
It becomes more than just a guild or clan, its more flexible, it creates elements of realistic enterprise between people of shared interests.
Hopefully this Communications Platform 2.0 update (expected to be shown at CitizenCon on Oct 9th) will go a little further in terms of what is possible and the tools available. Last year we saw the starmap, all it needed to be was a way to see the systems, the planets etc within them, and how to get from one to another, they ended up creating something pretty amazing (
Link if you've not seen it).
The Org update, which is part of this CP2.0, has been a few years in the making along with other stuff Turbulent do, but at some point the plan is to allow voice & text communications through their platform, which simultaneously links web uses with players. You could be on your lunch at work and organise plans with people who are in-game playing etc.
I feel like CIG understand what stuff a community wants, they listen and act upon it, and because they dont have to justify any community requests with someone questioning whether $1m on a feature makes sense, cos $1m on a superbowl ad will sell more copies. They end up going above and beyond and make something special like the Starmap - they can see why we'd want it, and how it makes the game better, and thats all the justification they need to make it happen.
and obviously those sharing org membership with you are likely to be known to others who you trust or have some form of reputation with the org leader which allows them to be members (this is where large orgs fall to bits as members cant trust each other to the same degree IMHO).
