[Local-chapters] Fwd: Request to approve Local Chapter Agreement at Board Meeting

Henk Hoff toffehoff at gmail.com
Fri Jan 22 18:32:26 GMT 2010


2010/1/22 Eugene Alvin Villar <seav80 at gmail.com>

> Hello,
>
> I have issues with this clause:
>
>
> 3.3 The Federated Organisation OpenStreetMap members will automatically
>> become members, with all the associated rights and obligations, including
>> specifically voting rights, of any ordinary Foundation member.
>>
>
> Does this mean that the Local Chapter will have to pay membership dues per
> member to the OSM-F (even if the fee is adjusted via PPP)? Wouldn't this
> complicate financial records especially given the disparate financial
> systems of different countries?
>

Yes, the Local Chapter will need to pay fees to the Foundation. The current
proposal to handle this is that a local chapter needs to pay a yearly fee
based on the number of members it has on the 1st January of that year. This
will reduce the amount of transactions to one per year. Also, for every new
member during a year the local chapter does not need to pay a membershipfee
to the Foundation.


>
> Also this one:
>
> 4.2 the Federated Organisation will cede control of all web presence that
>> references OpenStreetMap including but not limited to domain names, forums,
>> mailing lists to the Foundation.
>>
>
> I don't see why the OSM-F automatically has rights to these when the
> agreement is terminated. While there is a case for trademark infringement,
> each country has its own trademark laws and each country's registrar has its
> own dispute resolution mechanisms.
>
>
We hope the termination clause needs never to be used. However, if there
ever comes a time that an agreements has to be terminated, the Foundation
needs to be able to make an agreement with another organization to become
Local Chapter. The Foundation can not comply with section 1.1 when the
former organization still owns all the rights.


>
> It seems that these will just discourage local chapters from going into an
> agreement with OSM-F. I would imagine that potential local chapters would
> just prefer to be completely independent instead.
>

In all honesty: what did you expect? If a Ford car dealership ceases to be a
Ford dealer, it also needs to remove the name Ford of its building....


>
>
I very much prefer the local chapter structure adopted by the Wikimedia
> Foundation.
>
>

Well, in that case the *individual* members cannot elect the boardmembers of
the Foundation. And they also cannot votes on other major issues within the
Foundation (e.g. the recent vote on license-change amongst members of the
Foundation). The Wikimedia Foundation does not accept individual members....

Cheers,
Henk
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