[Osmf-talk] Chairman

[Nick Black]

Tom,

Agree that that is not a good situation.  I'd think that the Technical  
Working Group would be the right place to make a decision, or to take  
it to the Board if its something that needs more attention.

In this case, the problem was probably because of data protection  
stuff.  The OSM-F is not currently data protection registered, so we  
are severely limited as to what we can do with any personal data.  For  
example, more Board members don't know the names of the people who are  
Foundation members.  We are going to register with the UK data  
protection people - this adds extra burden (we have to put notices on  
the site) but it also allows us to do more, like expose GPX data and  
make contact with members.  All permission based, of course.

These kind of administrative things take a while to do in the  
Foundation.  Only one person can really fill out the forms and chase  
things up, but each of these "little" admin things sucks time from  
Foundation Board members who should really be doing more constructive  
things.  This is a great example of how a foundation "Adminstrator"  
would be able to really speed things up.

--
Nick




On 4 Aug 2009, at 11:07, Tom Hughes wrote:

> On 04/08/09 10:55, Nick Black wrote:
>
>> On 4 Aug 2009, at 08:57, Tom Hughes wrote:
>>
>>> On 04/08/09 08:54, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>>>
>>>> I guess one has to distinguish between Foundation and community  
>>>> here.
>>>> For the Foundation, there might arise situations where "a  
>>>> decision needs
>>>> to be taken" (especially when outside parties are involved, e.g.  
>>>> you are
>>>> issued a writ and need to respond; an opportunity for funding is  
>>>> about
>>>> to expire, etc.), and the decision then picks the path the  
>>>> Foundation is
>>>> going to pursue.
>>>
>>> My biggest complaint about the foundation is it's reluctance to make
>>> decisions - they like to punt by saying it's a not a decision for  
>>> them
>>> to make and that "the community" should decide. The problem is that
>>> nobody is able to tell me how to ask "the community" for a decision.
>>
>> Could you give us more examples ?
>
> Well the most recent example that comes to mind was when the  
> foundation was asked about the question of whether we should expose  
> additional information about public GPX traces.
>
> The general problem I have however, as the person at the sharp end  
> on many occasions, is that there seems to be nobody with the power  
> to make decisions about things. That leaves me, as the person with  
> the technical power to do or not do many things making the decisions  
> myself and catching the flak when people don't like the decisions I  
> make.
>
> Tom
>
> -- 
> Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
> http://www.compton.nu/

--
Nick Black
twitter.com/nick_b
nick at blacksworld.net