[Osmf-talk] EVERYONE: PLEASE VOTE
James Livingston
doctau at mac.com
Thu Aug 20 08:40:17 UTC 2009
Let me say at the start that people's corporate affiliation is playing
no part in how I vote, it's going on how well people have performed
(for existing board members), whether I think they will do a good job,
and trying to get decent geographic diversity.
On 20/08/2009, at 5:34 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> the Foundation will have a big influence on how the relicensing
> processs will be
> handled, and so on.
The will definitely have some influence, because how you word the
question asking whether contributors want to re-license their work
will affect the outcome. That said, I don't believe the board had the
final say on this. If the map data is copyright-able (please skip that
argument), then only the contributors can decide because OSMF (board
or membership) can't just decide to re-license.
I would like to know exactly what people are worried about a board
with multiple company members doing, and what we could do to overrule
that. Is it that people are worried CM or another company will turn
evil, re-license the map data so they can sell it to people? If so, we
need to ensure that the board without the approval of everyone else.
A question I asked on IRC, which Steve said he didn't know the answer
to, was "Is there a way for the membership to overrule the board?".
All the associations I've been part of here in Australia, where I've
cared enough to look at the constitution/articles, have had a clause
that said if you can get enough members to agree, you can force an
Extraordinary General Meeting. In one of those meetings, the
membership can vote on resolutions which bind the board, or remove
them from office and force new elections.
Does anyone know whether the same applies in the UK, and specifically
to OSMF? I don't expect to ever need to, but I'd be in knowing.
> This is simply not a situation where I want any business entity to
> dominate the OSM foundation. (And, if I were a business entity
> involved
> in OSM-F, I would stay the hell clear of maneuovring myself into a
> dominant position!)
I'd say that having two people on a seven member board isn't exactly
domination. I wouldn't oppose a "no more than 40%" or "less than half"
kind of rule, but personally don't think it's necessary.
One of many reasons I don't like this kind of rule, is that if it is
ever used you usually end up finding that the way it was worded wasn't
quite what you meant. For example in the GNOME Foundation case, I
believe that if someone is excluded their votes don't get distributed
to the next preference. Another case I saw back at Uni was that four
people in a group would have been elected but only three of them were
allowed on the committee, but the lowest two vote-getters had the same
number of votes, so according to the way it was worded, both got
excluded instead of one.
The only way to avoid that kind of headache is to tie the rule in
closely to the voting system, but the voting system often isn't
specified in the articles (as with Gnome, which changed from Most
Votes to Franctional STV).
More information about the osmf-talk
mailing list