[Osmf-talk] OPENSTREETMAP FOUNDATION - NOTICE OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Frederik Ramm
frederik at remote.org
Wed Jul 29 10:17:43 UTC 2009
Edoardo,
> IMHO, we should'nt make a statement like this one. If every single
> commercial entity interested in using OSM datas should have a seat in
> the OSMF board, in the future, how many seats should be made off the board?
Richard had suggested that "no more than one" seat be occupied by people
from the same company; not that every company should have one seat.
> This is a no-sense limitation too. The board is elected. If 2 people
> from the same company is elected in the board i can't see any problem.
> Maybe we can decide that a single company could not have more then a 1/3
> of the seats in the board.
Currently it is not something that can be decided by "us", as you
rightly say, anyone has the right to stand and the only thing that we do
is we vote them in or we don't. We could of course change our rules to
something else for the next election but the rules for this election are
set.
However, assuming that there was a majority of us thinking "Richard is
right, we should not have both Steve and Nick on the board", and then
half of them vote for Nick and half of them vote for Steve, we might end
up with a board that has neither Steve nor Nick in it; that's why it
makes sense to discuss these things beforehand, wouldn't it?
> We could consider to have a "commercial working group" who could give
> just raccomandation to the board from a business point of view composed
> just by people from companies usign OSM datas.
Yes, that's something I would actually like to see - no direct
commercial influence in the OSM board, instead a separate body that can
talk to OSMF if they want.
>> Personally I would prefer a board made up exclusively of people not
>> associated with OSM-related commercial organisations but I am realist
>> enough to see that it is unlikely to happen.
> why? what's the problem about?
I think that even with the best intentions there will always be a
potential for conflict of interest, e.g. OSMF extending their free
services into an area that until now was an area where I had paying
customers or something like this. (I am a commercial OSM user myself.)
It is bound to happen, and the best you can do about these issues is
avoid them altogther and keep things separate.
Bye
Frederik
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