[Osmf-talk] AoA Discussion

[Tom Chance]

On 18 July 2011 22:21, Chris Fleming <me at chrisfleming.org> wrote:

> Does anyone think that corporate members should get a vote?
>

No, as others have said I think there is a role for companies to sit on an
advisory board, and their employees are free to join as ordinary members.

I also think a basic principle of our Articles should be one member, one
vote. It is wrong to start introducing rules that weight votes in favour of
people such as myself who have been involved for many years, have many
nodes, etc.



> Finally is the fee putting people off joining, £15 a year is a lot of money
> to some people. When OSMF was setup the option of joining by sending a
> postcard to the foundation was offered, but to my knowledge it was never
> taken up. But perhaps this is a impediment to joining and if so the
> foundation may want to be more flexible on the fee?


You could introduce a tapered membership fee based on voluntary declaration
of earnings, which I have seen used in a number of organisations. For
example:

unwaged: £1/year
up to £20k/year: £5/year
up to £35k/year: £10/year
above £35k/year: £15/year

But I would guess that there is a more fundamental reason why OSM
contributors don't necessarily join the OSMF, and that is the OSMF's actual
role.

Let's say I'm an OSM contributor and I read the "About" page on the OSMF web
site. Why bother paying to join an organisation that, according to its web
site, just keeps servers ticking over and organises an annual conference?

Under the proposed ODbL structure, the OSMF takes on a more formal
controlling role over licensing.

The Board and Working Groups clearly have a controlling influence over the
way our systems are run, not least because many of the key developers and
sysadmins sit on those bodies.

It is not clear from the Memorandum of Association and the Articles of
Association whether an AGM could for example vote to overrule a decision of
a sysadmin or developer, thereby taking a more controlling influence over
the project.

The relationship between the OSMF and the OSM project is far more ambiguous
and problematic than the OSMF "About" web page suggests. Clarifying that
might help OSM contributors who are more concerned with tagging disputes and
the next API revision to decide whether the OSMF is relevant to them.

Regards,
Tom Chance

-- 
http://tom.acrewoods.net   http://twitter.com/tom_chance
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