[Osmf-talk] AoA Discussion

[Richard Fairhurst]

Tom Chance wrote:
> 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.

Politicos overruling developers, whether at their own behest or that of an
electorate, isn't rare in open source projects. The result is usually that
the developers leave and the project goes tits up. (I like Apache very
much but the OpenOffice->LibreOffice episode strikes me as the most
obvious example.)

In OSM, the licence change process has shown that, for the most part, our
"leaders" can and already do work hand-in-hand with those who actually
make the project happen, whether they're developers or mappers.

We should be wary about enlarging the "right for the community to be
heard" if the result would be an OpenOffice-like scenario.

cheers
Richard