[Osmf-talk] AoA Discussion

[Tom Chance]

On 19 July 2011 11:04, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:

> 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.


To be clear, I'm not advocating that we *should* enlarge that right, only
highlighting that at the moment the relationship between the OSMF, core OSM
hardware and services, and the wider OSM community isn't very clear, and the
articles potentially leave the door open to the OSMF making moves on
hardware, service and community matters.

If we want to go there then we should consider it properly, and if we don't
it might be worth ruling it out in the new articles.

Either way, revising the articles would be a good opportunity to clarify
where the OSMF begins and ends, a kind of venn diagram if you will to show
overlap and relationships with people, and where decisions about equipment,
services, licensing, tagging, etc. are taken.

Regards,
Tom

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