[Osmf-talk] OSMF Articles of Association - Discussion on Revision for 2013 AGM - Corporate Membership

[Simon Poole]

To get this moving a bit I would like to point to the informal poll
Frederik did last year which showed a clear majority for allowing a
non-voting corporate membership (please note the "supporting membership"
mentioned in the poll has nothing to do with the new membership class
proposed in the current discussions). See http://polls.cc/cyzooQ/results/

I'm personally not opposed to allowing corporate membership (and don't
see why they shouldn't be allowed to vote), however IMHO nobody has made
a convincing case why a change would be necessary and what the benefits
for the OSMF and OSM would be. I could imagine that when we have a
discussion about what kind of financing model we would like to have in
the future (assuming that impromptu donation drives may become to dicey
and painful with larger yearly budgets) that a possible model would be
at least partial financing via higher membership fees for corporate
members. But then I could easily come up with a number of reasons why
that might not be a good way forward.

Simon