[Osmf-talk] Draft New Corporate Membership Tiers

[Kate Chapman]

Hi Muki,

Thanks for your comments. I can see how this person might be viewed as the
"legal voice" for OSM. I was envisioning they were more someone who would
work with the LWG and serve as a resource for that working group. The OSMF
would be the customer of this legal person so they would certainly need to
respect the wishes/views of the foundation regarding the license/other
legal matters. Is there a disadvantage to the community if any of the legal
ambiguity is clarified?

-Kate


On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 2:27 PM, Haklay, Muki <m.haklay at ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hi Kate,
>
> Thank you for all the details, research, and thinking about this issue,
> but I see a problem with the idea of a ‘General Counsel’ for OSMF in
> principle which I think merits a discussion about the advantages and
> disadvantages (building on Simon’s point).
>
> Having a single, definitive legal voice for OSMF is a very significant
> cultural shift in the governance of OSM and the risks and benefits to
> companies, individuals and organisations who are using OSM currently. The
> current legal uncertainty creates opportunities as well as closing others,
> and while you’re getting a very clear message from potential corporate
> members that this is what they would like, it’s worth being devil advocate
> to a very high degree and thinking about all the unintended, adverse
> impacts of an official, unequivocal interpretation of, say, certain
> applications of OSM or its technologies. In effect, whatever a General
> Counsel will states about interpretation of the licence and other issues
> will be de facto and de jure the view of OSMF. This is not how things
> operated for the past 12 years with much longer deliberative processes.
>
> Importantly, I don’t say that OSMF shouldn’t go down a road of
> consolidation and formalisation, which many other organisations gone down
> through. However, I don’t think that such a decision should be taken
> without weighing, very carefully, the pluses and minuses of doing so.
>
> Cheers
>
> Muki
>
>
>
> *From:* Kate Chapman [mailto:kate at maploser.com]
> *Sent:* 27 April 2016 19:23
> *To:* Jonathan Witcoski <jwitcoski at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Osmf-talk] Draft New Corporate Membership Tiers
>
>
>
> Hi All,
>
>
>
> Thanks for you feedback so far, a couple comments.
>
>
>
> General Counsel: This is the number one thing that potential corporate
> members have requested. The idea is not that we are providing advice, but
> they have their own General Counsel that would like to speak to another
> lawyer. This is typically how companies operate and the idea was that they
> are willing to pay a significant amount of money for it. The specific
> details would still need to be worked out with the LWG and board.  If you
> look at the bottom of the wiki page I've put this contingent on having at
> least 5 or higher business members. I think the main reason other
> foundations don't offer this is that there is not as much discussion are
> licenses.
>
>
>
> Calls with board members: This is intended to help people internally
> "sell" the corporate membership within their organizations. Many people
> already talk to board members informally all the time. If you send me an
> email for example I don't demand you pay me to answer it, should I not
> answer it because you might be trying to influence me? Though if
> organizations are interested in this why not help fund the OSMF?
>
>
>
> -Kate
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 11:10 AM, Jonathan Witcoski <jwitcoski at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> I took a look at other opensource project corporate benefits...
>
>
>
> https://jquery.org/join/
>
> http://www.osgeo.org/sponsorship
>
> https://www.joomla.org/sponsor.html#packages
>
> https://assoc.drupal.org/supporting-partners
>
> http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/join/corporate
>
>
>
> They all offer:
>
> Joint Press Releases
>
> Joint Blog posts
>
> Sponsor badge for your Web site
>
> Invitation to Special Events
>
> Discounts (several free tickets and early bird pricing on all others) on
> tickets to events
>
> Discounts with other corporate sponsors (training and services)
>
> Free standard listing on Drupal Jobs
>
>
>
> None are offering:
>
> Legal access to OSMF General Counsel
>
> or
>
> Yearly call with board members
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 1:19 PM, Christoph Hormann <chris_hormann at gmx.de>
> wrote:
>
> On Wednesday 27 April 2016, Paul Norman wrote:
> > > - 'Attend OSMF general meetings' should be clarified as through a
> > > single representative (or a specified higher number) and should
> > > emphasize that this does not entail any formal rights in those
> > > meetings (i.e. just attendance).
> >
> > Corporate members are associate members who are not natural persons,
> > and have all the rights of associate members except voting at general
> > meetings. This gives them the right to attend and speak at general
> > meetings. As a practical matter, the last general meetings have been
> > open to the public and we've taken questions without first checking
> > for membership.
>
> OK - but implicitly i assume this only applies to a single
> representative - anything else would mean extended rights compared to a
> normal associate member.
>
> --
> Christoph Hormann
> http://www.imagico.de/
>
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