[Osmf-talk] Local Chapters criteria

[joost schouppe]

Hi,

Talking as myself the human here, not as the Board member.

I agree that it is important for "national organizations" to represent the
entire local community, and not just one subgroup. Currently this is
checked by looking at the statutes and asking directly through the local
communication channels. Is there anything else we could do?

Op ma 22 jul. 2019 om 00:54 schreef Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch>:

> But, back to Joosts question, yes, IMHO, we shouldn't in general be
> accepting organisations that have not established their standing both by
> being an outgrowth of an active OSM community in the territory in question,
> and themselves having a proven track record of being capable of actually
> running and financing a formally incorporated organisation, but actually
> nailing that down is difficult. For example while OSM-UK clearly was and is
> a product of an existing active OSM community, the actual formal
> organisation had essentially no track record at the time it was accepted,
> had there been hard criteria with respect to the organisations maturity
> they very well might have had to postpone the official LC status process
> for a number of years.
> <https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk>


I agree with the "being an established outgrowth of an active OSM
community", but " being capable of actually running and financing a
formally incorporated organisation" isn't really an issue, since the Local
Chapter can 'outsource' that. If I understand the wiki correctly, OSM
Belgium is the only Local Chapter where a part of an incorporated
organisation joined. This requiered both OSM Belgium and the mother
organisation Open Knowledge Belgium to be screened, but I believe that most
weight was given to the bylaws of OSM Belgium itsefl.
So we don't actually need to run an incorporated organisation. For Germany
and Italy the consequence is the same (the OSM people do not necessarily
need to run an organisation), though there it seems it is the mother
organisation that is officially the Local Chapter.

Is there a preference between the Belgian and the Italo-German model? Or is
this to low a bar in both cases?
For some international context: I've heard people propose to copy this
model to make it easier to join. For example, we could have one OSM Africa
organisation with individual national organisations being a chapter within
that organisation. I don't know if that would work.
Alternatively, one could look for other local organisations. But I've
understood that if those are present, they might simply not trust the OSM
people enough to allow them to become an official part of their
organisation.

Is everyone still in agreement that Local Chapter can be national
organisation, subnational and supranational too?

What makes it hard for me to think about this, is that I'm not really clear
about the purpose of the whole construction. For us in Belgium, there was
the clear benefit of more legitimacy as an organisation. But does the OSMF
really win much? On the other hand, if you are a more established
organisation why would you bother to join at all?

-- 
Joost Schouppe
OpenStreetMap <http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/joost%20schouppe/> |
Twitter <https://twitter.com/joostjakob> | LinkedIn
<https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joost-schouppe/48/939/603> | Meetup
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