[Osmf-talk] OSGeo Oceania Local Chapter application

[Rory McCann]

Hi all,

OpenStreetMap will eventually be massive, to the extend that I think 
just one Local Chapter for a country like UK, Germany or USA would be 
too large. There are national football teams, but also city & regional 
football teams. Eventually OSM will be that big.

I always envisioned the current Local Chapters eventually spawning new, 
more localized, local chapters. So we need to consider this “splitting” 
situation eventually.

There already are OSMF Local Chapters with overlapping geographic areas, 
and the new Local Chapter Agreement is faster to terminate, in the 
highly unlikely event we need that option.

So while such a large area is uncommon, I don't think it's a problem 
now. It appears the current OSGeo people don't want to be exclusive.

Rory

On 11/08/2020 16:31, Christoph Hormann via osmf-talk wrote:
> 
> I have thought about this quite a bit and my recommendation is that the
> OSMF not accept local chapters on a supranational level.  Should that
> idea not find sufficient support i would recommend making supranational
> local chapters contingent on qualified support from all national
> comunities included in their scope (which in this case quite clearly
> would mean Australia and New Zealand only).
> 
> Reasoning for that recommendation:
> 
> The concept of a local chapter in its name already implies localness.
> Existing local chapters predominantly represent local communities
> defined by cultural similarity and offer them a level of cultural and
> legal proximity that the OSMF lacks.  This is practically important in
> legal as well as economic matters where mappers and the organization
> they associate in exist in the same legal domain which simplifies a lot
> of interactions.  This includes for example financial transactions and
> contract matters (donations and funding as well as the local chapter
> being able to contract with businesses and shoulder risks when mappers
> organize local events or projects) and legal matters - like supporting
> and representing local mappers who get in legal trouble through OSM
> related activities or pursuing local license matters (like FOSSGIS does
> recently w.r.t. insufficient attribution).
> 
> But especially it is important in cultural matters where a local mapper
> should be able to expect to find understanding and like-mindedness
> w.r.t. their cultural views in their local chapters - no matter from
> where within the domain of their chapter they are.
> 
> All of this does not seem to be the case for OSGeo Oceania for the
> intended regional domain of Oceania outside of Australia and New
> Zealand.
> 
> You can also put it this way:  If some local mapper in a village in New
> Guinea has their local chapter, which is supposed to be their
> representation "when dealing with local government, business, and
> media" (quote from the wiki), in Hobart, how is that going to work?
> 
> If the local OSM communities of Australia and New Zealand want to form a
> common local chapter i would in principle have no issue with that
> although for practical reasons i would suggest they carefully consider
> if a national local chapter is not in the long term more beneficial for
> the mappers.
> 
> None of this in principle rules out accepting OSGeo Oceania as a local
> chapter with a smaller geographic scope.  There is precedent for that -
> FOSSGIS as an association covers Germany, Austria and Switzerland but
> as an OSMF local chapter only covers Germany.
> 
> I also have my doubts on the significance OpenStreetMap plays in the
> OSGeo Oceania activities in general and if the position of the OSM
> community within the organization is strong enough for it to fulfill
> the role of a local chapter.  But i have not looked at this deeply
> enough to form a clear opinion.
> 
> --
> Christoph Hormann
> http://www.imagico.de/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> osmf-talk mailing list
> osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk
> 
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