[Osmf-talk] Geolibres Local Chapter application for Argentina

[Christoph Hormann]

I think there is a good middle way here.

I concur with Simon that an invitation based membership scheme were
existing members factually decide at will who is going to become a new
member is in conflict with the very idea of a local chapter that is
supposed to represent the *whole* local OSM community in its region.

We have no firm rules about that at the moment and existing local
chapters differ in their membership rules but there is AFAIK none that
practically restricts new memberships in a similar fashion.  That would
be a principle IMO that should be maintained.  Formal rules in existing
local chapters that the board may reject or needs to approve new
memberships (which also exist in the OSMF by the way) are a different
thing if they are practically not invoked on a regular basis.  As we
have discussed at length in the past here the ability of an
organization like the OSMF or a local chapter to reject malicious
membership applications not in support of the goals of the organization
is essential.

Of course as Frederik has pointed out it could be tried to specifically
create a loophole though this would still in principle allow the local
chapter to publicly present itself as an invitation only club with the
loophole only open to those who know of its existence.

Long story short - i think the requirement should be that a local
chapter (a) is de facto open to membership for any interested active
members of the local OSM community without substantial discrimination
and (b) advertises this publicly to the local OSM community.  I think
this is achievable for Geolibres without big hurdles.  And it is also
easy to demonstrate in the yearly report of the local chapters by
showing that the number of membership applications is not too much
higher than the number of new memberships.

Rule (a) would also make it clear that local chapters cannot impose a
membership fee so high and without a possibility to waive it that a
significant fraction of the local community would be excluded by it.

> We did spot the potential issue, but we compared this with the other
> chapters. [...]

It seems quite inefficient to have a public local chapters application
review process without documentation of the review and discussion that
already happened non-publicly within the OSMF being available to the
members.  That requires us to essentially reproduce any analysis you
have already made.

--
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/