[Osmf-talk] Potential AoA change: Count time as associate member for board candidacy requirements

[Tobias Knerr]

Hi all,

the OSMF board discovered an oversight in the Articles of Association 
(AoA) during the preparations for last year's elections: People who have 
been part of the OSMF for a long time, but spent much of that time as 
associate members, may be prevented from running for the board because 
they do not formally meet the requirement of having been a member for 
180 days. This is because "associate members" are, counter-intuitively, 
not treated as a subset of "members" in the AoA.

Therefore, we are considering to propose the following change to 
paragraph 79 of our AoA:

## Before

Any person who has been a member of the Foundation during the full 180 
days prior to their appointment, and who is willing to act as a 
director, and is permitted by law to do so, may be appointed to be a 
director-
:(1) by election at a general meeting; or
:(2) by a decision of the directors.

## After

Any person who has been a member of the Foundation during the full 28 
days prior to their appointment, and has been a member or associate 
member of the Foundation during the full 180 days prior to their 
appointment, and who is willing to act as a director, and is permitted 
by law to do so, may be appointed to be a director-
:(1) by election at a general meeting; or
:(2) by a decision of the directors.

We hope that this is a straightforward correction. Directors still need 
to be regular members, but under the new rules, they would have time to 
change their status after deciding to stand for election.

Please share your feedback! And if you have input on how the text on 
https://join.osmfoundation.org/ could be improved to make the 
differences between the membership types more understandable, we would 
be interested in hearing about that as well.

Yours,
Tobias