[Strategic] SOTM-EU on Frontpage?

[Kai Krueger]

On 06/03/2011 01:58 PM, Steve Coast wrote:
> Those are good points up and until the point that OSMF has a legal duty.
Although OSMF should ideally not get itself into a situation where it 
starts having a legal duty to act against the interests of the community 
due to its decissions.
>
> An extreme example - the community decides to put hardcore porn on the 
> front page, but OSM own the domain name.
>
> An extreme example - the community decide to advertise SOTMEU on the 
> front page and OSMF lose $50k or something, then Kai decides to sue 
> the board for not acting in the best interests of the OSMF.

In nearly every discussion about OSMF's potential for funding services 
useful to the community the strong objection seems to be raised that 
OSMF does not want to fund these services as it wants to (more or less) 
concentrate on nothing other than the core services to make sure it will 
never get into a situation where it over commits resources to non 
essential services, causing problems to the essential (db + api) 
service. This can be a bit frustrating, as there is currently no 
organization to pool donations and resources for these kind of 
important, but non essential services, but in the end somewhat 
understandable.

But then why is not the same principal applied to SoTM? I.e. keep the 
organisation separate to make sure that any financial troubles resulting 
from SoTM will not negatively effect core OSM-F? Especially given the 
size of the financial commitments due to SotM. It is obviously to late 
to change things this year, but perhaps this should be kept in mind for 
next year to not get into this situation again.

Kai

>
> Steve
>
>
> On 6/3/2011 12:54 PM, Kai Krueger wrote:
>> On 06/03/2011 12:47 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>>> So it is only natural to have a SOTM-Denver ad on the OSMF web page.
>> But that is the thing. OpenStreetMap.org is not the page of the 
>> OSM-F. It is the page of the openstreetmap community that happens to 
>> be operated by OSM-F.
>>
>> As OSM-F should be representing the community, this really shouldn't 
>> matter, as the two aims ought to be in line. However, if the two are 
>> no longer in line and OSM-F starts making decisions against what is 
>> best for the community, because it is better for it, then there is 
>> something very wrong here.
>>
>> So the decision of whether to put an add for SOTM-EU on osm.org 
>> should only be judged by whether it is overall beneficial to the OSM 
>> community or not.
>>
>> There are Pro's and Con's to splitting SOTM by continent so it is not 
>> immediately clear what is best for the community, but the (cost) 
>> barrier of flying across the Atlantic is probably large enough for 
>> anyone not traveling on a "corporate" budget to warrant a split.
>>
>> Kai
>>
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>
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