[Talk-de] Hello from England

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Do Jul 2 10:10:46 UTC 2009


Hi Nick,

(A few lines of introduction for talk-de readers who haven't followed 
the issue:)

Ein bisschen Hintergrund fuer die Leser von talk-de: Die OSMF will gerne 
lokale "Vertretungen" haben. Der Plan ist, dass der FOSSGIS e.V. diese 
Rolle in Deutschland spielt. Hierzu ist eine Vereinbarung zwischen dem 
FOSSGIS e.V. und der OSMF notwendig. Jochen und ich haben zu einem 
vorlaeufigen Entwurf dieser Vereinbarung im Januar Stellung genommen. 
Grundsaetzlich wuerde so eine Zusammenarbeit so aussehen, dass jeder, 
der Mitglied im FOSSGIS wird, automatisch auch Mitglied der OSMF wird, 
ohne dafuer extra zahlen zu muessen, und FOSSGIS zahlt dann einen 
Beitrag an OSMF. Natuerlich wird nach wie vor niemand gezwungen, 
irgendwo Mitglied zu sein, es geht nur darum, diese Zweiteilung "werde 
ich nun Mitglied im deutschen FOSSGIS oder in der englischen OSMF" 
aufzuheben - man will sich ja keine Konkurrenz machen, sondern 
zusammenarbeiten.

Nick Black wrote:
> Thanks for the feedback on setting up local chapters.  This is the first
> negative feedback about this particular aspect I've heard 

Jochen and I have send you exactly that feedback when you asked us what 
we thought of the first draft of the local chapters guidelines in 
January this year. I am attaching a full copy of that e-mail to the end 
of this.

(Jochen und ich haben genau diese Kritik an Nick geschickt, als wir im 
Januar einen vorlaeufigen Entwurf der Vereinbarung zwischen OSMF und 
"Local Chapters" bekamen. Eine Kopie der Mail von damals haengt an.)

We had made it quite clear to you that the German community will happily 
enter into an agreement with OSMF and will also agree to return whatever 
it gained from that agreement if cooperation should stop at a later 
point in time, but that we would not hand over assets like the 
openstreetmap.de domain which we have independently of OSMF.

(Wir haben klargestellt, dass die deutsche Community sicher eine 
Vereinbarung mit der OSMF eingehen wuerde und dass es auch kein Problem 
waere, alles, was die Community aufgrund dieser Vereinbarung erhaelt, 
nach einem eventuellen Ende der Vereinbarung zurueckzugeben, aber Dinge 
wie die openstreetmap.de-Domain, die wir unabhaengig von der OSMF 
besitzen, wuerden wir natuerlich nicht zurueckgeben.)

> When setting up local chapters, the Foundation wanted to help local OSM
> communities represent OSM officially. 

Until now, you only ever spoke of "representing OSMF", not "representing 
OSM". Quote from the draft: "... 1.1 The Foundation grants the Federated 
Organisation the non-exclusive right to represent the Foundation in the 
designated territory".

(Bis jetzt hiess es immer "die OSMF vertreten", nicht "OSM vertreten").

> 1) Do you all generally agree that the OSM-Foundation needs to have a
> termination clause in the contract?
> 
> 2) If so, what can we do to make it more acceptable?

As I said, simply make the wording so that any rights gained through the 
agreement have to be returned.

(Wie gesagt, man aendere die Wortwahl dergestalt, dass nur das, was 
durch die Vereinbarung hinzugewonnen wurde, zurueckgegeben wird.)

FOSSGIS e.V. already handles the bits where OSM Germany needs some 
"official" representation vis-a-vis authorities etc., and once we sort 
out the remaining details (I hope we'll be able to talk to you and some 
other local-chapters-to-be at SOTM) FOSSGIS e.V. can also become the 
OSMF local chapter for D/A/CH.

(Der FOSSGIS e.V. handhabt bereits die Vertetung des OSM-Projekts 
gegenueber solchen Stellen, die eine "offizielle" Vertretung wollen, und 
sobald die verbleibenden Dinge geklaert sind - ich hoffe, wir koennen da 
auf der SOTM mal drueber reden - kann der FOSSGIS auch die lokale 
Organisation der OSMF fuer D/A/CH werden.)


Bye
Frederik

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Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:15:02 +0100
From: Jochen Topf <jochen at remote.org>
To: Nick Black <nick at osmfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] OSM-Foundation Local Chapters Draft Agreement


Hi Nick,

Frederik and I looked over the local chapters draft and have some
comments. They are no "official" statement of the German FOSSGIS
organisation or anybody else, just some issues that we came up with when
we discussed the draft.

1. Who is representing whom?
    We think a very fundamental issue hasn't gotten enough attention:
    What is the relationship between the general OSM community, the
    foundation and the local chapters. At the moment our understanding
    is that the Foundation and local organisations represent the community,
    each in its own way. The agreement changes this to: The Foundation
    is the only one representing the community and the local chapters
    represent the Foundation. This is especially important for the
    motivation of the local chapters. Why should they enter into this
    agreement, if they can represent the community without doing
    this?

2. What are the local chapters for?
    We are missing some more general discussion of what the local
    chapters are for. What are they expected to do? Which jobs remain
    with the Foundation? We are looking for informal guidelines,
    visions, "use cases". There is some in the preamble, but this
    needs to be fleshed out more. Before we can have a legal framework,
    there needs to be a common cause and a common understanding what the
    job of the Foundation and the local chapters is. We first need
    to know how things *should* work before we can evaluate a proposed
    legal document and see whether it is the best way to implement this
    idea.

3. Formal representation
    The draft gives the federated organisation the right to represent the
    Foundation. But legally the Foundation is represented by the board.
    What exactly is meant by this representation? Can the federated
    organisation enter into contracts in the name of the Foundation etc?

4. Non-exclusivity
    This is probably meant in a way that the Foundation can also speak
    for themselves in all the territories even if there is a local
    group there. But we should probably not allow more than one
    federated member for the same area or at least give existing
    federated members a veto right if another group wants to also
    represent this territory. Also, does the Foundation want to
    reserve the right to "overrule" a federated member in its area?

5. Membership
    Having all members of local organisations as members of the
    Foundation brings some difficulties with it. The German OSM
    community decided to join the existing FOSSGIS organization.
    Many members of FOSSGIS are not interested in OSM, they do
    other Open Source or Open Data stuff, but not OSM. This is
    especially important because of the payment of dues and because
    members also have obligations and not only rights. We could
    imaging there are similar situations in other countries.

    Also there are details like renewing memberships, different
    membership periods etc. that need to be defined properly. What
    about existing members?

6. Providing services
    Section 3.2 talks about "may be required...to provide...services"
    This is much too vague to be in a legal document.

7. Termination
    The rules for the termination are that the local group has to
    give up all right on domain names etc. At the moment these rights
    already belong to many local groups in the world. They did not
    get them from the foundation. So why give them "back" (or sign
    a document that says you will give them back in certain cases)?

These are just some comments for discussion, not an exhaustive list.
We send them to you as chairman of the working group so you can discuss
things internally. Its probably not something that should be discussed
to death on the public mailing list. Thanks for working on this issue!

Jochen




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