[OSM-talk] advertising

[Chris Fleming]

Christoph Eckert wrote:
> being a cosmopolitan, I'd prefer to support a non-national organisation. 
> As soon as I come to the conclusion that OSMF represents the complete  
> openstreetmap.org project (and not only its foundation or board 
> members), tries very hard to respect the feelings of the project 
> members and provides the infrastructure for the complete project, I'll 
> not hesitate to become a member and contribute my duties.
>   
Good point, one of the key things that sets openstreetmap apart is it's 
international nature. People seem to be fixating on the point that 
because the Foundation is registered in the UK then it's a UK 
organization; I don't believe that these two things are linked and 
furthermore it's worth noting that an organization needs to be 
registered somewhere if for no reason other that to have a bank account. 
I think that people are worrying far to much about where (but we are 
mapping people; so maybe it's in our nature :)

Having said that, I do have some concerns. As a community we need to see 
some more about the Foundation controlling the servers that house our 
data and control how the world views this data. It's my view that the 
Foundation needs to write out a Formal Statement of Intent (The why, and 
how of the Foundation), and some kind of constitution in order to 
describe how the Foundation is ruled, what the membership rules are, who 
forms the officers and what the duties are, and how they are elected.  
An example of this in an unrelated area is at 
http://www.bedlamites.co.uk/view.php?pg=4 - but it gives a good example 
of the kind of things that need to be covered (and is a constitution 
that I was involved is putting together).  I guess what I'm saying is 
that as a member I would like to see some more rigorous procedures in 
place and improved governance.

As the Foundation matures I would like to see the number of officers 
increased as this will provided more opportunities for others to get 
involved when decisions need to be made and would hopefully increase the 
spread of countries that are involved; although this number does needs 
to be kept small.

Cheers
Chris 

-- 
http://www.chrisfleming.org/