[OSM-talk] [OSM-legal-talk] License to kill

[80n]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com>wrote:

>
> On 6 Mar 2009, at 11:07, 80n wrote:
>
> On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 9:54 AM, graham <graham at theseamans.net> wrote:
>
>> Frederik Ramm wrote:
>>
>> > I believe the Foundation intends to give a vote *only* to those who were
>> > members in good standing as of January 23rd so your few days had better
>> > be 40-ish if you want to have a say in the matter.
>>
>> How do I find out if I'm a member in good standing? Is it possible to
>> check the register of members? I paid for membership - once, quite a
>> long time ago - and have never received any subsequent request for
>> "subscription and other sum (if any) which shall be due and payable to
>> the Association in respect of my membership" - so I guess I've probably
>> been dropped from the list. Is that the way it works? No reminders, and
>> silently dropped?  Or do you stay a member as long as you haven't been
>> asked for another subscription, terminating at death? That would seem to
>> be the implication of the 'general' section in the articles of
>> association.
>>
>> Graham
> If you were a member, but for whatever reason, are not fully paid up, then
> we give reasonable latitude to pay the fee and be re-instated.  You would
> not lose your right to vote.
>
> It's not our intention that members should be penalised because we or you
> missed an email or a cheque got lost in the post or something.
>
>
> Sounds like this should all get tighened up before the next elections or we
> might get into 'hanging chad' legal disputes!
>
> I do strongly support the setting up of a members mailing list
>
> I also strongly support the idea that regular contributor (ie have
> contributed in three consecutive months) automatically become members and
> are then dropped if they fail to contribute for over a year, something like
> that anyway. It would suddenly mean that we had 1,000's of contributors and
> it would be much harder to dominate the foundation.
>
> I know this has been discussed before and deferred, however that is not a
> reason not to review it before the next elections. Particularly as the whole
> membership thing seems to be pretty flakey at present.
>
> With all this, lets remember where we have come from and how well we are
> doing. There is no blame in regard to where we are, but that is not a reason
> not to get to a more professional place rapidly.
>
> There's definitely room for improvement.  As usual it gets driven by
priorities and pressing needs.

It would be good to have a review of the Articles of Association so any
changes could get ratified at the AGM in August.  Otherwise it won't happen
until next year.  However I think all available bandwidth is being consumed
by the license at the moment so it will probably have to wait until that
gets settled (unless the license implies that rights will get assigned to
OSMF in which case the Articles of Association suddenly go right to the top
of the agenda).

80n
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20090306/2688054d/attachment.html>