[Board] OSGeo Elections starting tomorrow

[Jeff McKenna]

Hi Adrian and Arnulf,

Regarding nobody seeing an immediate need to change anything
responsible for the Foundation, this is a hurtful statement as many of
us volunteer almost our whole career for this foundation.  In my case,
I will try to champion changes that we need.  I will do my best to use
the talk page outlined by Arnulf to resolve these election issues with
the Board.

-jeff



On 2013-07-09 11:12 AM, Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote:
> Adrian, thanks for asking.
> 
> The election period itself is not the best point in time to
> actually *change* anything. So I suggest to keep things as they are
> for now. But I have just started the talk page where we can add
> points which we think need to be changed: 
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Category_talk:Elections
> 
> The other problem might be that nobody sees an immediate need to 
> change anything / feels responsible for these aspects of the 
> Foundation. *During* the elections sometimes things pop up (as
> your mail and Venka's last year) but there is no follow-up
> process.
> 
> Our job as CROs (Michael and me) is to run the elections, not to
> clean up the process.
> 
> 
> I'll try to summarize how I see things right now:
> 
> Reality: Charter Membership is a very low key role. Their only
> responsibility is to elect new individuals into Charter Membership
> and elect the board of directors. As such the Charter Members never
> have had a meeting and there is no roll call except that we monitor
> who has voted in the charter and board elections. Members who fail
> to take part in two elections in a row become inactive and drop
> out. Any time they take part in an election makes them become
> active again. It has so far never happened that a member had to be
> excluded and I am not seeing it happen. But it may well be
> necessary to have something like this in place (is what every
> lawyer tells us) for example if somebody severely damages the
> reputation of the organization, etc.
> 
> By Laws: The bylaws as published at 
> http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/incorporation/bylaws.html
> are based on standard Delaware law for non-profit organizations
> and originate from the very first days of the Foundation when we
> still had corporate funding from Autdoesk and Rich Steele acted as
> our lawyer. I don't think that they are very relevant to how things
> are run at the foundation and it may be time to amend them to
> reflect how we really operate. The reality here is that lacking a
> lawyer and not seeing an immediate need for change things just stay
> as they are.
> 
> You probably refer to clause 7.7 Automatic Termination (not 7.4).
> Our current interpretation is that we move Charter Members to a
> dormant status if they fail to vote in three consecutive elections.
> The CRO makes sure the information is recorded and passed on to the
> OSGeo secretary who maintains the list.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> Best regards, Arnulf.
> 
> On 09.07.2013 14:50, Adrian Custer wrote:
>> Hey both,
> 
>> On 7/8/13 10:49 AM, Seven (aka Arnulf) wrote:
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
>>> 
>>> Folks, OSGeo elections are about to start. The nomination
>>> period for new Charter Member starts tomorrow!
>>> 
>>> Please consider nominating new Charter Members within the next 
>>> two weeks and help grow the Foundation to become a diverse and 
>>> lively group of enthusiasts, professionals and hobbyists 
>>> interested in geospatial openness.
>>> 
>>> Elections page: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Election_2013
>>> 
>>> News item: http://www.osgeo.org/elections_2013
>>> 
>>> Please help spread the word and also reach out into
>>> communities who have not yet connected with OSGeo. We are open
>>> for open source geospatial software, education and data.
>>> 
>>> Have fun, Arnulf
> 
> 
>> Since it's 'charter member' season again, I am again reminded of 
>> the weird OSGeo rules for such 'charter members' that include 
>> automatic termination, clause 7.4 
>> http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/incorporation/bylaws.html
>>  Unfortunately, for this rule to work, OSGeo should be recording 
>> its 'meetings of the members of the corporation' and logging 
>> attendance.
> 
>> I have brought this up before (though I can not find the mail 
>> quickly) and, at the time, there was some plan to get more
>> serious about following the bylaws. However, I cannot find any
>> list of 'charter member' attendance at the 'meetings of the
>> members of the corporation'. I would expect that the member list
>>  
>> http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/members/voting_members.html
>
>> 
> 
> would include a table of attendance.
> 
>> So has this part of the Bylaws fallen by the wayside yet again? 
>> Alternatively, is there a list of 'meetings of the members' with 
>> minutes and attendance? Finally, which of the committees 
>> http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/committees.html is 
>> responsible for membership?
> 
> 
>> thanks for any clarification, ~adrian
> 
> 
>