[OSGeo-Board] membership rules

[Tyler Mitchell]

I think it should start to be discussed a bit more broadly as a topic  
with the current membership - after all, it is about us :).  We need  
some resolution on this so that everyone knows who/what they are.   
IRC chats and the occasional email have referred to personal opinions  
on the matter of who is a member, etc. but there really hasn't been a  
good discussion or debate on this as far as I can tell.  In the  
least, we could just plan to defer the topic until FOSS4G.

My main concern is that 'member' becomes meaningless when it means  
everything or everybody.  I think this can be covered off by having  
an 'associate member' category.  But I think we should just open the  
membership to allow for an unlimited number of members, subject to  
some mechanism like a current member must nominate, etc. and being  
done with this debate :)

Members haven't really done anything special since they voted in the  
board, so I am not seeing why it should be a closed number.  This  
coupled with the board doing all the major decision making (eg not  
through member voting) makes this approach seem safe.  Am I  
forgetting anything?   I see other organisations bragging about the  
number of members that it has, it would be nice to also do the same  
for OSGeo.

My thoughts,
Tyler

On 5-Jun-06, at 8:26 AM, Arnulf Christl wrote:

> I wonder about the
> #  Voting Rights: none
>
> on page:
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Proposed_Membership_Rules#Specifics
>
> Any member of any OSGeo project may have some kind of voting rights  
> within
> that project - fx. -1, 0 +1 in a software project. So these  
> definitions of
>  voting rights are only meant with respect to official 'member' and  
> board
> elections. Oh I don't like those quotes. We should soon figure out  
> what
> the title and reuqirements of membership are. At Where 2.0 many people
> will want to know how to become a member. Yeah, come on, how should I
> know? This is your job... :-)
>
> I was inclined to forward this to discuss; Frank, if you wish you  
> can do
> that.
>
> -- 
> Arnulf
>
>
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