Projects, Committees and Working Groups

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

I've been a bit conflicted about what sorts of sub-committees we have
within OSGeo for a while.  I would like to suggest we have the
following "types" of committee:

1) Project

This is our traditional heavy weight project.  It is run by a Project
Steering Committee.  A project has it's own subdomain on the web site.
Most projects will be an open source software projects like GRASS,
MapServer, etc.  All Projects must go through incubation, but are
treated as somewhat "arms length" from the board in the sense that the
board will not normally interfere in the operation of a project as long
as certain basic constraints are satisfied.  Project PSC Chairs are
VP's of OSGeo.  Projects may also have dedicated funds help by OSGeo,
but available for the project to use as the PSC sees fit as long as some
basic "good governance" requirements are met (proper accounting, not
obviously being wasted or mis-appropriated).

2) Committee

This is a group assigned some specific area of responsibility by the board.
A committee's chair is a VP of OSGeo and reports back to the board.
Committees are given a mandate by the board on formation, and some
independence to pursue their assigned mission.  But they exist to "serve"
the board, and the board may direct them as it sees fit.  In many cases
policies developed in committee should be referred to the board for final
approval.  This would include committees like VisCom, WebCom, IncCom.
Committees do not have their own funds to disperse, and all spending needs
to be explicitly approved by the board, or at least the treasurer.
Committees may have their own project subdomain on the site, though this
isn't critical.

3) Working Group

This is intended to be the "lightest" format.  Working groups live primariliy
in the wiki, and do not need to explicitly formed by the board.  They
essentially form as a community of interest with some hosting of resources
on the foundation web site.  Working groups's chairs are not officers of
the foundation and they don't have a reporting responsibility to the board.
They can internally organize themselves as they see fit (formal meetings with
minutes are optional for instance).  Working groups do not have their own
project domain, and any special resources (like a web page not in the
wiki, mailing lists and so forth) should be requested from WebCom but
are provided at WebCom's discretion.   Other resources (funding, adopting
policies, etc) may be requested from the board, and are granted at it's
discretion.

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My intent is that several existing efforts, such as the "languages" (as in
perl/python/php), the "binary distribution" group, the "cerfication group",
the "telescience infrastructure" could all be organized as working groups
for the time being.  Some of them might well be promoted to full fledged
committees at some point, but only as needed.

My main objective in the above nominclature is to provide a "light" way
of organizing some efforts that don't necessarily have a clear mandate yet,
or for which we don't need a log of "process overhead".   While I've had
this idea for a while, I must admit my desire to push it now is partly
driven by Jo's concern I was putting too much weight on "process".  There
must be some sort of irony in my solution to "process overhead", being
to develop a new process (ie. working groups)!

But I'm also interested in formalizing what I see as the distinction between
"projects" and "committees".  Something that gives a voice to our assumption
of independence for software projects, and our assumption that committees
are not intended to be so independent.

I'm not sure if it would be valuable to have the above written into our legal
bylaws, but I would like to see us adopt it as a practice, and possibly
adopt it in some form.

By the way, I think the Geodata group could conceivably be pursued as just
a working group.  The main reason I think it makes sense to promote it as
a committee is to give it a more formal "heft" in the organization and to give
it's chair an appropriate title to use in advocacy and communication with
the outside world.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org