[OSGeo-Board] Projects, Committees and Working Groups

[Jo Walsh]

On Sun, Mar 26, 2006 at 03:49:41PM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> 1) Project
> 2) Committee
> 3) Working Group

> 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.

> By the way, I think the Geodata group could conceivably be pursued as just
> a working group...

This makes a lot of sense to me. Geodata has already spawned three working 
groups, those have people signing up to them who aren't on the
Committee list. I imagine that action on the part of the people on
that list, would be carried out through those working groups, the committee 
provides a shared mailing list and a reason to get together and talk about it all.
Working Groups could help express the overlap between differently
focused Committees. 

The w3c provides "Interest Groups", or does for RDF anyway, which act like the 
equivalent of the Working Group description Frank offers, in which people from the
'organisation' carry out informal projects through which they engage people  
from outside the conventional standards community. The more formal
Working Group in the w3c (what maps to a Committee) works on preparing
Recommendations, and so in a more formal context, with regular logged
telecons etc, but can road-test developments amongst the Interest Group. 
I found involvement in an Interest Group a good way of really feeling 
involved with an effort while not having to be in a framework of formal 
commitment to it.

Thanks, and best wishes,


jo