[Board] OGC Relationship

[Jo Walsh]

dear all,
On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 02:03:12PM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> I'm not sure what we would offer OGC in return.  I suspect ultimately what
> would be most valuable to them is some sort of commitment to not become a
> a "standards development" organization. 

This scares me a bit, the idea of signing a non-compete, in order to
be able to work better in a collaborative fashion. 

> The other angle might be some sort of more active involvement of OSGeo 
> projects
> in OGC testbeds and other IE efforts.  However, it is hard for us to force
> project involvement.  It might be appropriate for the foundation to provide
> some modest supporting funding for project involvement in OGC testbeds and
> interoperability experiments.  For instance, providing travel funding.

Given the amount of high-level, high-value corporate funding flowing 
through OGC, including from OSGeo members; offering money-value rather 
than social-value as a 'sweetener' to indicate the foundation's goodwill, 
makes no sense.

> Note that there are at least a few people who would like to see OSGeo
> become a sort of light weight agile standards development organization.
> I'm not keen on that, but it might be prudent to give these folks a chance
> to make their case.

Well, i think that OSGeo already *is* such a thing, in terms of the
developments that have already gone on. Note that many of them are in
EOGEO's space (lists hosted there, efforts originated there.) If
anyone *really* wants to point at something and say, "this is an
ad-hoc, implementation driven pre-standards development effort", then
it would be there. 

Well, this is a weird topic because there is 'tension' every time it
comes up. Where is that tension coming from and what is the best way
to get it resolved happily, given we seem to be past the point where 
smiling and saying nothing and keeping on building is viable anymore. 

I am concerned that we may be assuming a lot about the attitude of OGC
decisionmakers towards the Foundation. Can't we ask them outright?

best wishes,


jo