[Board] OGC Relationship

[Jo Walsh]

On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 02:34:48PM -0800, Michael P. Gerlek wrote:
> (how did this thread start anyway? :-)

It restarted for me a couple months ago when i met IONIC's business
development manager briefly and he was *pressing* the case for OSGeo
'membership' of OGC, but regular 'membership' doesn't really make
sense for us, so do we need to define something new that creates mutual 
value without draining mutual energy. This iteration of the thread is Frank's:

[[ I am favorable on the idea of a formal liason relationship with OGC
though I don't consider it particularly critical to us or them since there is
already extensive cross membership and cross pollination. ]]

Here's the relevant bit of the OSGeo 'mission statement' 

[[ To encourage the implementation of open standards and
standards-based interoperability in foundation projects. ]]

On a personal level i would love to see OGC pull back towards the
'grassroots' and out of the ISO process orbit and the regulatory
obsession with TC211. But i could see how an attempt to do this in a
formal, negotiated way could just be a time and energy sink, and
individual projects and members are already doing so much inside OGC
particularly in the 'mass market' effort hopefully to very positive effect!

cheers,


jo