[Board] Collaborating with OSSI

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

Hi, John Weathersby (OSSI) and I had a phone meeting with Vance  
Saunders from Ball Aerospace about their open source release of an  
image processing project.

One outcome of that meeting was that John and I got to see how OSGeo  
and OSSI might want to consider working together at some level.  At  
this point he's invited us to sign up as a community member and start  
talking more.  For those of your who remember, John was at the  
Chicago OSGeo kick-off meeting and they share many common objectives  
with us.

Perhaps Mark can give us some more info about OSSI and confirm the  
value for us to enrole.  He isn't so much interested in funds or  
reciprocal form of membership in OSGeo (I told him it doesn't exist)  
but is most interested in working together at some (yet to be  
determined) strategic level.

Tyler

Begin forwarded message:

> From: John Weathersby <jmw at oss-institute.org>
> Date: July 5, 2007 9:04:14 AM PDT (CA)
> To: "Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)" <tmitchell at osgeo.org>
> Cc: "Mark Lucas (home)" <mlucas17 at mac.com>
> Subject: Re: Collaborating
>
> Thursday, 5 July, 2007
>
> Tyler,
>
> It was a pleasure speaking with you this morning.  As mentioned, I  
> think it would prove mutually beneficial for OSGEO and OSSI to  
> exchange reciprocal memberships in order to promote collaboration  
> and promotion of our collective missions and efforts.
>
> OSSI has a "Community (Associate) Membership" category designed for  
> this type of arrangement.  It is available for other non-profit  
> orgs and development community efforts.  There is no membership fee  
> or hard obligation associated with this membership...it is designed  
> to provide a venue for both parties to share information and  
> project collaboration in a mutually beneficial manner.
>
> Here's a link to the Community Membership (Associate) page.
>
> We'd include OSGEO's logo and information on our site with links  
> back to your site.  And we'd have a "diplomatic channel" between  
> the two orgs to work on projects like the Ball/Opticks effort.  We  
> can also cross promote other services or joint memberships down the  
> road, if both parties are interested, but that is not our primary  
> interest or concern.
>
> What I would like to do, though, is to be able to promote your  
> journal you mentioned and other projects you guys are involved  
> with.  The more positive open source projects that we can point to,  
> the better for everyone.
>
> Lucas can attest to the fact that we are not provincial and are not  
> interested in horning in on other people's turf...our mission is to  
> tell the story to anyone that will listen (and to those who don't  
> listen, as well).  That requires good partners who are doing other  
> good projects.
>
> Please share this info with your board and let me know if we can  
> establish a mutually-beneficial membership exchange...and then let  
> me know.  Regardless of the outcome I look forward to  working with  
> you on the Ball project.
>
> Regards,
> jmw