[Board] So what is the purpose of OSGeo?

[Ned Horning]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Michael,
>
> I might also suggest a 3b option - judge this proposal on it's merits,
> but try to develop criteria for future decisions on OSGeo 
> branded/supported
> commercial training activities.
Judging this on merit is important and this is a good time to come up 
with evaluation criteria  My perspective as a co-chair of the Education 
Committee is that I'd like to put in a pitch for giving value to the 
degree to which the proposal improves the archive of education/outreach 
materials that we are compiling. If a project proposed to make open 
licensed training materials available through OSGeo they would be given 
more credit than if the training materials were proprietary. I expect a 
similar metric would be developed for the software that would be 
supported in the Teach-In(open source, free, OSGeo project [in or out of 
incubation]).

My perspective as a potential student in one of these workshops is that 
this is a great idea. The FOSS4G workshops in the past have always 
filled up quickly and there seemed to be more demand than what could be 
accommodated. My (unfounded) sense is that if a young organization like 
OSGeo errors in judgment early on it's better to error on the side of 
increasing visibility. There will always be folks who find fault in the 
details but the "big picture" here seems to be a step in the right 
direction.

All the best,

Ned