[Board] Press release president's comments

[Ari Jolma]

Arnulf Christl kirjoitti:
>>> [BOF]
>>> Arnulf Christl explains, "I'm pleased to be able to help in my new 
>>> role as OSGeo President. I have three mail goals on my personal 
>>> agenda, these include further supporting the emergence of local 
>>> chapters and supporting them in organizing meetings and conferences 
>>> that complement our global FOSS4G effort. The second area is to 
>>> improve our support for businesses using and supporting Open Source 
>>> Geospatial software. Our organization is now so strong and healthy 
>>> that we need to tell the world about it in the lobby (pressure group 
>>> work, etc. - please add some correct terminology). The third area is 
>>> the most challenging one. It includes conciliating between the 
>>> extremes of proprietary businesses that dominate the OGC and the 
>>> other extreme of thorough volunteerism(?) that rules still 
>>> exponentially growing OpenStreetMap. If at all then OSGeo is the 
>>> organization capable of bridging this gap/gorge/chasm/."
>>> [EOF]
>
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Press_Release_Board_2008#New_President
>
Arnulf,

The wiki seems slow to open now. I'm not native speaker anyway so I 
write some comments. This is of course your vision or agenda, so don't 
let us change it upside down. I think this is good. I support the first 
two ones, the third one may be a bit, unconstructive, especially if it 
aims to construct (conciliate). It's also not very clear to me what you 
mean with it. I'm not very well aware of all what's going on but my 
feeling is that we or some (many?) people at OSGeo are and have been 
very active in the standards front. It would be good to bring that up a 
bit I guess. The thorough volunteerism and going against what those in 
power do is also important for us - at least some of us in the 
universities like to believe in intellectual freedom. I'm not very sure 
how these two things connect however.

I also support Markus in his wish to get the press release finally out.

And finally, we do have a meeting tomorrow?

Cheers,

Ari

-- 
Prof. Ari Jolma
Environmental Management Information Technology
Teknillinen korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
tel: +358 9 451 3812 address: POBox 5300, 02015 TKK, Finland
Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi 
http://geoinformatics.tkk.fi/twiki/bin/view/Main/AriJolmaHomePage