[Board] A possible view of the world

[Markus Neteler]

On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Michael P. Gerlek <mpg at flaxen.com> wrote:
>> > A percentage of the proceeds from each of the chapters would return to the OSGeo parent organization, to support hosting
>> services, etc. (only if the chapter's proceeds are greater than a certain amount).

Hosting is free to my knowledge (that's why we move away from
Peer1, no?). Hardware has had a certain cost , right. Future
hardware could probably even become donated if OSGeo would
approach appropriate companies for that.

>> I am personally not at all keen on us trying to treat projects,
>> chapters and conferences as revenue sources.

I fully agree. And especially since I currently don't see what the
projects and chapters gain from that. As a GRASS PSC I did
not receive relevant support for the project from OSGeo.
Marketing for the projects I haven't seen yet not financial support
for community sprints (I approached our sponsors for the GRASS
Prague sprint in 2011 successfully myself). Or anything else which
would justify to transfer money from chapters or national conferences
to the OSGeo parent organization... how did OSGeo support
the FOSSGIS, the GFOSS, or the OSGeo-JP Kansai conferences?
Perhaps I am not informed of course :)

...
> Rather than "revenue to OSGeo" I'd characterize it as a cost of the Chapter doing business, in that they can outsource to OSGeo for a lot of messy overhead things like hosting servers, keeping their books, providing legal resources, etc.

Perhaps we need first some figures how much the "messy overhead" which
you list actually costs OSGeo. Looking at

http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Budget_2011
it is marked as "NOT COMPLETED - BASIC DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION ONLY".
Since we are getting close to the end of 2011, it should really be
updated. I guess there is a different document somewhere?

Best
Markus