[Board] Proposal/thoughts for a FOSS4G Advisor Role

[Frank Warmerdam]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Daniel Morissette
<dmorissette at mapgears.com> wrote:
> As OSGeo treasurer, the fact that we accept full financial responsibility
> for any losses (which is fresh news to me), after handing full financial
> control to the LOC is really something that bothers me a lot, and hopefully
> something that this position can help address.

Daniel / Board,

Each year we (the board) are supposed to appoint one person to the
LOC as our monitor.  The most important role of that person is to
report if there is reason to believe the LOC is operating substantially
outside the parameters of the approved budget.

Of course that doesn't guarantee there won't be a loss but it is
not intended that the LOC operate without any monitoring.  Now
we have perhaps not always been as explicit about this role as we
could.

As for Jeff's proposal, I am struggling with it.  I suppose part of
my concern is that Jeff is proposing charging something near
full consulting rates while I had imagined this as being more
along the lines of "enough money to justify the time" rather
than something that would be moderately lucrative.

Certainly there are lots of complex dynamics when we introduce
money into what has been seen as a volunteer activity.  One of
those is that it may cause others on the LOC to question why they
do their work for free while someone is getting paid.   It helps to
mitigate that if the payment is clearly modest.  But then Jeff may
find himself in the position of being expected to provide professional
level service for a lot less than professional level payment which isn't
fair either.

I will continue to think about it, and I am reading everyone's
thoughts with interest.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Software Developer