[Board] Eclipse meeting report

[Michael P. Gerlek]

I’ve already replied to a few of these points elsewhere, so I’ll address only two of Nick’s points here.

 

 

First, Nick says

 

> For such important decisons, i think that it would may be worth making Charter members 

> vote too, just like to get an major orientation decided by 120 people instead of only 8.

 

if I was proposing something like a change to OSGeo’s organizational structure or mission, then yes I’d want to talk about having the charter members vote on the issue. And yes, I’d originally I’d thought about a larger collaboration between OSGeo and Eclipse. But that’s not what I’m doing now.

 

My current proposal is deliberately quite conservative: I am only proposing we proactively let our community know the Eclipse is interested in working with some of our projects, and if it an OSGeo project would like to pursue that then we should not get in their way at all. Please reread my proposed 3-point board motion.

 

 

Second, Nick also writes that

 

> Of course  as Michael said,OSGeo needs more fundings. But it also needs more active members, 

> more interest and help to local chapters, more support to the projects, better marketing, 

> somehow more democratic decisions, and may be more diversity at the board, as some 

> recently pointed out i think. (number ? nationality ? gender ?...)

 

The board has always welcomed ideas from the community to address these important issues. If you have specifc proposals please let us know, and please consider running for the board yourself this year.

 

 

-mpg

 

 

 

From: nicolas bozon [mailto:nicolas.bozon at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2012 6:53 AM
To: Bob Basques
Cc: mpg at flaxen.com; board at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Board] Eclipse meeting report

 

Hi Board,

Thanks Michael for that good slides and accurate report.

As Jo, i'm still wondering where we are going to with such a potential collaboration.
As Cameron, i'd like to see such annoucement and ideas on osgeo-discuss to may be get opinions from other members that are not necessarly following the board list unfortunatelly. 
For such important decisons, i think that it would may be worth making Charter members vote too, just like to get an major orientation decided by 120 people instead of only 8.

As may be many other C/C++/Python/Javacript/x? users and developers, i believe that such a collaboration would mostly concern Java-based OSGeo projects , those being developed using the Eclipse IDE for example. So may be only some of the OSGeo projects could benefit from such a collaboration, am i wrong here ? I am really wondering. I don't know Eclipse activities and projects that much too. Are they actually using or interested into other languages/software/librairies than Java too ?

Such a differenciation between Java OSGeo and rest of the world may be not be good for our Foundation. 
I mean it would be very good if Java projects could get more support and fundings from Eclipse, but what about other projects ? 
Won't that create even more competion betwen the 'languages', and between our good and lively OSGeo Tribes ?

I think it is a really good idea to appraoch other foundations that are able to get more fundings that we do. That could help OSGeo a lot in future.
As Eclipse, i am also thinking to other foundations or consortiums that the board could may be talk too (i.e W3C (geolocation WG), Mozilla (they also have several geolocation interests), and there should others for sure). 
Such collaborators coud be Commercial, Commercial Open Source, or simply Open Source too.

However, I still agree with Jo that OSGeo already accomplished many good things and progress since 2006, and i don't think that it necessarly needs to partner, to be affiliated, partly affiliated, merged or even eaten by other Foundation to grow better. 

Of course  as Michael said,OSGeo needs more fundings. But it also needs more active members, more interest and help to local chapters, more support to the projects, better marketing, somehow more democratic decisions, and may be more diversity at the board, as some recently pointed out i think. (number ? nationality ? gender ?...)

So my opinion is that the Board may be needs to find new approaches like the one we are talking about here to make the Foundation grows, on every sides and for all our projects and tribes. 

My only 0,2€

Best,

Nick

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/attachments/20120525/52ea78d5/attachment.htm>