[Board] OSGeo involvement in οfficial project

[Dimitris Kotzinos]

Dear all,

this is a very interesting discussion.
Having tried to do that for a number of non-profit organizations mainly 
in Greece my experience is rather negative, especially for organizations 
relying solely on volunteers.
There are two main problems as I see it:
1/ severe legal obligations coming mainly from the fact that official 
participation (and here I exclude advisory boards, etc.) usually entails 
some kind of budget and management of this budget in an official way 
(and according to EC or national regulations). Most of these kind of 
organizations lack this structure and do not really want into the 
trouble of establishing one (leaving alone issues of non-profit that 
might also inhibit this).
2/ participating or sometimes even endorsing competitive projects on an 
official capacity (e.g. as OSGEO) can create all sorts of troubles on 
"why endorsing him/her and not me" or at a later stage "who handles the 
money and who gets"paid" from the money" that come through these sources.

I am not saying all these to sound negative; as I said I investigated 
this couple of times myself. So investigating this for OSGEO might worth 
it. In any case I am in favor of revisiting the guidelines for OSGeo.

Finally, from Jachym's e-mail I would also like to keep the point on 
establishing a European legal presence for OSGEO, something like maybe a 
European OSGEO chapter. I am not taking a stance of being in favor or 
against; I am saying this is a valid idea to investigate in the future.

Best regards,

Dimitris

-- 
Dimitris Kotzinos, Ph.D.
Professor
Lab. ETIS, Dept. Sciences Informatiques
Université de Cergy-Pontoise
2 av. Adolphe Chauvin
Site Saint Martin, bureau A583
95000 Pontoise
France
phone: +33 13425 2855
e-mail: Dimitrios.Kotzinos at u-cergy.fr