[Board] request for letter of support for Jan Hartmann (UvA)

[Jeff McKenna]

Jachym is correct, in the past I was contacted offline by several groups 
to support bids, and I always make a strong stand against this and ask 
that the request be done publicly on the Board list (imagine if I start 
signing support letters offline, including those that benefit my own 
company) ; in this case the request was done publicly, and I have no 
problem supporting it.

-jeff



On 2015-04-13 6:08 AM, Jachym Cepicky wrote:
> Guys, I believe Jeff will have some input to this topic,
>
> but in the past, there were different points of views of European board
> members and america-based board members.
>
> And I would like to read the Jeff's and Michael's opinion to this,
> because I feel, they have more fine sense for those kinds of supporting
> letters then we in Europe have
>
> J
>
> po 13. 4. 2015 v 10:13 odesílatel Massimiliano Cannata
> <massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch <mailto:massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch>>
> napsal:
>
>      From my point of view there is no issue.
>
>     Whoever asks for a support letter which could help in gain funds to
>     develop, promote, advance FOSS4G should be supported by OSGeo.
>     No exclusion, even if two people are bidding in "competition", they
>     could always ask for a letter each and I don't see any conflict.
>
>     I strongly believe that We, as the foundation, should always support
>     fund raising as one of our primary objective and only verify that
>     the proposal is in line with our CoC and mission
>
>     Maxi
>
>
>
>     Il giorno lun 13 apr 2015 alle ore 08:31 Bart van den Eijnden
>     <bartvde at osgis.nl <mailto:bartvde at osgis.nl>> ha scritto:
>
>         Hi Jachym,
>
>         in this case Jan’s “competition” is only research institutes
>         from other (non-geo) disciplines, so personally I don’t see the
>         issue.
>
>         Do you still see an issue given the above?
>
>         Best regards,
>         Bart
>
>>         On 13 Apr 2015, at 07:10, Jachym Cepicky
>>         <jachym.cepicky at gmail.com <mailto:jachym.cepicky at gmail.com>>
>>         wrote:
>>
>>         Hi,
>>
>>         Sorry about remaining still. Maybe you already addressed this.
>>         But AFAIK the policy is, not to explicitly support anybody's
>>         grants/project proposals, because of once you would have to
>>         support one project over another, which could cause us a lot
>>         of troubles..
>>
>>         ?
>>
>>         J
>>
>>
>>         On Wed, Apr 8, 2015, 09:59 Bart van den Eijnden
>>         <bartvde at osgis.nl <mailto:bartvde at osgis.nl>> wrote:
>>
>>             Hi board,
>>
>>             I’ve been contacted by Jan Hartmann from the University of
>>             Amsterdam to see if OSGeo can write a letter of support
>>             for a large non-profit proposal he is putting together,
>>             details are here:
>>
>>             http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Uva_letter_of_support
>>
>>             The proposal is due May 18th so would be great if we can
>>             vote on it in this week's board meeting.
>>
>>             TIA.
>>
>>             Best regards,
>>             Bart
>>             _________________________________________________