[Board] [OSGeo-Discuss] Proprietary GIS on our OSGeo website

Tue Oct 10 11:29:49 PDT 2017

I do not think the board was asked to reach a conclusion, the specific bug
report was the result of a mistake (made sure not to check who) and has
since been fixed: http://osgeo.getinteractive.nl/projects/qgis/

I will note that the website is still under active development by the
contractor, and that none of our community members had access to fix the
issue when it was reported - I am sorry if that made anyone feel like they
were not being listened to.

In terms of responsibility for website content:

- I feel that the project teams should have the final say on what appears
on these project pages (if they do not wish to provide "migrate from"
information then there is no requirement to).
- In a similar fashion committees, initiatives, goeforall labs should have
edit access and freedom to manage their respective pages.
- the board is responsible for the partner pages, as it maintains these
partner relationships
- the marketing committee has responsibility for a few sections, branding,
what is open source, and advocacy pages

With respect to the purpose of this website, the marketing committee was
asked by the board to take on this project to meet a couple of our goals as
an organization, that were being held up by our Drupal website (lack of
participation more than appearance).

- Outreach: To introduce members of the public to open source geospatial. I
view this as a calling for all of us in this organization (ie our "*Empower
everyone with open source geospatial*" mission statement) rather than just
the calling of the board, the local chapters, the marketing committee,
initiatives like GeoForAll and OSGeo, or the individual projects.
- Celebration: To celebrate our community, especially its members (the goal
is written as "*celebrate excellence, openness and service within the OSGeo
community*"), which results in the strong focus on team photos in the
design and presentation (there is of course lots more we can do as an
organization - would love to see some more diverse awards and recognition).

What happened to the Drupal website? *While there were limitations around
presentation (a rebranding done in 2009 was never implemented), the largest
one was around participation. The website committee became in active and
disbanded, and the individual committees and community activities gradually
migrated to the wiki. Indeed much day-to-day maintenance fell on Jeff
McKenna and his dedication and perseverance has kept us online. *

The key message is that everyone is need to both finish this website, and
to make it a success for everyone.

--
Jody Garnett

On 10 October 2017 at 11:00, Steven Feldman <shfeldman at gmail.com> wrote:

> Angelos - did the board reach a conclusion on this topic? The IRC seems to
> end without a decision or any actions
>
> Jeff - have you formally proposed a web site management team to the
> systems committee? Can you share the terms of reference that you are
> proposing, particularly regarding content management.
>
> My view fwiw is that we have a Marketing Committee which has several
> people with expertise in marketing, surely we should give them a brief re
> the objectives of the web site (supporting our strategic goal of outreach?)
> and then let them get on with developing the content. Remember the advice
> about too many cooks ...
> ______
> Steven
>
>
> On 21 Sep 2017, at 20:12, Angelos Tzotsos <gcpp.kalxas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> The last 3 sentences of this statement make me worry for more future
> conflicts.
>
> What happens when the Marketing Committee (which has the mandate to
> outreach for OSGeo and create the new web site) conflicts with the new
> Website Management Team (part of Systems Administration Committee) on the
> content of the web site?
> Which one of these teams gets to decide if the site focuses on our
> community (us) or on bringing in new users (outreach)? Do-ocracy is not an
> option in this case, both groups are willing to act.
> Going through the by-laws [1] once again, I see that the only conflict
> resolution process we have in place is a Board resolution.
>
> Just to be clear: I am not against forming the "Website Management Team",
> just trying to be pro-active.
>
> I suggest discussing this matter at the next Board meeting [2]
>
> Best,
> Angelos
>
> [1] http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/incorporation/bylaws.html
> [2] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2017-10-05
>
>
> On 09/21/2017 02:25 PM, Jeff McKenna wrote:
>
> I am setting up an OSGeo "Website Management Team" now, to help bring the
> focus on the OSGeo community, manage the website (and WordPress theme),
> security, backups, content etc, and will propose this to OSGeo's Systems
> committee and OSGeo Board; for the longterm maintenance of the website.  I
> imagine during this maintenance process we will be removing these
> unnecessary promotions, and focus on the OSGeo community (us). We'll leave
> promotion of other things for those with the big money ha, as they have the
> big funding for their products, as you mentioned.  We will focus on the
> OSGeo community.
>
>
> --
> Angelos Tzotsos, PhD
> Charter Member
> Open Source Geospatial Foundation
> http://users.ntua.gr/tzotsos
>
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