[Board] [OSGeo-Discuss] How to retire membership status?

[María Arias de Reyna]

This is me writing as a person, not as board. This is my personal opinion.
Again: not the board, not the president speaking. Nothing official. Just me.

On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 11:03 AM, Christian Willmes <c.willmes at uni-koeln.de>
wrote:

> I think this email, cited by Sara Safavi, from Marc Vloemans [1] is just
> unbelievable and thus unacceptable to this community.
>
Personally I agree with you that it was an uncomfortable situation easy to
misinterpret. I wasn't comfortable either reading it. (me, the person, not
the board)

The thing is, we still have this "assume good intent" clause on the CoC
that makes it kind of useless on the gray area. So if Marc says that his
intention hasn't to harass Sara, that's it. He didn't do anything that is
officially bad. And I haven't asked Marc about his intentions, so I have to
assume good intent on this words. Misinterpretable? Uncomfortable? Sure,
but not wrong according to current CoC. We are all humans, everybody slips
sometimes and the wording doesn't come out as it should. And there should
be some kind of mediation system so we all learn what we did that made
other people uncomfortable so we can improve and do better next time. This,
assuming the intention was not to harass (which is what I personally
decided to believe as I don't think Marc is a bad person).

Personally I plan to review the CoC and make stronger rules to prevent
situations that can make people uncomfortable, no matter intention, no
matter wording. But as all my OSGeo work is done on my free time, I have to
wait until my holidays to do something about it. And as all my requests for
volunteers to do this have failed, I don't expect anyone to do anything
about it.

So again, please, can someone volunteer to help in improving this? It is a
huge work to do it right and if it has to be me alone working on it, I can
assure you, it won't be quick. More situations like this will happen until
I can have something final.

> I demand a public apology by Marc Vloemans for his accusations against
> Sara Safavi and the OSGeo organisation and community. Furthermore, I demand
> the OSGeo board to force LT to publish the financial records as a matter of
> course. I also suggest to discontinue any relationships with LocationTech
> if there is no public apology for this incident.
>
As a personal opinion, I think LocationTech has nothing to do with that
discussion. I haven't seen any official statement from LT in that thread
(maybe I missed it?). Furthermore, the agreement with LT for FOSS4GNA
didn't include any budget disclosure so they are not forced to show us
anything. We can change that for future events, but not for past events, if
they don't want to do it. So, personally I would leave LT out of the topic.

Going back to the main topic, this topic about being comfortable on the
community worries me (not only this specific case, but more cases I have
seen). So for sure I/we are going to move it inside the community (not only
as a task for the board, why should it be a task for the board?).

Specifically for the board actions, remember that we are volunteers and it
is difficult to make all of us be available to work at the same time. So
for this delicate issues, nobody can't expect a response from the board
that is quick. We need to think, discuss and decide. And that takes time.
We are not full time workers for OSGeo, we are volunteers. That's important
to remember.

I'm sorry for Sara and I really would prefer if she doesn't leave. But I
understand her concerns, so I can't blame her for her decision. I have done
similar things in the past in other organizations. Now I am more a fighter
and prefer to stay, but it is still her decision to fight or not. If she's
not comfortable, I can just hope to make OSGeo more friendly in the future
so she can come back.

(And, if you are wondering, no, this is not because Sara is my friend. In
fact, I barely know her. So don't try to read between lines, I would do the
same with anyone in the same situation).

Again, all this was my personal opinion. Not the board, don't blame the
board for anything here. The rest of the members don't know about this
email. This is my personal action.
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