[Board] OSGeo and Russia / Belarus

[Angelos Tzotsos]

Hi Jeroen,

Your topic has been added in the agenda for the next board meeting.

Best regards,
Angelos

On 1/10/24 13:27, Jeroen Ticheler via Board wrote:
> Dear board,
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> With a long war in Ukraine going on, I would like to know if we have had talks in the OSGeo board or community on how we deal with contributions to our software from Russia and Belarus? We have sincere and great contributors that are residents of those countries on one hand, and we have things like international sanctions on the other hand.
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> In the GeoNetwork community we have active contributions on the language translations from contributors we know and that we don't know. Sometimes with usernames that are generic.
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> Now I personally have both positive and negative feelings about this. Negative because I dislike the idea that our software could be used for bad things by a hostile government. Positive because contributions coming back to the project improve things for everyone and helps making the world a better place by being inclusive and friendly.
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> As also described in https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/21/russian_foss_contributions_blocked/ it does not help much to block Russians or Belarussians from contributing; They can still use the software and _not_ share their improvements with the project (a fork is easily maintained outside of our repositories). So my stance at this point is not to take active action. I'm very interested to know what the board thinks about the topic and if other projects have had similar discussions?
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> Thanks and greetings,
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> Jeroen
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> https://www.geocat.net
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> Jeroen Ticheler
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> E-mail: jeroen.ticheler at geocat.net
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> https://www.geocat.net
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> Veenderweg 13
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> 6721 WD Bennekom
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> The Netherlands
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> #
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-- 
Angelos Tzotsos, PhD
President
Open Source Geospatial Foundation
http://users.ntua.gr/tzotsos