[OSGeo-Conf] conflict of interest

[Frank Warmerdam]

Dave Patton wrote:
> It's not clear to me whether or not people may perceive
> there to be conflict of interest within OSGeo with
> regard to policies and/or decisions about "teach-ins",
> but it is worth considering the possible perceptions
> before coming to any decisions.
> 
> Perhaps input from the Discuss list would help, and/or
> a vote by the Charter Members.

Dave,

OSGeo has a conflict of interest policy, and several board members
did abstain in the vote in the last meeting based on a declared possible
conflict of interest.

   http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Conflict_Of_Interest_Policy

Presumably Jeff as a co-proposer of the event for which the policy
is initially being developed will want to abstain from votes at
the conference committee level as may a few others hoping to
participate as paid instructors.

However, we did recently revise the conflict of interest policy to
support those with a conflict of interest still contributing to
discussions of the topic of the conflict of interest.

I'm in favor of input from the discuss list, but it seems we are a long
ways from actually voting on any specific proposal.  I also don't see
this as an important enough issue to justify a charter member vote.  Mostly
I anticipate going to charter members only for really major decisions.
This might include revised articles of incorporation, or some sort of
existential question like "should we merge ourselves into the foo-corp
user group".

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org