[OSGeo-Discuss] About OSGeo...

[Tim Bowden]

In putting together some words for the Aust-NZ chapters bid to host the
2009 FOSS4G conf, I went looking at what OSGeo stands for and how we
could answer that mission in our conf hosting bid.  I looked at
http://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/about.html and got the distinct
impression it was quite dated.

I don't think it's reasonable to consider OSGeo a nascent organisation
anymore.  The foundations governance model has been set.  We have
already expanded to include multiple projects, with even more great
projects to come.  While the foundation provides organisational support
to the wider open source geospatial community, I don't think it's fair
to say it provides legal and financial support.  Certainly it provides
financial support (in terms of structures and processes for financial
dealings) to OSGeo projects, but even there the legal support is a very
grey area that I don't think anybody is too keen to test.  Perhaps we
should cast the net a little less far reaching (though perhaps suitably
ambiguous?) when making a statement about OSGeo's financial and legal
intentions.  Any thoughts on what we should be saying?

I also noticed (ok, so at this point I was going on the hunt for what
else we might want to revisit) that we have no "media centre" links from
the front page.  Do we have a place where we put all our press releases?
We do have them don't we?  Surely we have something valuable we want to
tell the world?  Address current issues?  From time to time issues fly
around the geoblogsphere, and lots of people here express strongly held
views when outrageous things are done and said, but shouldn't the
response sometimes come from OSGeo as well?  We should probably also
have an rss feed on the media content.  Well, looks like I've just
identified a job that needs doing, and it would be a little petulant of
me to complain and expect others to do all the heavy lifting.  I'm happy
to help out with such an effort, but I can't do it alone.  Any help
would be appreciated.

The faq http://www.osgeo.org/content/faq/foundation_faq.html) also needs
updating.  I suspect some of the issues may no longer need quite so much
attention, while there should be plenty of new material to add.  I'll
troll through the list archives over the next few weeks and see if I can
pick out any with some proposed answers.  Feel free to ping me on this
one if I take a little too long...

Regards,
Tim Bowden