[OSGeo-Discuss] About OSGeo...

[Arnulf Christl]

Tim Bowden wrote:
> 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.

Good point. Did you get any feedback on this? I am a bit out of the loop and we are currently looking for more of this kind of information for upcoming jobs in the Marketing committee. 

> 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?

Hehe. We have press releases whenever somebody does them. Did you?

> 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.

Probably the best way to help in this direction is to join the WebCom mailing list. 

> The faq http://www.osgeo.org/content/faq/foundation_faq.html) also needs
> updating.  

Right on. You can start working here:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/FAQ

Once you think its done send a mail to WebCom and they will copy it to the portal - if they like it. 

Be bold, delete everything, be a berserk. We are all much too reluctant in the use of the Wiki, it can definitely endure more dissent than the participating editors. We never ever had an edit war yet - thats a shame! 

> 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...

Ping. :-)

> Regards,
> Tim Bowden

Best regards, 
Arnulf.