[OSGeo-Discuss] OGC and OSGeo Sign Memorandum of Understanding

[Arnulf Christl (OSGeo)]

On Wed, January 7, 2009 23:01, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Bart van den Eijnden (OSGIS) wrote:
>
>> Hey Tyler,
>>
>>
>> I understood from some people/discussions that the individual
>> membership can only be used when the individual owns their IP
>> (intellectual
>> property). So people working in a company, where the company owns the
>> persons IP, would not be able to use this membership.
>>
>> Is this true, are you able to shed some light on this?
>>
>
> Bart,
>
>
> I believe the individual members via OSGeo are bound by the normal
> limitations on such memberships.  I believe you question about IP belonging
> to a company as opposed to the individual roughly describes the main
> criteria.
>
> So the individual memberships are primarily useful for hobbiests, and
> other independent folks.

This is correct. In some cases this will not help people, for example if
they develop on Open Source software and work for a company that is not
member of the OGC but at the same time.

>> What will be OsGeo's policy for selecting the 6 people?
>>
>
> This isn't worked out in detail, but I believe Arnulf has been selected
> as the primary liaison and for the time being would be making the decision
>  if there are more candidates than slots available.  It may be that this
> isn't much of a problem.
>
> Best regards,

For the time being please send an email to Frank and me as we are listed
as the OSGeo liaison officers to the OGC. More than just having a few
slots for individuals we hope that the formal relation might help foster
interaction with what is going on in the OGC and OSGeo communities.

Quite a lot of companies producing and using Open Source already are a
member of OGC. This MoU is meant to also give people a chance to
collaborate more closely who have not been able to look into OGC's work
because the cost of joining is prohibitive. Please do not underestimate
the amount of time that on needs to spend to really achieve something in
OGC, I believe that this might actually be the larger barrier to getting
things done. On the other hand there are quite a lot of other
possibilities to collaborate with OGC, their members and staff, be it
interoperability experiments, or joint appearances at trade shows,
conferences, etc. Hopefully this will also get some life into our
standards list which is another place to talk open standards.

I would also be happy to answer questions on OGC procedures on this list
and why it makes sense to actually talk to them and work with them (once I
am back online in mid February... :-).

Best regards,
Arnulf.